Stola - This was the long gown or robe worn by every honourable matron among the Romans.
It was a dress with sleeves, and descended to the feet; usually of purple cloth, having around it at the bottom a plaited welt or border of fringe, sometimes of gold stuff; for which reason the words stola et instita are used by some authors to signify the chasteness and modesty which best becomes women of respectability, to whom alone it was allowed to wear the stola, as according to Festus, the toga had been abandoned to lower classes of women and to courtesans. Hence the phrase mulier stolata designated a woman of quality.
Over the stola Roman ladies put a sort of mantle, called palla, which was also an article of dress peculiar to the sex, inasmuch as men could not with any degree of propriety wear it.
The female colonists of Antioch used the stola, on which account the Genius of that Roman city appears on its coins stolata (Vaillant Col. |ii| p. 4). The Genius of the colony of Sidon is also personified as mulier stolata, after the Roman manner.