No man ever steps in the same river twice.”¹Heraclitus’ riddling remark about identityalso applies to Roman (dress) culture. Fortunately, the puzzling contradiction dependson words and not on objects. If we define the term ‘Roman dress culture’ in the broadestsense, it includes all the garments which Roman people (if we also allow for a broaddefinition of the term ‘Roman’) wore from the beginnings of Rome until the year 476CE, when the Western Roman Empire officially ended. If we divide the subject matterinto different parts, such as when we talk oftheRoman dress culture of a given period,linguistic identity dissolves, and we find a Roman dress culture I and a Roman dressculture II etc. that differ from each other. This allows us to search forur-Roman costumeas opposed to garments acquired through acculturation, most notably the garmentsadded through Hellenization. In this book, the term ‘Roman dress culture’ is used inboth the general sense of ‘worn by Romans at some point’ and the particular meaningof ‘worn during a specific period.’ The particular Roman dress culture that is the focusof this book concerns the garments worn by the Romans in the third century BCE, whichwere later considered traditional dress by the first century BCE. Beyond any labelling,‘Roman’ dress was very likely a heterogenous mix of ethnic garments from the start.However, creating the sub-set ‘traditional Roman dress’ helps to elucidate the greatchanges Roman dress style underwent after the end of the Punic Wars.