Roman Slave Research

In preparation for next month's Roman party, a friend of mine has asked for help putting together his Roman garb. Having just lost an impressive amount of weight, my friend is eager to show off his muscular legs, so I've suggested a Roman slave's garb. From what I've seen in researching my own outfit, slaves generally wore short tunics, giving him ample opportunity to show off his gams.

Pro Tip: absolutely DO NOT search for "Roman slave outfit" with safe search off. Yikes.

Though my initial web search was not entirely helpful, I dug up my copy of Peacock's The Chronicle of Western Fashion and nabbed shots of a couple of his illustrations of ancient Roman servants. This text was originally published in America in the early 1990s, at the height of political correctness, and based on my other research, it's fair to assume they wrote "servant" when they meant "slave.":

The examples show fairly similar styles. The garments are white or offwhite, short sleeved, in a single layer. Each garment is a loose tunic-like garment, generally with a belt, falling above the knees (sometimes considerably above the knees). One example I found from period sources shows a sleeveless tunic which, rather than being belted, has been knotted at the crotch. Several examples show trim as with a higher-ranking man, two parallel lines running vertically along the front (and presumably back) at the shoulder. However, freemen are typically shown with red trim, whereas the slaves are shown with black.

I like the style of the tunic shown on the baker in the second example, but I'm not sure my friend wants to show off quite that much leg. Instead I think I'll go with the light brown one-shoulder tunic on the left. Nobody else is wearing an asymmetrical style, so it'll add some variety.

I've already taken my friend's measurements, and I've already made a Roman tunica for myself, so this will be a very easy process. My friend measures 25" across at the shoulders and 50" from shoulder to knee. In order to properly pattern, I'll also need his chest measurement, but he'll be stopping by tomorrow afternoon for that.

Basically the pattern will be two rectangles, each 50 inches long and probably about 40 inches wide. I might even do a 50x50 square. I'll sew the fabric from bottom to top on one side and from bottom to a little more than halfway up on the other. On the open side (the high side), I'll stitch and gather the shoulder from about 1/3 across to about ten inches from the end, leaving the last ten inches or so open to flutter on the shoulder as the illustration shows. The only trick will be belting it in such a way that the hem stays flat. It's obvious the fabric isn't cut at a diagonal because there is draping on the low side, but I may end up needing to engineer a cheat to keep it even as the night wears on.