Romans, and others at the time, used pouches that they carried tied around their necks, waists, or ther portions of their anatomies. They also had a nicely done bronze purse that sloipped over the wrist and had a lid that openned inwards so that your wrist held it closed. When men wore their togas, the drape of the toga over the left arm also created a sort of pouch out of some of the folds that was called the "sinus" where they carried various light items.
For pics of Roman clasp knives, go to
http://www.hr-replikate.de/englisch/index.html make certain that you are in the English version, then click on "Catalogue", then on "Roman", next on "Other Items". Holger shows three knives in this section, two of them clasp knives. Mine is about 2/3 of the way down the page, #296, the little knife with the rooster hilt, which is bronze and not brass. I am considering ordering the #296 knife from further up the page. And, in case you're curious, Priapus was a male fertility god, as illustrated by the figurine #273.
To answer your question about when the Romans first had folders, my guess is that they had them
Ad Urbs Condita, from the founding of the city back in the 8th Century BCE. By the First Century BCE, it was illegal to go armed within the
"Pomerium", the area circumscribed by the ancient walls of the city, so I should imagine that they must have had many of these little clasp knives available for folks to use as how else would people have cut their meat, sharpened quills, or any of the myriad of things that one uses a pocket knife to accomplish.
BTW, there were basically three types of dagger that appear in Roman commentaries, the
pugio,the broad-bladed dagger of the legionary, the
parazonium, a somewhat narrower, but still straight dagger carried by high ranking officers in the armies, men of the patrician (or senatorial) class at the time in which "Rome" is set, and the
sica, a curved dagger carried by non-Romans. The use of a
sica by a Roman citizen would have been unthinkable as they were relegated only to barbarians such as Thracians, Greeks, and Jews. There was a group of Jewish zealots in the First Century CE who carried
sicae and used them to assassinate people in Judaea. The Latin name for them was
"sicarii", or men who carried
sicae. Their name in Aramaic, the local laguage used in Judaea was
"iscariot", which puts an interesting twist on the story of Judas Iscariot, IMO.
The carrying of any of these daggers by anyone but a person duly authorized to do so was a crime and was punished, although by the First Century BCE the major players were very probably ignoring these laws and even carrying
gladii, the Roman short swords, within the
pomerium. A toga can hide a multitude of things if it is draped properly and if the items are distributed properly. Lacking a toga, one could always hide things under a cloak.
Given the patrician, senatorial status of the men who assassinated Caius Iulius Caesar, it is my own opinion that they were not using
pugiones or, gods forbid,
sicae, but they were using the
parazonium. In a society as class conscious as the Romans were, men would not have used daggers associated with those of lesser status and all of the assassins were senators, who came only from the patrician class.
