The noblest senators were there, and the representatives of the oldest families of Rome, and not a few who were destined to wear hereafter the purple shroud of imperial power. Most of them came dressed in togas of dazzling whiteness, and there were few who did not display the broad purple band of the senator, or at least the narrower band of the Roman knight. The knights were conspicuous by their large gold rings, the senators by the crescent of silver or of ivory which they wore in the front of their shoes. Those who, like Otho, were professional dandies were clothed in the most elaborate dresses, but nearly all the guests wore gay tunics under their white togas, which, during the banquet, they laid aside for the lighter and more elegant loose dress of green, violet, or other vernal colours. Nero himself received them in a paludament bordered with golden stars. Agrippina was dressed in robes of rich violet, and on her neck was a great opal from the spoils of Mithridates. Octavia had arrayed herself in one of the most costly dresses from the imperial wardrobe, and her stola was of that amethystine tint the use of which Nero afterwards reserved for himself alone. But many of the other ladies were hardly less splendid in their attire. The necklaces which reached to their breasts had often as many as fifty fine rubies dependent from their links of gold. Some of them carried fans of peacocks’ feathers. Some were dressed in robes variegated with soft and brilliantly coloured plumage; the mantles of others had broad bands of gold sewed across the folds at the breast; others wore robes of interchanging sheen, or of the favourite mallow-colour, or Coan dresses of fine linen, woven with gold thread. The whole atrium looked like a bed of flowers, and even the pavement flashed with the light of jewelled feet.