Strutt informs us that the Roman women, married as well as unmarried, used girdles, and besides them they sometimes wore a broad swath or bandage round their breasts, called strophium, which seems to have answered the purpose of the bodice or stays, and had a buckle or bandage on the left shoulder, and that the mitra or girdle of the Greeks probably resembled the strophium of the Romans. The annexed illustration represents a lady of Ancient Greece. He also speaks of the Muses as being described by Hesiod as being girt with golden "_mitres_," and goes on to inform us that Theocritus in one of his pastorals introduces a damsel complaining to a shepherd of his rudeness, saying he had loosened her mitra or girdle, and tells her he means to dedicate the same to Venus. So it will be seen that the waist and its adornment were considered at that early period of the world's history matters of no ordinary importance, and whether the term strophium, zone, mitra, custula, stays, bodice, or corset is made use of, the end sought to be obtained by their aid was the same.
Constant mention is made by early writers of the _peplus_ as being a very elegant garment, and there are notices of it as back as the Trojan war, and the ladies of Troy appear to have generally worn it. On the authority of Strutt, it may be stated to have been "a thin light mantle worn by Grecian ladies above the tunic;" and we read that Antinous presented to Penelope a beautiful large and variegated peplus, having twelve buckles of gold, with tongues neatly curved. The peplus, however, was a very splendid part of the lady's dress, and it is rarely mentioned by Homer without some epithet to distinguish it as such. He calls it the _variegated_ peplus and the painted peplus, alluding to ornamental decorations either interwoven or worked with the needle upon it, which consisted not only in diversity of colours, but of flowers, foliage, and other kinds of imagery, and sometimes he styles it the _soft purple peplus_, which was then valuable on account of the excellence of the colour. We learn from a variety of sources that the early Roman and Grecian ladies indulged in almost unprecedented luxury in matters of personal adornment, as the following extract from Fullam will show:--