MANICA, a sleeve. Besides the use of sleeves sewed to the tunic, which, when so manufactured, was called chiridota or manicata tunica (Curt. iii.7 p12, ed. Zumpt), sleeves were also worn as a separate part of the dress. Palladius (de Re Rust. i.43) mentions the propriety of providing ocreas manicasque de pellibus, i.e. leggins and sleeves made of hides, as useful both to the huntsman and to the agricultural labourer. The Roman gladiators wore, together with greaves, a sleeve of an appropriate kind on the right arm and hand (Juv. vi.255).

These parts of dress are mentioned together even as early as the Homeric age (see Od. xxiv.228, 229). In this passage the manicae (xeirideV) seem to be mittens, worn on the hands to protect them from briars and thorns; and Eustathius, in his commentary on the passage, distinguishes between simple mittens, such as our labourers use in hedging, and gloves, which he calls xeirideV daktulanytai (p1960, init.).

Gloves with fingers (digitalia, Varro, de Re Rust. i.55) were worn among the Romans for the performance of certain manual operations. Pliny the younger refers also to the use of manicae in winter to protect the hands from cold (Epist. iii.5). Those used by the Persians were probably made of fur, perhaps resembling muffs: the Persians also wore gloves in winter (daktulhqraV, Xen. Cyrop. viii.3 §17). In an enumeration of the instruments of torture used in the fourth century of the Christian era we observe "the glove" (Synes. Epist. 58); but its construction or material is not described.

Handcuffs were called manicae (Virg. Georg. iv.438, Aen. ii.146; Plaut. Asin. ii.2.38, Capt. iii.5.1, Most. v.1.17; Non. Marcellus, s.v. Manicae.)

William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), p 729.