The hair alone was subject to innumerable vagaries either of fashion or of individual taste.  It might have a parting or no parting; it might be plaited over the head and fastened by jewelled tortoise-shell combs, or by pins of ivory, silver, or bronze with jewelled heads, as varied and ornamental as the modern hatpin; it might be carried to the back and rest in a knot on the neck, where it was bound with ribbons; it might be piled into a huge pyramid or “towers of many stories,” so that a woman often looked tall in front and appeared quite a different person at the back; it might be encased in a coloured cloth or in a net of gold thread, for which poorer people substituted a bladder.  But in all cases it was preferred that the hair should be wavy, and this was a matter which was attended to by a special coiffeur kept among the slaves.  No handmaid had a harder or more ungrateful task than the tiring-woman, who built up and fastened the reluctant locks while the mistress contemplated the effect in her bronze or silver mirror.  There was no rule for a woman’s treatment of herself in this respect.  “Consult your mirror,” is the advice of the poet Ovid, who has hopelessly lost all count of styles, since they were “more numerous than the leaves on the oak or the bees on Hybla.”  To full dress belonged a coronal or tiara, consisting of a band of gold and precious stones.

But who shall dare to speak of the jewellery that bedecked a Roman matron en grande tenue—­of the pearl and pendant earrings, the necklaces of pearl and diamonds, the gold snake armlets with their emerald eyes, the bangles and finger-rings, the brooches and buckles on the shoulders and down the sleeves, the gems scattered among the hair, the chains and chatelaines strung with all manner of glittering articles?  Says one who lived at the time:  “I have seen Lollia Paulina covered with emeralds and pearls gleaming all over her head, hair, ears, neck, and fingers to the value of over L300,000.”  If Rome is the eternal city, it is eternal in this respect at least as much as in any other.

Who, still more bold, shall pry into her apparatus for the beautification of her person, examining her patch-box and the innocent little pots of rouge, vermilion, and white lead for the complexion, and of soot to rub under the eyes?  Who shall scrutinise too closely that delicate blue which tinges her temples?  Who shall dare to question whether that yellow hair of the most approved tone, then best seen in Germany, grew where you find it or came from some head across the Rhine?  Who shall venture to ask whether that smooth skin was preserved by her wearing last night a mask of meal, which she washed off this morning with asses’ milk?  Petronius, indeed, says that the “lady takes her eyebrows out of a little box,” and probably Petronius knew.  For her artificial teeth there is an obvious and sensible excuse, and it is no reproach to her if, as the poet declared, “she puts her teeth aside at night, just as she does her silks.”  Probably she scents herself far too heavily, but there are many Roman men who are just as bad.