History of The Bikini - in Antiquity

In Antiquity

In the Chalcolithic era around 5600 BC, the mother-goddess of Çatalhöyük, a large ancient settlement in southern Anatolia, was depicted astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a bikini. Two-piece garments worn by women for athletic purposes are depicted on Greek urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC. Active women of ancient Greece wore a breastband called a mastodeton or an apodesmos, which continued to be used as an undergarment in the Middle Ages. While men in ancient Greece abandoned the perizoma, partly high-cut briefs and partly loincloth, women performers and acrobats continued to wear it.

Artwork dating back to the Diocletian period (286-305 AD) in Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily, excavated by Gino Vinicio Gentile in 1950-60, depicts women in garments resembling bikinis in mosaics on the floor. The images of ten women, dubbed the "Bikini Girls", exercising in clothing that would pass as bikinis today, are the most replicated mosaic among the 37 million colored tiles at the site. In the artwork "Coronation of the Winner" done in floor mosaic in the Chamber of the Ten Maidens (Sala delle Dieci Ragazze in Italian) the bikini girls are depicted weight-lifting, discus throwing, and running. Some activities depicted have been described as dancing, as their bodies resemble dancers rather than athletes. Coronation in the title of the mosaic comes from a woman in a toga with a crown in her hand and one of the maidens holding a palm frond. Some academics maintain that the nearby image of Eros, the primordial god of lust, love, and intercourse, was added later, demonstrating the owner's predilections and strengthening the association of the bikini with the erotic. Similar mosaics have been discovered in Tellaro in northern Italy and Patti, another part of Sicily. Prostitution, skimpy clothes and athletic bodies were related in ancient Rome, as images were found of female sex workers exercising with dumbbells/clappers and other equipment wearing costumes similar to the Bikini Girls.

Charles Seltman, a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, curator of the Archaeology Museum there and an editor of The Cambridge Ancient History, illustrated a chapter titled "The new woman" in his book Women in Antiquity with a 1950s model wearing an identical bikini against the 4th-century mosaics from Piazza Armerina as part of a sisterhood between the bikini-clad female athletes of ancient Greco-Romans and modern woman. A photograph of the mosaic was used by Sarah Pomeroy, Professor of Classics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in the 1994 British edition of her book Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves to emphasize a similar identification. According to archeologist George M.A. Hanfmann the bikini girls made the learned observers realize "how modern the ancients were".

In ancient Rome, the bikini-style bottom, a wrapped loincloth of cloth or leather, was called a subligar or subligaculum ("little binding underneath"), while a band of cloth or leather to support the breasts was called strophium or mamillare. The exercising bikini girls from Piazza Armenia wear subligaria, scanty briefs made as a dainty version of a man's perizoma, and a strophium band about the breasts, often referred to in literature as just fascia, which can mean any kind of bandage. Observation of artifacts and experiments shows bands had to be wrapped several times around the breasts, largely to flatten them in a style popular with flappers in the 1920s. These Greco-Roman breastbands may have flattened big breasts and padded small breasts to look bigger. Evidence suggests regular use. The "bikini girls" from Piazza Armenia, some of whom sport the braless look of the late 20th century, do not depict any propensity of such popularity in style. One bottom, made of leather, from Roman Britain was displayed at the Museum of London in 1998. There has been no evidence that these bikinis were for swimming or sun-bathing.

Finds especially in Pompeii show the Roman goddess Venus wearing a bikini. A statue of Venus in a bikini was found in a cupboard in the southwest corner in Casa della Venere, others were found in the front hall. A statue of Venus was recovered from the tablinum of the house of Julia Felix, and another from an atrium in the garden at Via Dell'Abbondanza. Naples National Archaeological Museum, which opened its limited viewing gallery of more explicit exhibits in 2000, also exhibits a "Venus in Bikini". The museum's exhibits include female statues wearing see-through gold lamé brassiere, basque and knickers. The Kings of Naples discovered these Pompeii artifacts, including the one meter tall, almost unclothed statue of Venus painted in gold leaf with something like a modern bikini. They found them so shocking that for long periods the secret chamber was opened only to "mature persons of secure morals". Even after the doors were opened, only 20 visitors were to be admitted at a time, and children under 12 were not allowed into the new part of the museum without their parents' or a teacher's permission.

There are references to bikinis in ancient literature as well. Ovid, the writer ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature, suggests the breastband or long strip of cloth wrapped around the breasts and tucked in the ends, is a good place to hide love-letters. Martial, a Latin poet from Hispania who published between AD 86 and 103, satirized a female athlete he named Philaenis, who played ball in a bikini-like garb quite bluntly, making her drink, gorge and vomit in abundance and hinting at her lesbianism. In an epigram on Chione, Martial strangely mentions a sex worker who went to the bathhouse in a bikini, while it was more natural to go unclothed. Reportedly Theodora, the 6th century empress of the Byzantine Empire wore a bikini when she appeared as an actress before she captured the heart of emperor Justinian I.