The Toga in Military Context

The toga, a long flowing wrap worn by citizen men on formal occasions, was by the Late Republic a quintessentially civilian garment, famously summoned in Cicero's self-encomium cedant arma togae ('let arms yield to the toga') to celebrate the return of civil peace after the violence of the Catilinarian conspiracy.(1) By the Late Republic, the toga was a long, elaborately folded piece of cloth, difficult to put on and cumbersome to wear, suitable for formal occasions and public appearances.(2) Yet several passages of Latin literature report togas issued and worn in a military context in historical times, indicating that the word toga could describe a garment suitable for soldiers on active service.(3) Ursula Rothe has recently argued that the early toga was initially a common and practical outdoors garment that only acquired its "high" connotation as a marker of male citizenship in the Late Republic and Augustan age.(4) The toga, while a critical cultural artifact, was not a timeless, changeless item, but underwent historical evolution across over a thousand years of wear, as well as changes to its symbolic resonance. This paper argues that in the Middle Republic, Roman soldiers used togas as practical outer wraps that were worn belted over armor. Refences to togas being worn by soldiers during the third and second centuries suggest that the strictly civil vision of the toga found in Cicero was a development of the first century BC.