Killgrove gained some insights into the use of swaddling clothing as diapers in antiquity, I began to wonder what, exactly, Romans had on under their togas or tunics, and why we know so little about them. There is an expert article on this by Kelly Olson, and thus many of the classical references I will now explore have been plucked from her publication on the matter.
Martial (11.99) notes that women wore a tunica under their clothing which could be bothersome and ultimately give them a wedgie. Young women and brides-to-be could also wear an undertunic called a supparus or supparum. This was a long piece of linen around one’s thighs that, at least from descriptions, seems to have been a bit like a slip however, Lucan (2.364) suggests it could also come up to and around the shoulders. Women also wore a “breast band” or what we would call a bra. These were referred to as strophia. As Olson notes (204), you could increase your bust size (i.e. Stuff your bra) by simply wrapping more fabric or leather around you.These strophiaare likely depicted in the mosaics from Piazza Armerina often referred to as the “bikini girls”. In my day (I guess this was the 90s?), we just called this fabric bra a bandeau. The women in the Piazza Armerina mosaics wear a kind of workout bottom often worn by men called a subligar or a subligaculum, but there is no textual evidence that under their clothing on a day-to-day basis, Roman women wore underpants. Another mosaic from the Villa Romana del Casale outside Piazza Armerina. The women wear a strophium and (likely) the subligar. The aforementioned subligaculum probably strongly resembled a diaper, and was rather bulky. We get a good idea of what these likely looked like particularly from reliefs, figurines, and mosaics of gladiators, but these were perhaps modified from the day-to-day underwear worn by Roman men. Just like soccer players wear cups, I would imagine that gladiators would want to have a bit more (*cough*) protection than they would need for simply taking a stroll around the Forum Romanum. Some nice patterns for underwear can be found in The World of Roman Costume(2001: 234). Mosaic from the Villa Borghese outside Rome (4th c. Here we should note that even partial nudity could visually communicate status–though I am not sure this should be surprising to us. It simply matters where and when the individual wore their underthings. If I wear my bikini to a crab shack at the beach? Just fine. I wear a bikini to lecture in? Not fine. In Roman antiquity, slaves often had bare chests.
For example, mill slaves likely only wore the subligaculum.