§239. Besides the _subligāculum_ and the _tunica_ the Romans had no regular underwear. Those who were feeble through age or ill health sometimes wound strips of woolen cloth (_fasciae_) around the legs for the sake of additional warmth. These were called _feminālia_ or _tībiālia_ according as they covered the upper or lower part of the leg. Such persons might also use similar wrappings for the body (_ventrālia_) and even for the throat (_fōcālia_), but all these were looked upon as the badges of senility or decrepitude and formed no part of the regular costume of sound men. It must be especially noticed that the Romans had nothing corresponding to our trousers or even long drawers, the _braccae_ or _brācae_ being a Gallic article that was not used at Rome until the time of the latest emperors. The phrase _nātiōnēs brācātae_ in classical times was a contemptuous expression for the Gauls in particular and barbarians in general. §240. The Toga.--Of the outer garments or wraps the most ancient and the most important was the _toga_ (cf. _tegere_). Whence the Romans got it we do not know, but it goes back to the very earliest time of which tradition tells, and was the characteristic garment of the Romans for more than a thousand years. It was a heavy, white, woolen robe, enveloping the whole figure, falling to the feet, cumbrous but graceful and dignified in appearance. All its associations suggested formality. The Roman of old tilled his fields clad only in the _subligāculum_; in the privacy of his home or at his work the Roman of every age wore the comfortable, blouse-like _tunica_; but in the forum, in the _comitia_, in the courts, at the public games, everywhere that social forms were observed he appeared and had to appear in the toga. In the toga he assumed the responsibilities of citizenship (§127), in the toga he took his wife from her father's house to his (§78), in the toga he received his clients also toga-clad (§182), in the toga he discharged his duties as a magistrate, governed his province, celebrated his triumph, and in the toga he was wrapped when he lay for the last time in his hall (§198). No foreign nation had a robe of the same material, color, and arrangement; no foreigner was allowed to wear it, though he lived in Italy or even in Rome itself; even the banished citizen left the toga with his civil rights behind him. Vergil merely gave expression to the national feeling when he wrote the proud verse (Aen. I, 282): Rōmānōs, rērum dominōs, gentemque togātam.[1] [Footnote 1: The Romans, lords of deeds, the race that wears the toga.] [Illustration: FIGURE 84. TIBERIUS IN THE TOGA]