The ancient Romans brought to the decoration of their Parasols a magnificence unknown in our days. They borrowed from the East its stuffs, its jewels, its ornamental style, to enrich in the best manner possible these pretty portable tents. When Heliogabalus, forgetting his sex, after the example of the priests of Atys, appeared on his car clothed with the long dress and all the gewgaws that women wear; when he caused himself to be drawn along surrounded by legions of nude slave-girls, he carried a fan in the guise of a sceptre; and not only was there a golden Parasol in the form of a dais stretched over his head, but also at each side two /umbelliferæ/ held light Sunshades of silk, covered with diamonds, mounted on Indian bamboo, or on a stem of gold carved and encrusted with the most wondrous jewels. In the train which accompanied a matron on the Appian Way, if we can believe the historian of /Rome in the age of Augustus/, two slaves were obligatory: the fan-bearer (/flabellifera/) and the follower (/pedis sequa/). The latter carried an elegant Parasol of linen stretched over light rods at the extremity of a very long reed, so that, at the least sign of her mistress, she might direct over her the shadow of this movable defence. The Roman Umbrella seems to have been nothing but a simple morsel of leather, according to these verses, which Martial wrote by way of advice: /Ingrediare viam cœlo licet usque sereno; Ad subitas nunquam scortea desit aquas./ This "leather cloth" was assuredly an Umbrella, which, except perhaps in weight, need have envied nothing of our own. At Rome, as at Athens, the Sunshade appears to have hidden people from the looks of the gods, for, according to Montfauçon, even the Triclinia were covered with a sort of Sunshade, that folk might deliver themselves more mysteriously to orgies of every kind and to the pleasures of Venus. The material used in the manufacture of Sunshades was originally, according to Pliny, leaves of palm divided into two, or the tresses of the osier; afterwards they were made in silk, in purple, in Eastern stuffs, in gold, in silver; they were adorned with Indian ivory; they were starred with trinkets and jewels. One author tells us even of Sunshades made out of women's hair--/the hair of women so arranged as to supply the place of a Sunshade/. Singular headdress or singular Parasol! Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with some yellow amber to a friend to celebrate her birthday and the return of spring. /En cui tu viridem umbellam, cui succina mittas Grandia, natalis quoties redit, aut madidum ver Incipit./ And with regard to this /green/ Sunshade, apropos of the /viridem/, all the commentators enter into the field, and make a deafening noise to explain that the epithet had no reference to the colour of the Sunshade, but to the spring. Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering into these idle dissertations.