The dressing room occupied by Valeria—once wife of Sextus Drusus and now living with Calatinus as her third husband in about four years—was fitted up with every luxury which money, and a taste which carried refinement to an extreme point, could accomplish. The walls were bright with splendid mythological scenes by really good artists; the furniture itself was plated with silver; the rugs were magnificent. The mistress of this palatial abode was sitting in a low easy-chair, holding before her a fairly large silver mirror. She wore a loose gown of silken texture, edged to an ostentatious extent with purple. Around her hovered Arsinoë and Semiramis, two handsome Greek slave-girls, who were far better looking than their owner, inasmuch as their complexions had never been ruined by paints and ointments. They were expert hairdressers, and Valeria had paid twenty-five thousand sesterces for each of them, on the strength of their proficiency in that art, and because they were said to speak with a pure Attic Greek accent. At the moment they were busy stripping off from the lady's face a thick layer of dried enamel that had been put on the night before.
Had Valeria been willing, she might have feared no comparison with her maids; for from a merely sensuous standpoint, she would have been reckoned very beautiful. She had by nature large brown eyes, luxuriant brown hair, and what had been a clear brunette skin, and well-rounded and regular features. But her lips were curled in hard, haughty lines, her long eyelashes drooped as though she took little interest in life; and, worse than all, to satisfy the demands of fashion, she had bleached her hair to a German blonde, by a process ineffective and injurious. The lady was just fuming to herself over a gray hair Arsinoë had discovered, and Arsinoë went around in evident fear lest Valeria should vent her vexation on her innocent ministers.
Over in one corner of the room, on a low divan, was sitting a strange-looking personage. A gaunt, elderly man clothed in a very dingy Greek himation, with shaggy grey hair, and an enormous beard that tumbled far down his breast. This personage was Pisander, Valeria's "house-philosopher," who was expected to be always at her elbow pouring into her ears a rain of learned lore. For this worthy lady (and two thousand years later would she not be attending lectures on Dante or Browning?) was devoted to philosophy, and loved to hear the Stoics[36] and Epicureans expound their varying systems of the cosmos. At this moment she was feasting her soul on Plato. Pisander was reading from the "Phaidros," "They might have seen beauty shining in brightness, when the happy band, following in the train of Zeus (as we philosophers did; or with the other gods, as others did), saw a vision, and were initiated into most blessed mysteries, which we celebrated in our state of innocence; and having no feeling of evils yet to come; beholding apparitions, innocent and simple and calm and happy as in a mystery; shining in pure light; pure ourselves, and not yet enchained in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body ..."
"Pratinas, to see her ladyship!" bawled a servant-boy[37] at the doorway, very unceremoniously interrupting the good man and his learnedly sublime lore. And Pratinas, with the softest and sweetest of his Greek smiles, entered the room.
"Your ladyship does me the honour," he began, with an extremely deferential salutation.
"Oh, my dear Pratinas," cried Valeria, in a language she called Greek, seizing his hand and almost embracing him, "how delighted I am to see you! We haven't met since—since yesterday morning. I did so want to have a good talk with you about Plato's theory of the separate existence of ideas. But first I must ask you, have you heard whether the report is true that Terentia, Caius Glabrio's wife, has run off with a gladiator?"
"So Gabinius, I believe," replied Pratinas, "just told me. And I heard something else. A great secret. You must not tell."
"Oh! I am dying to know," smirked Valeria.
"Well," said the Greek, confidentially, "Publius Silanus has divorced his wife, Crispia. 'She went too much,' he says, 'with young Purpureo.'"
"You do not say so!" exclaimed the lady. "I always knew that would happen! Now tell me, don't you think this perfume of iris is delicate? It's in that little glass scent bottle; break the neck.[38] I shall use it in a minute. I have just had some bottles sent up from Capua. Roman perfumes are so vulgar!"