In his account of the assumption of the Ionic dress by the Athenians, Herodotus speaks only of the women; but we know that it was worn by men also, partly from the evidence of the monuments and partly from Thucydides, who tells us[107] that not long previously to the time at which he is writing the elder men of the wealthy classes gave up wearing linen chitons and fastening their hair with the τέττιξ, “cicala,” a luxurious mode of dress common to them and their kinsfolk the Ionians. The Ionic dress was probably discarded by the Athenians shortly after the outbreak of the Persian war, when a reaction set in against Orientalism and a tendency towards greater simplicity began to manifest itself; Thucydides is writing more than a generation after the Persian wars, but his expression, οὐ πολὺς χρόνος, “no great length of time,” is sufficiently vague, and he probably recollected the change which took place in his youthful days; moreover, he speaks only of the elder men of the wealthy classes, who would naturally be of conservative tendencies and the last to adopt any change in their mode of life or dress. The exact period at which the Athenians adopted the Ionic dress is unknown; the Æginetan expedition of 568 B.C., of which Herodotus makes use in dating the change, is too late, for we know that already in Solon’s days luxury in dress had reached such a pitch as to necessitate the passing of a sumptuary law to regulate it, and such luxury could hardly have been reached so long as the simple Doric dress was retained. It may not be unreasonable to assume, then, that constant intercourse with the Ionians in the islands on the coast of Asia Minor led the Athenians to adopt their dress at some time towards the end of the seventh century. [107] i., 6. [Illustration: FIG. 25.—Vase-painting from Lucania—British Museum. _Face page_ 61.]