At home, as a rule, only the chiton was worn. It was, however, not considered correct to be seen thus in the street: only artisans or eccentric people went out without a cloak; but it was just as incorrect to appear without the chiton, only in the himation or chlamys. It is true this is very common on works of art: Zeus, Poseidon, and some other gods are represented without the chiton, and only in the himation, and Hermes and Apollo only in the chlamys; and even in representations of daily life we very often see in statues, reliefs, vase pictures, etc., men without under garments, clad only in the cloak (compare the youth in Fig. 9), and also in portrait figures. This is, however, a liberty taken by artists in order to avoid concealing the body entirely by the dress, but by no means corresponding to reality. Only those who specially desired to harden their bodies, and also poor people and certain philosophers who wished to proclaim their cynic principles by exceedingly scanty dress, went out, even in winter, in a cloak without an under garment. Shirt and trousers were unknown in Greek male dress; the latter are Oriental, and therefore only appear on monuments representing barbarous persons. As regards female dress, it may be stated at once that the strong contrast found in modern times between the dress of men and women is foreign to Greek antiquity: both have essentially the same elements, sometimes even the same shape; and this similarity becomes greater the nearer we get to antiquity. This was not carried so far that a woman could simply have put on a man’s under garment; in fact, even the Homeric epics distinguish the woman’s _peplos_ from the man’s chiton. Unfortunately, both the shape and the mode of wearing the Homeric peplos are matters of dispute which cannot be satisfactorily settled by the words of the epic. According to Helbig, it was not essentially different from the long male chiton; like this, it descended to the feet, fitting closely and without folds to the figure, and was provided with an opening for head and arms. The girdle was worn rather low down, not immediately under the breast or round the waist, but round the hips, and fell down somewhat in front. The peplos was put on by means of a slit between the breasts, which often descended as far as the feet, and was fastened by a large number of fibulae, or hooks. Helbig thinks that this fashion was due to Oriental influence, since such openings are very commonly found on monuments representing Oriental nations.