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HAIR-DRESSING OF ROMAN LADIES AS ILLUSTRATED ON COINS. |
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46 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE arrangement of the hair suggests Roman fashions of the second century A.D. It may be a late Roman attempt to copy an earlier portrait of Cleopatra." Fulvia, wife of Antony (44-40 B.C.),Coh. No. 2 (Illust. VIII.), as Victory, on a gold coin in my husband's cabinet, shows the hair neatly gathered into a knot of plaits at the back; one long plait brought from this mass is arranged in a loop along the top of the head, resting on the forehead. A coin of Octavia struck in Athens, soon after her marriage to Mark Antony, in the British Museum, from the Strawberry Hill Collection, shows this plait also.Illust. IX. On a lovely coin of the Antistia Family (16 B,C,), in the Evans Collection, gold (Babelon, Monnaies de la Repub. Romaine, 1. 153, no. 23), bearing the head of Victory (Illust. X.) the hair is waved and gathered in a knot at the back. One special roll round the face is emphasized and then gathered to the knot. With this coin may be compared the head of Diana, of the Claudia family (Babelon, i. 349, No. 5), where a similar but more conventionalized dressing appears with a beaded diadem, Illust. XI. Agrippina the Elder, wife of Germanicus (died A.D. 33), wears her hair very carefully waved over her head. Her front hair, with the exception of a flowing lock or two on the forehead, is rolled from the face. One curl falls beneath the ear. The rest of the hair is plaited in a tail down the back. This plait returns on itself, and is bound together at the nape of the neck with a riband in the form now often adopted by young girls and called a “Cadogan,” or “catogan.” Illust. XII. Spiers's French Dictionary gives “relever en catogan” as “to club the hair;” and, indeed, the bound plait does resemble a |
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