Gird your loincloths. We’re here to examine peplum. And we’re not talking about the pleated skirts once worn by the world’s most manly men, including Hercules, Maciste, and comparable semi-deities.

In ancient Rome, that is to say the 1950s, there arose a cult of the male body that soon had many followers. The practitioners wore colourful costumes based on the old Greek peplos – the long tunic ...