A “Good Woman”

Later Roman art does not show women with the frequency or diversity it does men. Very often the women who are shown are there to be paradigms of modesty and piety. This picture is one in that mould. This outfit is indeed what a modest and pious woman of the peasant class would have been wearing, although it would be rare for her dress to be quite so plain. In this paradigm suchg a woman would not have been seen in public with out a cape. Her simple headdress was called bhlarion / vilarion by the “middle Byzantine” period.