Woolen Togas

At Mantua, cross-legged tailors were busy last week cutting scores of classic Roman togas from wide bolts of the traditional white woolen cloth. To make a toga for a wearer 5 ft. 8 in. tall, they snipped out a flattened semicircle, 17 ft. from tip to tip, and 5 ft. broad at the widest point. After binding the edges the toga was complete, was taken to the Accademia Vergiliana, famed Mantuan university. There, later in the week, arrived august professors from every Italian university; also from Oxford, Cambridge, La Sorbonne and many another foreign seat of lore. . . .

Shrewd, these learned men did not put on their togas haphazard, but allowed themselves to be draped by an expert. He, deft, threw one end of the toga over their left shoulder, allowing the point to hang down in front. The major remainder of the toga was then wound about the body, toward the right, and finally disposed in graceful folds about the right arm. Soon, like so many Caesars, the good doctors strode forth, paraded through Mantua, and grouped majestically while a statue of Virgil, famed Mantuan* was unveiled. . .

* Publius Vergilius Maro, "greatest Roman poet," author of the Aeneid, was born, strictly speaking, not at Mantua, but on a farm nearby.