FROM A BAS-RELIEF. (Nimroud.)
| Sea Nymphs, Italian, 1760, gouache on skin; horn stick, finely piqué in gold, panaches with crown & fleurs de lys of France. | Mr W. Burdett-Coutts. M.P. |
FANS OF THE ANCIENTS—Continued
GREECE AND ROME
In Greece, as in Egypt, the fan had a sacred as well as a secular use. M. Uzanne refers to the fan of feathers which those discreet and irreproachable ladies, the Vestals, made use of to fan the flame of their sacrifices, and, rather roguishly, seizes the idea of fanning the flame to suggest that of inward flames kindled by the arrows of the little god Cupid, in place of the chaste ardours of the sacred mysteries. The fans of the priests of Isis, when Isis was a Grecian divinity, were formed of the wings of a bird, attached to the end of a long wand, and thus made to resemble the caduceus of Mercury.