HABIT is also used for a dress or garb, or the composition of garments, wherewith a person is covered. The principal part of the dress worn by the Jews and Greeks was the phylon and the chiton. The phylon was an upper garment, consisting of a loose square piece of cloth wrapped round the body; the chiton was an under garment, or tunic, which was fastened round the body and embraced it closely, falling down to the mid-thigh. It is proper in this place to observe that a person divested of this upper garment or phylon, in the eastern language, is styled naked, and in this sense David danced naked before the ark.
The several sorts of garments in use with both sexes, amongst the Romans, were the toga, tunica, peluna, lacerna, chlamys, paludamentum, lina, stola, pallium or palla. See Toga, &c.
For the habits of the priests amongst the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, see the article PRIESTS.