Underwear
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on the way you see it, women like men seem to not have worn underwear in their every-day life, or at least this is what all the vase depictions indicate. Vases are a great source of information for all sorts of occasions, both formal and informal, and unlike most sources (save for comedy) they "speak" to us even about very intimate situations.
Here is one of the relatively modest scenes of private life. This is probably a hetaira dressing up after her show (the barbitos is beside her and the client wears a wreath for the symposium). The man is just offering her the payment. Her semi-transparent chiton reveals the lack of underwear.
The semi-transparent clothes and the lack of underwear are not to be associated only with hetairae, as this skyphos shows the respected women of Troy with Helen and Menelaus. They too are not wearing underwear.
However, both for practical reasons, hygiene and aesthetics, women seem to, and must have worn some types of underwear some times. According to our research so far it is only two depictions of Atalante which show women's loincloths and breast band from the archaic and classical. This is probably not by chance, since Atalante had sworn Virginity and was a priestess of Artemis.
Atalante with a modern looking bra and loincloth. Note the embroidery.
Atalante with a loincloth wrestling with Peleus.
Loincloths for women have unknown form. Nor is there a name mentioned for them, since the diazoma and the perizoma are associated with men in the sources. Unfortunately the two depictions of Atalante above are inconclusive, since Atalante was brought up like a man, and excellent athlete and huntress. It is then possible that they depicted her with an athlete's loincloth.
The most common form of underwear for women was the breast band. The first mention is by Homer in the Iliad [Ξ.214 and Γ.371] where he is using the word kestos (κεστÏŒς) (cestus in Latin) for the girdle of Aphrodite. Kestos means "embroidered" and originally was an epithet for imas (ιμάς), a band, but it seems that later the word alone meant the breast band. The kestos enhanced Aphrodite's erotic appeal, and whoever wore it enjoyed the charm of Aphrodite herself, so Aphrodite gives her kestos to Hera to seduce Zeus.
From that we may extract that the kestos was tied under the breast and supported it.
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Another word used for a breast band is the strophion (στρÏŒφιον). It literally means "wrapped around". It is mentioned frequently by Aristophanes [Lys.931][Thesm.139, 255][Frag.509] but in Aeschylus it means a virgin's girdle [Theb.871]. In the Homeric hymn to Apollo it is a synonym to swaddling cloth.
It is then not by chance that Atalanta, as a devoted Virgin, is wearing a modest breast cover. Although in the vase above the bra she is wearing does not look like a wrapped around cloth, in Lysistrata the strophion is evidently also covering the woman's breasts, because her husband is eager to take out all her clothes, her having left the strophion last.
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There is yet more terminology around the breast band. We see the words stethodesmos (στηθÏŒδεσμος) and its synonym apodesmos (απÏŒδεσμος) also found in Aristophanes, and later mastodesmos (μαστÏŒδεσμος). We have no further information as to how these looked like and what separated them with the strophion. It seems however that they were tied in a knot, as the compound "desmos" indicates.
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In Hellenistic and Roman art Aphrodite is often depicted in the process of tying or untying the breast band. It is hard however to associate what she is wearing with the early form of kestos used by Homer.
Aphrodite. Late Hellenistic-early Roman statuette from Cyprus.
Statuette of Venus. 2nd c AD
Venus with a supportive breast band
(kestos/cestus?) 2nd c AD