Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors), acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task--a most grave affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves. Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed _chironomy_. Like a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice. Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,--"the subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand" of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here: "Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur, Cui digiti pingues, cui scaber unguis erit."[E] The nail-paring over, there remains the dressing of the person, to be accomplished by other slaves. The seamstresses (_carcinatrices_) belonged to the least-important class; for that matter, there was little or no sewing to do on the garments of the ancients. Lucretia had been dead for many years, and the matrons of the empire did not waste their time in spinning wool. When Livia wanted to make the garments of Augustus with her own hands, this fancy of the Empress was considered to be in very bad taste. A long retinue of slaves (cutters, linen-dressers, folders, etc.), shared in the work of the feminine toilet, which, after all, was the simplest that had been worn, since the nudity of the earliest days. Over the scarf which they called _trophium_, and which sufficed to hold up their bosoms, the Roman ladies passed a long-sleeved _subucula_, made of fine wool, and over that they wore nothing but the tunic when in the house. The _libertinæ_, or simple citizens' wives and daughters, wore this robe short and coming scarcely to the knee, so as to leave in sight the rich bracelets that they wore around their legs. But the matrons lengthened the ordinary tunic by means of a plaited furbelow or flounce (_instita_), edged, sometimes, with golden or purple thread. In such case, it took the name of _stola_, and descended to their feet. They knotted it at the waist, by means of a girdle artistically hidden under a fold of the tucked-up garment. Below the tunic, the women when on the street wore, lastly, their _toga_, which was a roomy mantle enveloping the bosom and flung back over the left shoulder; and thus attired, they moved along proudly, draped in white woollens.