chlamys

plural chlamyses · plural chlamydes

1. historicalA short poncho-like cloak caught up on the shoulder, worn by hunters, soldiers, and horsemen in Ancient Greece.

   He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders.

   1824–1829, Walter Savage Landor, “Æsop and Rhosope”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […]

   2 more examples

   The horse was not in the least like a Greek horse (nor even a Trojan), and F.M. the Duke of Wellington was not represented with the ensis or short sword in his grasp, the chlamys flying from his shoulder, or the paludamentum, as more suitable for the cool of the English climate (totidem divisos orbe &c.), the kothornos on his leg, the galea slung at the crupper? no reins, and his naked nether-man, not (as in these precious models) seated on the bare back of the bull-necked, square-jawed, dray-limbed steed.

   1847, “The Wellington Statue”, in The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c., London, page 523, column 2

   A male god stands in three-quarter view to right, wearing a chlamys fastened at his right shoulder with a round clasp.

   1977, Mary Carol Sturgeon, Sculpture: the Reliefs from the Theater, page 38