“[A] few authors tell us that the girl wore the toga praetexta, the toga bordered by a purple stripe, just as freeborn boys did. Why children wore the toga itself is unclear, but the wool of the garment and especially its purple band (likely woven directly onto the toga) had a general apotropaic significance. Persius described the purple stripe as the guard of pre-adolescence; . . . in a declamation attributed to the rhetorician Quintilian, the colour purple is described as the one ‘by which we make the weakness of boyhood sacred and revered’. . . .”

—Kelly Olson, ‘The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl’, from Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, edited by Jonathan Edmondson and Allison Keith, 2008.