37.  The Beauty of the Greek Dress.—­Greek Costume, then, is something fully sharing in the national characteristics of harmony, simplicity, individuality.  It is easy to see how admirably this style of dress is adapted to furnish over ready models and inspiration for the sculptor.[*] Unconventional in its arrangement, it is also unconventional in its color.  A masculine crowd is not one unmitigated swarm of black and dark grays or browns, as with the multitude of a later age.  On the contrary, white is counted as theoretically the most becoming color on any common occasion for either sex;[+] and on festival days even grave and elderly men will appear with chitons worked with brilliant embroidery along the borders, and with splendid himatia of some single clear hue—­violet, red, purple, blue, or yellow.  As for the costume of the groom at a wedding, it is far indeed from the “conventional black” of more degenerate days.  He may well wear a purple-edged white chiton of fine Milesian wool, a brilliant scarlet himation, sandals with blue thongs and clasps of gold, and a chaplet of myrtle and violets.  His intended bride is led out to him in even more dazzling array.  Her white sandal-thongs are embroidered with emeralds, rubies, and pearls.  Around her neck is a necklace of gold richly set,—­and she has magnificent golden armlets and pearl eardrops.  Her hair is fragrant with Oriental nard, and is bound by a purple fillet and a chaplet of roses.  Her ungloved fingers shine with jewels and rings.  Her main costume is of a delicate saffron, and over it all, like a cloud, floats the silvery tissue of the nuptial veil.

[*]"The chiton became the mirror of the body,” said the late writer Achilles Tatius.

[+]No doubt farmers and artisans either wore garments of a non-committal brown, or, more probably, let their originally white costume get utterly dirty.

38.  Greek Toilet Frivolities.—­From the standpoint of inherent fitness and beauty, this Athenian costume is the noblest ever seen by the world.  Naturally there are ill-advised creatures who do not share the good taste of their fellows, or who try to deceive the world and themselves as to the ravages of that arch-enemy of the Hellene,—­Old Age.  Athenian women especially (though the men are not without their follies) are sometimes fond of rouge, false hair, and the like.  Auburn hair is especially admired, and many fine dames bleach their tresses in a caustic wash to obtain it.  The styles of feminine hair dressing seem to change from decade to decade much more than the arrangements of the garments.  Now it is plaited and crimped hair that is in vogue, now the more beautiful “Psyche-knots”; yet even in their worst moods the Athenian women exhibit a sweet reasonableness.  They have not yet fallen into the clutches of the Parisian hairdresser.

The poets, of course, ridicule the foibles of the fair sex.[*] Says one:—­

The golden hair Nikylla wears
   Is hers, who would have thought it? 
She swears ’tis hers, and true she swears
   For I know where she bought it!