HAIR-DRESSING OF ROMAN LADIES AS ILLUSTRATED ON COINS.

60                               NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE

manner to the plaits previously mentioned (Illust. LXV., LXVI., etc.).

As the coins of Helena (died 328 A.D.), wife of Constantius Chlorus and mother of Constantine, appear to have been struck for the most part in the time of Constantine, they may be considered here. On the small brass coin struck in London (Illust. LXXIV.), her hair is waved in front, confined by a fairly wide band, or circlet, which also keeps in place a plait of hair brought up the back of the head and forming a loop on the forehead. On a similar coin struck at Trier (Illust. LXXV.), this plait is represented in so conventional a manner as to suggest the bar at the back of a helmet,

Sometimes Helena is represented with a deep band apparently of woollen material round her head, over what looks like a skull-cap, just as a modern turban is worn round a fez.  Illust. LXXVI.

One is inclined to wonder whether this was the style objected to by Tertullian (died circa 240 A.D.), in his De Virginibus Velandis (ch. xviii.): “Some with their mitres and woollen bands do not veil their head, but bind it up.” Like Fausta, Helena sometimes reverts to the simple Greek knot (cf. Coh., No. 14). The sculpture of this period shews, by its sarcophagi and portrait-busts, that elaboration was common. Young girls, till the third century, seem to have retained the simple style, but St. Jerome (circa 420 A.D.) objects to their floating hair elaborately decorated. The women of his day wore a high piled-up mass of hair which could hardly have been satisfactorily managed without false hair and pads (“Alienis crinibus turritum. verticem struere," Ep., 130. 7).

In the hair-dressing depicted in the Catacombs some examples of the third century show smooth braids, but