Silk in Greece

WHAT inspired the Greek sculptor of the late fifth and early fourth centuries to give to his draperies the soft, transparent, clinging quality we so much admire today? Were the draperies of the Parthenon Fates (c. 438-31), the Erechtheion Karyatids (c. 421-14), the Nike Balustrade (c. 410), the Nereids (c. 400), the akroteria of Epidauros (c. 380-375) merely an artistic convention, or were they suggested by draperies worn at the time? That the latter was the case is indicated by the fact that we have references to such thin, transparent garments at the very time when the "fashion" was prevalent also in the sculptural representations. In the Lysistrate of Aristophanes, 1. 150 f.-produced in 411 B.C.-the women are told to captivate the men by coming forward "naked in their Amorgian chitons ": KAV roT-S XLTCOLPV'oL taro saopytvots yuvwalC raplo/IEV.