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HAIR-DRESSING OF ROMAN LADIES AS ILLUSTRATED ON COINS. |
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43 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE Naples Museum. Our own Museum shows many varieties of them. They are usually of bone, but are found also made of bronze, gold, or jet. Generally they are plain, straight pins, but often have fancy heads more or less elaborated. In the York Museum is preserved the back hair of a Roman lady, found in 1875, during some diggings for the new railway station there. It is a beautiful coil, still retaining its auburn colour, and has two fine jet pins still in it. Excavation also often brings to light combs of various sorts made of box-wood, ivory, or tortoise-shell (cf. Ov., Ars Am., iii. 147, “testudine Cyllenea”). Matrons wore diadems and circlets of gold and jewels (" Diadema est ornamentum capitis matronarum auro et gemmis contextum," Isid., xix. 21). Professional hair-dressers ("cinerarii") seem to have been in great request with their curling-irons ("calamistrum"). These persons appear to have served a regular apprenticeship to their trade. During the night, or when busy about the house by day, ladies seem to have worn hair‑nets ("reticulum quod capillum contineret: " Varro, L. L., v. 130). This net was sometimes made of gold thread ("reticulum auratum. "). Juvenal (ii. 96) complains of this effeminate habit among men. As age and baldness advanced, caps (“calauticae,” “mitrae,” etc.) were adopted. Martial (viii. 33, 19) alludes to caps made of bladder. These may have been more after a Greek than a Roman fashion, and are, perhaps, the very close-fitting caps, like elegant skull-caps, depicted on Greek vase-paintings. Men seem to have let their hair grow long in token of mourning, and when at sea, if overtaken by a storm, shaved their heads and offered the locks to Neptune (Lucian, De Mercede Conductis). In fine weather it was a ticklish matter to |
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