Ooh! I was just reading about this! The Roman hippodrome had four stables which each had a different color associated with it: red, green, blue, and white. They were like different teams, so maybe the filmmakers assumed people would have dressed in their teams' colors just like modern sports fans (and I wouldn't be surprised if they were right). Those four colors were also associated with the four political factions that served as labor unions/guilds/political machines for the city of Rome, and later Constantinople, so alternatively, they could have been implying that those people were supporters of those factions. I haven't found out yet if the stables were associated with the factions, but in Constantinople, the emperor Justinian was nearly overthrown by an alliance of the four factions at the end of a chariot race in the hippodrome, which seems to have been used by the factions to whip the crowd into a suitably revolutionary frenzy. I hope this helps! Tea Rose -----------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:07:04 -0700 From: WickedFrau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [h-cost] Toga trim in Gladiator.. I was rewatching Gladiators this weekend and wondered if there were some color system to the toga trims. In some scenes there seemed to be groups of black trim, red and I think blue....anyone aware of any historical information for this? Thanks, Sg _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
