We're working on lapbooks based on the book The Purple Mantle which is about the persecution of Christians during the Diocletian era of ancient Rome. I can't wait to show them off here! While perusing the internet for Roman dress I came across this little paragraph (and the photo above)which I've lifted directly from this site:
It is also known that many politicians campaigning for public office would go as far as whitening their toga with chalk in order to stand out more from the crowd. In fact this is the very reason for the name. In Latin candida stands for white. So the candidates were ‘the white ones’. The use of the word has survived unto this day in the English language.
I'm not sure candidates back then were any "whiter" than they are now. In fact I suspect political corruption is a very ancient evil. Funny, then, that such a name should persist after all these years.
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