A tunic worn by the Greeks in the Archaic period, a time around the 5th century B.C. when Greek fashion was beginning to develop its own style. The chiton was standard dress for both men and women; the women and older men wore it to the ankles while the young men's garment was considerably shorter, resting at the knees. Both variants were woven to fit the individual and would have measured twice the distance from elbow to elbow across.

The chiton was a rectangular-shaped, home-woven linen or cotton sheet, folded and pinned by fibulae - decorated pins, similar to but larger than the modern safety pin. It may have featured pleats and/or decorated borders, and would have been dyed red, blue, purple, (vaguely) white or saffron. The chiton was worn either alone or under another chiton or himation.

A commonly worn garment was the doric chiton, a dress very similar to the tighter peplos of earlier times. The top half of the sheet would be folded down to the centre, creating an overfold referred to as the apotygma, and wrapped around the body so that an opening would be formed at the side. It was then pinned together here and at the shoulders, though men would leave one shoulder bare while working. Spartan women were known to leave a large part of the open side unpinned; this fashion earned them a nickname meaning "showing her bare thigh". A girdle of woven material or leather would be passed around the waist either under or on top of the apotygma.

Another variant was the ionic chiton, a finely woven, lightweight, possibly translucent dress worn by sophisticated women. Its length was the same as that of the doric, but it was wider and thus looser. It lacked an apotygma and was fastened with many fibulae along the top edge, forming sleeves when a girdle was tied round the waist. If the woman wished for more freedom around the arm area, the girdle could be passed over the shoulders, crossed over the back and tied at the front, pulling the sleeves up and thus freeing the arms. The length of the chiton could be adjusted by pulling some of the sheet over the girdle in a kolpos fold, which may have been girdled as well.

A type of armor available in the game "The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind". It's an armor made by the native Ashlanders on the plains of Morrowind from the pasted shells of such crunchy indigenous creatures of the Ashlands such as scrib and kwama.

Chiton armor is one of the most inexpensive and least protective light armors in the game, there are also a few weapons, such as chiton bows, daggers, and short swords.

A chiton is a class of mollusc. Molluscs include snails, slugs, clams, oysters and squid. Chitons seem to us more primitive, and more basic, than these others.

Chitons are sedentary or slow-moving animals, as long as 10 inches in length but usually smaller, covered with a segmented armored shell in 8 separate pieces. They look something like giant sow bugs.

Usually intertidal, one species has been found at a depth of 10,000 feet. None live outside the sea. They are edible if you can pry them off the rock, but have a rough texture and fishy flavor, and are more favored by the very hungry than by other people.

Chitons have no eyes or other sensory organs on their poorly-defined heads. Like their relatives the snails, their underside consists of a large muscular foot. They graze on algae and small growths on the rocks on which they live, using the rasping radula to scrape such organisms free. Like the horseshoe crab they have blue blood, containing hemocyanin, a copper compound, rather than using an iron compound (hemoglobin) as we do.

Sperm and eggs are cast into the sea, developing into free- swimming larvae similar to those of marine worms.

It is an ancient body plan: similar fossils have been found, complete with the 8-segmented shell, 500 million years old. There are about 650 species living at the present time.

There's not a lot of brain here, but you have to give them credit for being persistent.

Kingdom, Animalia; Phylum, Mollusca; Class, Polyplacophora.

Chi"ton (?), n. [Gr. a chiton (in sense 1).]

1.

An under garment among the ancient Greeks, nearly representing the modern shirt.

2. Zool.

One of a group of gastropod mollusks, with a shell composed of eight movable dorsal plates. See Polyplacophora.

 

© Webster 1913.

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