4. This leads us to consider the costume of the men, the chief parts of which we will describe generally, before we speak of them in detail. These then are, first, the chiton, a woollen shirt without sleeves, worn by all the Greeks and Italians, the only dress of boys;(1261) since it was not till after the increase of luxury in Athens that they began to dress young boys in the himation.(1262) Secondly, the himation, called in Homer χλαῖνα.(1263) a square piece of cloth, sometimes rounded off at the corners, which was commonly thrown over the left, and behind under the right arm, and the end was again brought back over the left shoulder.(1264) Thirdly, the chlamys (Θετταλικὰ πτέρα), of Macedonian and Thessalian origin,(1265) an oblong piece of cloth, of which the two lower ends came forward, and were fastened with a clasp upon the right shoulder; so that it left that arm free. This latter dress is never mentioned in the poems of Homer. Sappho was the first among the Greek poets who spoke of it.(1266) It was not therefore till after her time that its use was extended over Greece Proper, first as the dress of horsemen, and young men in general, and then as a military cloak; under which character it was introduced into Sparta.(1267) The earliest painted vases, however, always represent the warriors in the himation, which is commonly without folds, and drawn close to the body.(1268) Thucydides(1269) says of the Lacedæmonians, that “_they were the first to adopt a simpler mode of dress_:” a statement which is founded on a peculiar notion of this historian, that the loose linen garments, which were still worn by old-fashioned people at Athens in the time of Aristophanes, were the original Greek dress; whereas we know with tolerable certainty that this dress was brought over to Athens by the Ionians of Asia.(1270) The Athenians again laid this aside at the time of the Peloponnesian war, and returned to the thin clothing of the ancient Greeks; with the exception of the women, who had formerly at Athens worn the Doric costume, but now retained the Ionic dress with long sleeves, wide folds, and trailing hem, which was generally of linen. Thucydides, however, is so far right, that the Lacedæmonians were distinguished among all the Greeks for their scanty and simple clothing: thus the Lacedæmonian habit,(1271) the τρίβων,(1272) was of thick cloth and small size,(1273) which the youths(1274) of Sparta were bound by custom to wear the whole year through without any other clothes;(1275) and to which older men (for example, those Athenians who aped the Lacedæmonian manners) sometimes voluntarily submitted.