Did the ancient Romans wear underwear? The truth is surprisingly complicated

At first glance, it seems like a question with an obvious answer. Surely the Romans, famed for the complexity of their social culture, engineering prowess, elaborate fashions and careful etiquette, must have worn underwear?

It’s hard to imagine that members of the civilisation that built aqueducts and amphitheatres wandered along their famously straight roads without anything beneath their tunics.

Yet as professor Ursula Rothe explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the reality of Roman underwear is very ambiguous, and exceptionally tricky to pin down. “This is quite a controversial topic,” she says.

The debate begins with what the people of the Roman empire wore (or didn’t), but morphs into more complex questions about how they viewed the body, beauty, modesty and status.

Roman writers left detailed descriptions of clothing, hairstyles, jewellery and elite fashion, but almost nothing about underwear. “On the whole it’s not really something Romans talk about,” Rothe notes. “It’s not something that is depicted.”

Most organic Roman textiles have vanished from the archaeological record, not being something that preserves over two millennia. The few surviving garments and images that have survived are often inconclusive. This scarcity of evidence has led to competing interpretations of Roman underwear. But what’s the answer?

As Rothe explains, looking at the clues reveals as much about Roman values, as it does about Roman clothing – or lack thereof.

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Roman fashion and the purpose of the strophium

There is one thing we can say with relative certainty about underwear: there was something like a bra.

“We do know that women wore a band around their bust called a strophium,” Rothe says.

This was a simple cloth band that functioned as a form of support, like a modern bra. And it’s a garment that speaks volumes about Roman beauty ideals.

“It was considered a beauty ideal to have a very small bust in the Roman world. A big bust was considered a bit coarse and barbaric,” Rothe explains.

A fuller chest was associated with lower status, partly because elite women typically didn’t breastfeed their own children; enslaved wet nurses did.

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“If you had a big bust, then you looked like you were breastfeeding your own children,” says Rothe, and therefore a tightly wrapped strophium signalled refinement and social rank.

Rather than functioning just as underwear, the strophium was part of a broader system of visual cues that signalled a person’s place in the social order.

The ‘bikini girls’ of Sicily

Images of Roman women wearing what look like two-piece outfits appear to offer clear evidence of underwear. Most famous are perhaps the “bikini girl” mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, the scenes of which depict young women wearing bandeau tops and brief-like bottoms while playing sports.

But Rothe urges caution when drawing conclusions from the mosaics.

These are late antique mosaics belonging to a specific decorative tradition, centuries removed from the early imperial period that we most often associate with the Roman empire.

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“They look like they're wearing briefs and this breast band,” Rothe says, “but we don't know whether they were normal underwear, or whether they were used by women for exercising when they had taken everything else off.”

These outfits may have been worn only in contexts where clothing was deliberately reduced for strenuous physical activity.

Roman men, loincloths and the problem of interpretation

Evidence for male undergarments is harder to find a sign of, but not impossible.

“We know that men had loincloths,” Rothe says, based on images of labourers, athletes and enslaved workers. These garments appear in scenes where men have removed outer layers in the heat.

But did men routinely wear these beneath their tunics? Or was it just in these instances?

Sources are ambiguous. Rothe explains that some Roman literature describes men falling over and accidentally exposing themselves, something that implies the absence of underwear. But it’s not solid evidence, and it’s certainly not conclusive.

What is clear is that Roman clothing habits varied widely across regions, centuries and social groups. Soldiers, labourers, enslaved people and elites did not dress in the same ways, and expectations differed between urban and rural environments.

Why the Romans barely discussed underwear

So why, when we know so much about ancient Roman culture, is this specific topic still so ambiguous? The answer lies in the fundamental differences between Roman and modern ideas of modesty and the body.

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Roman society was one of communal bathing, open latrines, shared sleeping arrangements and household hierarchies, in which enslaved people routinely saw their masters undressed. Privacy wasn’t concerned with concealing the body. As such, underwear simply might not have been as important to the Romans as it is to many cultures today.

Elite women likely wore the strophium. Men and women working or exercising wore loincloths or brief-like garments. But what about the broader public? Was the average person on an average day wearing underwear?

Rothe’s conclusion on the debate is one of caveats: “It's a fraught question,” she says. “It’s not entirely clear. We don't know, and I think that debate will continue to rage.”

Some individuals may have worn underlayers beneath tunics; many probably didn’t. The deeper lesson is that the question of underwear exposes a cultural gap. Roman underwear, as a marker of modesty or personal privacy, simply didn’t hold the meaning it does today.

Ursula Rothe was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.