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HAIR-DRESSING OF ROMAN LADIES AS ILLUSTRATED ON COINS. |
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52 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE simple jewelled head-band, fixed straight along the brow at the roots of the hair. The Roman form may be studied in sculpture in the British Museum (bust No. 1898, a portrait of this period assigned to Sabina). Marciana, Trajan's sister (died 114A.D.), has a similar style of hair to her daughter Matidia, but the effect is softer and more pleasing, as she wears, apparently, her hair in curls between the two steps of the diadem.Illust. XXVIII. On a bust in the British Museum (No. 1894), which may represent her, a curious mass of plaits is shown on the scalp, Matidia's daughter, Sabina, wife of Hadrian (circa 100 A.D.), was deified by her husband after her self-inflicted death, since, as Tillemont puts it, “ he did not mind whether she were in heaven or hell so long as he had not to put up with her bad temper” (Coh., vol. ii. p. 247). Her style of hair is very like that of her mother, Matidia (Illust. XXIX), but the tiara is lower, and the plaits behind more prominent, They are disposed in a style that suggests the “cap of maintenance” of heraldry. Illust. XXX. Sometimes Sabina's hair is very simply dressed, in a pretty Greek style, loosely gathered to the back with a simple diadem. Illust. XXXI. The beautiful veiled head (“consecratio”) with the shell-like folds, struck after death, may be idealized, Illust. XXXII. Faustina the Elder, wife of Antoninus (died 141 A.D.), sets off her remarkable beauty by gathering her hair in loose waves off the face, and plaiting the end of each lock till a succession of ladder-like fine plaits goes up the back of the head to form a crown of plaits at the top. A dressing so elaborate as this raises a doubt whether it could have been dressed afresh every day, or whether
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