ABSTRACT
The Eastern Libyans in general appear to have been but scantily clad; and just as in Arabia even the kings of the Nabataeans wore only sandals and a purple loin-cloth, 1 so in North Africa the majority of the inhabitants wore, even in Roman times, so few clothes as to justify the phrases nudi Garamantes 2 and Nasamon nudus 3 of the poet Lucan. The Byzantine general Solomon, exhorting his troops, emphasized the fact that the Africans were practically naked; 4 and Procopius remarks that the Libyan dress consisted of but one rough tunic which the wearer did not change within the year. 5 Yet such as it was, perhaps because of its very scantiness, to foreign eyes the African costume was distinctive. Herodotus, writing of the Adyrmachidae, observes that whereas they resembled the Egyptians in their manners, they wore the dress of the Libyans. 6
