Bandeau that dates from the Diocletian period (286–305 AD), mosaics depict young women dressed in bandeau-like garments participating in weightlifting, discus throwing, and running ball games, but not swimming. The mosaic features ten maidens who have been anachronistically dubbed the "Bikini Girls". Other Roman archaeological finds depict the goddess Venus in a similar garment. In Pompeii, depictions of Venus wearing a bikini were discovered in the Casa della Venere, in the "tablinum" of the House of Julia Felix, and in an atrium garden of Via Dell'Abbondanza. In the 1920s the term was applied to a simply shaped brassiere, usually of a
Bandeau linen that was wrapped across the breasts and tied or pinned at the back. As a silhouette the bandeau was also worn in Roman times. Archaeologist James Mellaart described the earliest bandeau-like costume in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia in the Chalcolithic era (around 5600 BC), where a mother goddess is depicted astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a modern bandeau-style bikini. In the Greco-Roman world, women athletes wearing two-piece garments were depicted on urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC. In the floor of "Coronation of the Winner" hall of Villa Romana del Casale, a Roman villa in Sicily