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HAIR-DRESSING OF ROMAN LADIES AS ILLUSTRATED ON COINS. |
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39 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE This simple knot is a fashion that continued to be followed concurrently with the many extravagant modes of the Empire. Tertullian (De Cultu Feminarum, ch.vii,) and other Fathers recommend it as suitable to the Christian woman, and it continues in use to the present day among young girls and persons of simple taste in all European countries. Towards the end of the Roman Republic the influence of Greece introduced other varieties of hair-dressing, but at the beginning of Imperial times simplicity was still the rule. At marriage, some alteration was usually made by Roman women in the arrangement of their hair (see Marquardt, Privataltertumer der Romer, i. 44, etc.). It was the duty of the bridegroom, as one of the wedding ceremonies, to divide the bride's hair with the “caelibaris hasta,” or little spear (Ov., Fasti, ii. 560),‑perhaps with some allusion to the time when marriage was by capture, and the bride was the spoil of the spear. It was divided into six parts (“sex crines”), and each of these was fastened with a “vitta" at the crown of the head (Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, iii. 1. 197, etc.). “Vittae” among young girls were fillets, or ribands bound once or more times round the head, as we have seen in the case of Diana. They were considered to be emblems of chastity, as the “snood” is, or was, in Scotland. In Sir W. Scott's Heart of Midlothian, Effie, in the days of her innocence, is described as having "waving ringlets of brown hair . . . confined by a snood of blue silk." Later in the story, when she appears in the dock, she is ordered to " put back her hair," when it falls over her face, since "her beautiful and abundant tresses of long fair hair, which, according |
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