“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 libertinae, 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.

At length, the wife of Paratus is completely attired; she has drawn on the white bootees worn by matrons; unless, indeed, she happens to prefer the sandals worn by the libertinae,—­the freedwomen were so called,—­which left those large, handsome Roman feet, which we should like to see a little smaller, uncovered.  The selection of her jewelry is now all that remains to be done.  Sabina owned some curious specimens that were found in the ruins of her house.  The Latins had a discourteous word to designate this collection of precious knick-knackery; they called it the “woman’s world,” as though it were indeed all that there was in the world for women.  One room in the Museum at Naples is full of these exhumed trinkets, consisting of serpents bent into rings and bracelets, circlets of gold set with carved stones, earrings representing sets of scales, clusters of pearls, threads of gold skilfully twisted into necklaces; chaplets to which hung amulets, of more or less decent design, intended as charms to ward off ill-luck; pins with carved heads; rich clasps that held up the tunic sleeves or the gathered folds of the mantle, cameoed with a superb relief and