Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Nudus

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

NUDUS (γυμνός). Unclad; in the ordinary sense, denoting absolute nakedness; thence, in common language, scantily or imperfectly clad, denoting a person of either sex who is divested of all clothing except that which is worn next the skin — the Roman of his toga, the Greek of his pallium — as we say undressed of a man without his coat, or of a female without her gown. But the Latin nudus, as well as the Greek γυμνός, appear to have indicated something more than the mere absence of an outer garment (amictus) over the tunic; for both words are particularly used in describing the hardworking population, agricultural labourers, ploughmen, &c. (Hesiod. Op. 391. Virg. Georg. ii. 299. Aurel. Vict. Vir. Illust. 17.), who either wore an exomis (wood-cut, p. 269.), or a very short tunic girt high up above the knees, as the left-hand figure in the annexed illustration (Nudus/1.1) from a Pompeian painting; and in respect of women, as descriptive of one who escapes from danger in a hurried flight and half dressed (Xen. Anab. i. 10. 3.); or of the young Doric virgins who contended in the gymnasium (Aristoph. Lys. 82.), and wore a very small chemise, not reaching to the knees, and leaving the right shoulder exposed (Pausan. v. 16. 2.), precisely as shown by the right-hand figure, from a statue in the Vatican. In all these instances, the style of clothing, which scarcely conceals the person, really does suggest a notion of nudity; but that is not so obviously the case when a person wears an ordinary tunic, without an amictus over it (see the examples s. TUNICA); besides which both the Greeks and Romans had a separate word to distinguish that kind of dishabille; viz. μονοχίτων or οἰοχίτων, and TUNICATUS.

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  Nudus/1.1