Silius rises, and with the help of a valet, who is of course a slave, dresses himself.  His household barber—­another slave—­shaves him, trims his hair in the approved style and cleans his nails.  At this date clean shaving was the rule.  Every emperor from Augustus to Hadrian, fifty years later than Nero, was clean shaven, and the fashion set by emperors was followed as closely by the contemporary Roman as “imperials” and “ram’s-horn” moustaches have been imitated in later times.  The hair was kept carefully neither too long nor too short.  Only in time of mourning was it permitted to grow to a negligent length.  By preference it should be somewhat wavy, but there was no parting.  Dandies had their hair curled with the tongs and perfumed, so at to smell “all over the theatre.”  If they were bald, they wore a wig; sometimes they actually had imitation hair painted across the bare part of the scalp.  If nature had given them the wrong colour, they corrected it with dye.  If the exposed parts of the body were hairy, they plucked out the growth with tweezers or used depilatories.  But these were the dandies, and we need not assume Silius to have been one of them.

It is to be a day of some formality, and Silius will therefore attire himself accordingly.  In other words, he will put on the typical Roman garb.  Of whatever else this may consist, it will comprise a band round the middle, a woolen—­less often a linen—­tunic with or without sleeves, and over this the voluminous woollen toga; on the feet will be shoes.  Of further underwear a Roman used as much or as little as he chose.  If, like the Emperor Augustus, he felt the cold, he might indulge in several shirts and also short hose.  Such practices, however, were commonly regarded as coddling.  Breeches were worn at this date only by soldiers serving in northern countries, where they had picked up the custom from the “barbarians.”  Mufflers were used by persons with a tender throat.

[Illustration:  FIG. 59.—­PATRICIAN SHOES.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 60.—­ROMAN IN THE TOGA.]

Inasmuch as Silius is of senatorial rank, his tunic, which will show through the open front of his toga, bears the broad inwoven stripe of purple running down the middle, and his shoes—­which otherwise might be of various colours, such as yellow with red laces—­are black, fastened by cross straps running somewhat high up the leg and bearing a crescent of silver or ivory upon the instep.  The stripe, the shoes, and the crescent mark his senatorial standing.  That which marks him as a citizen at all is the toga—­an article of dress forbidden to any inhabitant of the empire who could not call himself in the full sense “Civis Romanus.”  It was a cumbrous and heavy garment (when spread out it formed an oval of about 15 feet by 12), with which no man who wanted to work or travel or simply to be comfortable would hamper himself.  St. Paul was a Roman citizen, but, if he ever wore a toga at all, it would only