e heavy woollen _sagum_, or in the
skin mantle, some greater protection against the inclemency of the
weather than their southern conquerors required.

[Illustration: Fig. 209.]

Allusion has already been made to the extreme taste for showy jewellery,
and gaudy personal decoration, indulged in by the later Roman rulers,
after the seat of government had been removed to Constantinople. It
seems to have increased as their power decayed: for the rude paintings
and mosaics of the eighth and ninth centuries depict emperors and
empresses in dresses literally covered with ornament and
jewellery--indeed, the artists must have put forth their best strength
in depicting the dresses, as if they had received similar orders to
those given by good Mrs. Primrose, who expressly desired the painter of
her portrait to put as many jewels on her stomacher "as he could for the
money."

[Illustration: Fig. 210.]

Fig. 210, the bust of the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (so called from
the ample beard the monarch wore), is an example of male foppery. This
emperor came to the throne A.D. 668, and died in 685. It will be
perceived that two brooches fasten his outer garment, one upon each
shoulder. That upon the right one is highly enriched, but the original,
as really worn by the emperor, was most probably much more so, by
chasing, enamel, and jewels which the artist had not space, or perhaps
ability, to express. From it hang three chains, which were most probably
formed of hollow gold beads, cast in an ornamental matrix; such having
been found in Crimean graves; and less frequently in those of the
Germanic and Gaulish chieftains and aristocrats. To the ends of these
chains were affixed circular ornaments, sometimes decorated with enamel,
like the York fibulae already described, and sometimes with cameos, set
in a gold framework: for as the Arts decayed, the finer works of this
kind, executed in the palmy days of Rome, were much prized and valued as
the works of a race who were acknowledged to be mentally superior.

The empresses naturally wore a greater abundance of jewellery than their
lords; they also wore great circular brooches on each shoulder, but they
increased the pendent ornaments by adding heavy gold chains, which hung
across the breast, and from the brooches on both sides nearly to the
waist; at the ends of these chains was a group of smaller chains, each
supporting a jewel of varied form, so that a heavy bunch of them was
forme