The Wonders of Pompeii

by Marc Monnier

Then came the ornatrix, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her. The mirrors of those ancient days—let us exhaust the subject!—were of polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory; and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"

At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who cuts her nails, for never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation with their own hands. It was to the barber or tonsor that this office was assigned, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so. Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.

Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors), acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task—a most grave affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves. Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed chironomy. Like a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice. Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,—"the subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand" of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here:

"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 libertinæ, 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 libertinæ,—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 of exquisite workmanship worthy of Greece; in fine, all that luxury and art, sustaining each other, could invent that was most wonderful. The Pompeian ladies, in their character of provincials, must have carried this love of baubles that cost them so dearly, to extremes: thus, they wore them in their hair, in their ears, on their necks, on their shoulders, their arms, their wrists, their legs, even on their ankles and their feet, but especially on their hands, every finger of which, excepting the middle one, was covered with rings up to the third joint, where their lovers slipped on those that they desired to exchange with them.

Her toilet completed, Sabina descended from her room in the upper story. The ordinary guests, the friend of the house, the clients and the shadows (such was the name applied to the supernumeraries, the humble doubles whom the invited guests brought with them), awaited her in the peristyle. Nine guests in all—the number of the Muses. It was forbidden to exceed that total at the suppers of the triclinium. There were never more than nine, nor less than three, the number of the Graces. When a great lord invited six thousand Romans to his table, the couches were laid in the atrium. But there is not an atrium in Pompeii that could contain the hundredth part of that number.