In the strictly hierarchical Roman society of the Late Republic, dress became a subject of statutory regulations and social taboos. Numerous works have been devoted to identifying, documenting, and analysing these norms. Consequently, the typology of traditional Roman dress and the contexts in which it was worn are well-researched. However, the history of clothing reveals numerous counterexamples where prevailing rules and taboos were transgressed as acts of protest against political, social, or religious regulations.
This catalogue presents dresses that transgressed the regulations and taboos of the Late Roman Republic. I term them “non-normative dress.” The catalogue is primarily based on literary sources. It details the principal characteristics of non-normative dress, including its colours, fibres, fabrics, and usage contexts. Additionally, the catalogue is complemented by metadata—information about the sources and their authors, dates of composition, and other pertinent details.
Compiling this data and metadata into a single resource enables an assessment of the scale of these instances of dress norm violations, thereby facilitating an evaluation of their potential influence on the history of ancient Rome.