[141] Joh. Sarisberiensis, i. cap. 12.
[142] Plin. lib. xxxiii. cap. 9. Seneca, Quæst. Nat. i. cap. 5.
[143] Vita Probi, cap. iv. p. 926: “Patinam argenteam librarum decem specillatam.” Salmasius chooses rather to read specellatam. I am inclined to think that this word ought to be read in Suetonius instead of speculatum, where he speaks of an apartment which Horace seems to have been fond of. That historian, in his Life of Horace, says, “Ad res venereas intemperantior traditur: nam speculato cubiculo scorta dicitur habuisse disposita, ut quocunque respexisset, ibi ei imago coitus referretur.” Lessing, who in his Miscellanies (Vermischten Schriften, Berlin 1784, 12mo, iii. p. 205) endeavours to vindicate the poet from this aspersion, considers the expression speculatum cubiculum, if translated an apartment lined with mirrors, as contrary to the Latin idiom, and thinks therefore that the whole passage is a forgery. Baxter also before said that this anecdote had been inserted by some malicious impostor. This I will not venture to contradict, but I am of opinion that specillatum or specellatum cubiculum is at any rate as much agreeable to the Roman idiom as patina specillata. This expression Salmasius and Casaubon have justified by similar phrases, such as opera filicata, tesselata, hederata, &c. The chamber in which Claudian makes Venus ornament herself, and be overcome by the persuasion of Cupid, was also covered over with mirrors, so that whichever way her eyes turned, she could see her own image. Did Claudian imagine that this goddess knew how to employ such an apartment, not only for dressing, but even after she was undressed, as well as Horace? I have seen at a certain court, a bed entirely covered in the inside with mirrors.
[144] Iliad. lib. xiv. ver. 166.
[145] Hymnus in Lavacrum Palladis, v. 15, 21. It was however customary to ascribe a mirror to Juno, as Spanheim on this passage proves; and Athanasius, in Orat. contra Gentes, cap. xviii. p. 18, says that she was considered as the inventress of dress and all ornaments. Should not therefore the mirror, the principal instrument of dress, belong to her? May it not have been denied to her by Callimachus, because he did not find it mentioned in the description which Homer has given of her dressing-room?
[146] De Natur. Deorum, iii. 22.
[147] Licetus de Lucernis Antiq. lib. vi. cap. 92.
[148] Lib. xxxiv. cap. 17, p. 669.
[149] Quæst. Nat. at the end of the first book.
[150] Mostell. act i. sc. 3. v. 101.