All the bases were, however, separated from their statues, and all are inscribed to the " Virgo Vestalis Maxima," so that no personal identification is possible.

A bust of a vestal virgin may be studied in the British Museum, No. 1998.

In later Republican and Imperial times, fashions and taste in women's hair-dressing were of extraordinary diversity. Ovid, who is an authority on the details of Roman women's fashions, lays down precepts as to the variety adopted being in accordance with suitability to the wearer's face. He finds that it would be easier to number the leaves on an oak, or the bees at Hybla, than to enumerate the daily variety of hair-dressing (Ars Amatoria, iii. 137, etc.).

It is easy to imagine that ladies, living as the Roman women did, very domestic lives without taking any prominent part in that making of history which occupied the time of their husbands, found the hours hang some-what heavily on their hands, and indulged in a friendly rivalry among themselves, in inventing new conceits in doing their own or their friends' hair, They had probably locks in great profusion. This habit of mutual hair-dressing among women is still a feature of Roman and Neapolitan door-ways, and I can remember a proverb told me in my youth by a Dorset woman, “When women like each other, they kiss; when they love, they do each other’s hair.”

St. Paul (1 Tim. ii, 9) and St. Peter (1 Pet. iii. 3) seem to fear the insidious waste of time involved in “braiding the hair,” and to this day our own Marriage Service warns the English bride against its seductions.