The story of the toga is fascinating if you don’t mind me rambling. During much of the classical Roman period that we think about when we think about ancient Rome, togas were formal wear that most men only donned on special occasions. Lots of non-elite men apparently couldn’t even afford a toga, but could rent them when necessary much like men do today with formal evening wear.
Non-citizens, who made up a sizable percentage of the population of Rome, were subject to the death penalty if they were caught wearing a toga, which marked citizenship.
It seems that men and women, unless they were in the upper classes, pretty much wore tunics (one piece, A-frame sleeveless garments that were hammed with a pretty high neckline) most of the time. Even at elaborate dinner parties, a man might be expected to wear a fancy embroidered tunic instead of a toga.
Men were togas over their tunics when on official state or religious business.
Children of both sexes would also wear togas over tunics on formal occasions, and some historians think upper class children might possibly have worn togas daily, and maybe without a tunic underneath, though there is some disagreement about that.
It appears that sometime around 200 BC when men stopped wearing togas every day (unless they were of the elite political class) women began wearing stolas over tunics on special occasions, and if they were elite whenever they left the house.
There is some indication that slaves and other non-citizen women in Rome continued to work in public with breasts exposed after 200 BC, maybe well after, right into late Republican times.
If this is true, then we can see a society that like the one in ancient Greece, that tended to control the sexuality and dress of high-status women more strictly than of lower-status women.
Cato the Younger famously made a pain in the ass of himself during the late Republic by not wearing a tunic under his toga, leaving chest hair exposed, which some observers complained about as being indecent or offensive.
But he was a traditionalist, and insisted that his returning to an older custom was a return to stronger Roman values.
One wonders what he would have said if his wife had worn a toga out of the house without a tunic underneath it. Probably not much good.
