Fig. 85.
in their fondness for dress and fine clothes. Considerable attention was devoted to the care of the body. Washing and bathing were, of course, very common. Scenes from the bath are often represented on monuments; especially we often find in sculpture or painting representations of Aphrodite, or some beautiful mortal, stooping down while a maid pours water over her back from a jar. In the vase picture represented in Fig. [85], next to which a scene from the toilet is depicted, one woman is pouring water into a basin, while another has disrobed, and is arranging her hair before a mirror. We must suppose the locality of these scenes to have been a special bathroom, which was always found in the better class of houses on the lower storey.
The usual morning wash was performed in large basins standing on high feet, or sometimes at the well itself, which was situated in the courtyard of a house; women of the lower classes probably washed at one of the public wells. On a picture representing the Judgment of Paris, of which some figures are represented in Fig. [86], a vase painter naïvely represents Athene thus performing her toilet before presenting herself to the judge; she is holding both hands under the water flowing from the fountain, evidently intending to wash her face; she has carefully drawn her dress between her knees in order to keep the water from it. There were also large public baths for women, but ancient authorities tell us very little about their construction and use; still, notices here and there in writing, or on monuments, enable us with certainty to assert their existence. The vase painting, Fig. [87], gives a wonderfully vivid picture of one of these public baths for women. It is a hall, supported by Doric columns, covered to the height of
Fig. 86.
