Wikipedia
The paenula was a cloak worn by the Romans, akin to the poncho of the modern Spaniards and Spanish Americans (i.e. a large piece of material with a hole for the head to go through, hanging in ample folds round the body). This was originally worn only by slaves, soldiers and other people of low degree; in the 3rd century, however, it was adopted by fashionable people as a convenient riding or travelling cloak; and finally, by the sumptuary law of 382 ( Cod. Theod. xiv. 10, r, de habitu. intra urbem) it was prescribed as the proper everyday dress of senators, instead of the military chlamys, the toga being reserved for state occasions.
Usage examples of "paenula".
Get me the dalmatica and the paenula and the pallium and that silver pectoral, and then help me do something with my hair.
Her soft, fawn-brown hair was braided and wrapped in the current fashion for widows, and she wore a paenula of wool embroidered with silk and gold thread that showed her wealth more than her manner.
She pulled the long folds of her bronze-colored paenula more closely around her.
Her clothes were silken, the paenula so extensive that it surrounded and engulfed her in vast folds of shimmering red.
She was dressed in a long, dark bronze paenula that completely swathed her in silk.
The whole was worn over a paenula of rose-colored silk which in turn covered a dalmatica of gold-medallioned silk the same shade as fresh peaches.
She had adjusted the drape of her paenula so that the silk looked like water cascading over her, the most chaste and revealing caress.
Niklos had found a palanquin, Olivia had changed her dalmatica and paenula so that she was more formally attired.
She moved away from him, pulling the folds of her paenula more closely about her.
He took the neck of her paenula and dalmatica in his hands and with a sudden wrenching pulled both garments apart.
She caught the edge of her paenula and began to twist it in her fingers.
Antonina offered a second cup of hot spiced wine to her visitor, then pulled her plain wool paenula more closely around her shoulders.
By the time Niklos had found a palanquin, Olivia had changed her dalmatica and paenula so that she was more formally attired.
A white tunic and a paenula of fine white cloth or a lacerna, both being long and ample so as to fall in becoming folds, would be the best.