3.3
Still further, Numa’s watchful care of young maidens was more conducive to feminine decorum; but the treatment of them by Lycurgus, being entirely unconfined and unfeminine, has given occasion to the poets. They call them phainomerides, bare-thighed (so Ibycus), and revile them as mad after men. Thus Euripides says Andromache, 587f. (Kirchhoff), slightly adapted.:— They leave their homes to mingle with the youths; Their thighs are naked, flying free their robes.
3.4
For in fact the flaps of the tunic worn by their maidens were not sewn together below the waist, but would fly back and lay bare the whole thigh as they walked. Sophocles pictures the thing very clearly in these wordsFragment 788 (Nauck).:— And that young maid, whose tunic, still unsewn, Lays bare her gleaming thigh Between its folds, Hermione.
