The primary garment,[145] answering to the _chemise_ of the moderns, was a white tunic reaching to the ground,[146] in some instances sleeveless, and fastened on the shoulders with buttons, in others furnished with loose hanging sleeves descending to the wrist, and brought together at intervals upon the arm by silver or golden agraffes.[147] It was gathered into close folds under the bosom by a girdle,[148] or riband, sometimes fastened in front by a knot, sometimes by a clasp.[149] This inner robe, made in the earlier ages of fine linen,[150] manufactured in Attica, or imported from Tyre, Egypt, or Sidon, came, in after times, to be of muslin from Tarentum, or woven at home from Egyptian cotton. The use of linen, however, for this purpose was not wholly superseded. A very beautiful kind, from the island of Amorgos,[151] one of the Cyclades, was often substituted down to a very late period in place of the byssos, or fine muslin of Egypt; and this insular fabric,[152] whether snow-white or purple, would have rivalled the finest cambric, being of the most delicate texture and semi-transparent,[153] like the Tarentine and Coan vests of the Roman ladies, the sandyx-coloured Lydian robe, or the silken chemises of the Turkish sultanas, described by Lady Montague.[154] It is in a tunic of this linen that Lysistrata, in Aristophanes, advises the Athenian ladies to appear before their husbands in order to give full effect to the splendour of their charms.[155] ----- Footnote 145: Athen. xii. 5. 29. Boeckh. i. 141. Aristoph. Lysist. 43. sqq. Footnote 146: Ἐκ δὲ λίνου, λινοῦς χιτὼν, ὃν Ἀθηναῖοι ἔφορουν ποδήρη.—Poll. vii. 71. Footnote 147: Ælian. V. H. i. 8. Footnote 148: On the ζῶνη, Cf. Il. ξ. 181. Odyss. τ. 231. Damm. 988. On the Cestus Il. ξ. 214. Aristoph. Lysist. 72. βαθυχζώνοι. Æschyl. Pers. 155. et Schol.—Bœttig. Les Furies, p. 34. Footnote 149: Achilles Tatius. ii. cap. xi. p. 33, seq. Jacobs. Footnote 150: Thucyd. i. 6. Footnote 151: Aristoph. Lysist. 150. 735, et Schol. Footnote 152: Poll. vii. 75. Footnote 153: Aristoph. Lysist. 48. Poll. vii. 57. 74. Footnote 154: Works, ii. 191. Footnote 155: Aristoph. Lysist. 48. ----- Because the Amorginean linen was often, perhaps commonly, dyed purple, it has been inferred, that none purely white was produced; but this, as Bochart[156] observes, is, probably, a mistake. At all events, it was of extraordinary fineness, superior, in the opinion of Suidas,[157] even to the byssos and carbasos, or lawn of Cyprus, and appears to have been of a thin, gauze-like texture, like the drapery of “woven air” which Petronius[158] throws around his female characters. ----- Footnote 156: Chanaan. I. 14. p. 449. Footnote 157: Corrected by Bochart, who reads ἔστι δὲ σφόδρα λεπτὸν ὑπὲρ τὴν βύσσον ἢ τὴν κάρπασον. Cf. Suid. v. Ἀμοργ. t. i. p. 204. c. Etym. Mag. 85. 15. Footnote 158: Satyricon. cap. 55. p. 273. Burmann. -----