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She wore a flowing violet-tinted stola, that tumbled in soft, silky flounces down to her ankles, and from beneath it peered the tint of her shapely feet bound to thin sandals by bright red ribbons. Her bare rounded arms were clasped above and below the elbow and at the wrists by circlets shaped as coiled serpents, whose eyes were gleaming rubies.
The cheap story, written for the day, is dressed in all the fashionable articles that can be laid upon it, like the revolving lady in a shop window. The real story, which alone outlives the modíste's bonnets and shawls, may drape itself as it pleases; for it does not depend on its peplos, or stola, on its stomacher, or basque, or crinoline, for its effect.
Ovid, again, is never weary of dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot. He represents the chaste matron as wearing a weighted stola which always fell so as to cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her feet.
"Why, what is this, Aurelia," exclaimed Catiline, as if he were angry, although in truth the whole thing was carefully preconcerted. "Wherefore is Lucia thus strangely clad? Is it, I pray you, in scorn of our noble guests, that she wears only this plain morning stola?"
The ladies were both waiting in the atrium, when the young man dismounted from his car; and never had his Julia, he thought, looked more lovely than she did this morning, with the redundant masses of her rich hair confined by a net of green and gold, and a rich pallium, or shawl of the same colors, gracefully draped over her snowy stola, and indicating by the soft sweep of its outlines the beauties of a figure, which it might veil but could not conceal.
Greek was the only tongue now that sounded in her ear, unless she talked privately with Fabia or was beguiled into trying to learn a little Egyptian a language Berenice and Monime spoke fluently. The clothes she wore were no longer stola and palla, but chiton and himation. The whole atmosphere about her was foreign, down to the cries on the streets.
Claudia arose, and let her maids throw over her a long white stola, with deep flounces and an elaborate embroidery of sea-nymphs and marine monsters. Lentulus went out into the atrium and walked up and down, biting his nails, and trying to think out the arguments by which he would confute the political heresies of Drusus.
In the same way, while he tolerated the prostitute, beyond a certain point he sharply curtailed her privileges. Not only was she deprived of all influence in the higher concerns of life, but she might not even wear the vitta or the stola; she could indeed go almost naked if she pleased, but she must not ape the emblems of the respectable Roman matron.
Slightly above the middle stature, and with a waist of scarce a span’s circumference, her form was exquisitely full and rounded; the sweeping outlines of her snow-white and dimpled arms, bare to the shoulders, and set off by many strings of pearl, which were themselves scarcely whiter than the skin on which they rested; the swan-like curvature of the dazzling neck; the wavy and voluptuous development of her bust, shrouded but not concealed by the plaits of her white linen stola, fastened on either shoulder by a clasp of golden fillagree, and gathered just above her hips by a gilt zone of the Grecian fashion; the small and shapely foot, which peered out with its jewelled sandal under her gold-fringed draperies; combined to present to the eye a very incarnation of that ideal loveliness, which haunts enamored poets in their dreams, the girl just bursting out of girlhood, the glowing Hebe of the soft and sunny south.
Nepo's toga and my stola are hidden in a grove just outside the town, and it will be dusk by the time we arrive there. Kiss me, Aemilia; I am glad that I know you, for I have heard much of you from Pollio. I am glad that Beric has chosen so well. Goodbye, Beric; I hope we may meet again before long, and that without danger to any of us.
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