hastened to accomplish this prodigious piece of work. First, the applier
of cosmetics has effaced the wrinkles from the brows of her mistress,
and, then, with her saliva, has prepared her rouge; then, with a needle,
she has painted her mistress' eyelashes and eyebrows, forming two
well-arched and tufted lines of jetty hue, which unite at the root of
the nose. This operation completed, she has washed Sabina's teeth with
rosin from Scio, or more simply, with pulverized pumice-stone, and,
finally, has overspread her entire countenance with the white powder of
lead which was much used by the Romans at that early day.
Then came the _ornatrix_, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their
hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore
wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their
statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses
were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in
length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a
Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with
both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her.
The mirrors of those ancient days--let us exhaust the subject!--were of
polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied
upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory;
and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the
Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice
to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"
At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be
pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long
pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who
cuts her nails, for never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman
either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation
with their own hands. It was to the barber or _tonsor_ that this
office was assigned, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally
speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed
you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you
with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so.
Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.
[Illustration: Lamps of Earthenware and Bronze found at Pompeii.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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