Lampridius, Heliogabalus, ch. 31:
“In his baths he was always together with the women, and he made their toilets with psilothrum: he used psilothrum likewise for his beard, and, disgusting to relate, the same which the women had just been using. With his own hand he shaved off the fleece from the virile part of his pedicons, and then shaved his own beard.”
What Lampridius finds so repugnant, is that the emperor did not hesitate to use upon his beard the same ointment, which the women had just been applying as a plaster upon the pubis, and which he used at once and before the bad smell had evaporated.
But to return to our patients, they also were not in want of illustrious lovers, who took care to depilate them; an example of this we find in the emperor Hadrian, according to Spartianus, who says, ch. 4:
“That he corrupted the freedmen of Trajan, made the toilet of his minions, and often depilated them, while he was attached to the Court, is generally believed.”
In what other way can we believe Hadrian to have made the toilet of these minions, if not in the same way in which Heliogabalus made the toilet of his females, with psilothrum, particularly as it is added that he depilated them frequently? We may take it for granted that he used that ointment, or that he rubbed their faces with moistened bread, either to improve their skin or to hinder the beard growing too soon. Suetonius, Otho, ch. 12:
“He shaved his face every day, and rubbed it with damp bread, a habit which he had contracted when the first down began to appear, so as not to get bearded.”
Juvenal, II., 107 has aimed an arrow of the same sort at Otho:
“It surely is the duty of a mighty Captain ... to keep his skin right smooth ... and knead bread with his fingers to make a plaster for his face.”
What wonder then if the women cherished similar artifices? Who can help thinking of the woman depicted with such marvellous art by Juvenal, from verse 460 to verse 472 of that Sixth Satire, to which Salmasius gave the epithet, of “divine”? “Her face is all puffy with bread crumbs, where the lips of the poor husband keep sticking”, to such an extent, that one doubts: