returned to his
home. During his absence, his slaves have cleansed the marbles, washed
the stucco, covered the pavements with sawdust, and, if it be in winter,
have lit fuel oil large bronze braziers in the open air and borne them
into the saloons, for there are no chimneys anywhere. The expected guest
at length arrives--salutations to Pansa, the future aedile! Meanwhile
Sabina, the wife of Paratus, has not remained inactive. She has passed
the whole morning at her toilet, for the toilet of a Sabina, Pompeian or
Roman, is an affair of state,--see Boettger's book. As she awoke she
snapped her fingers to summon her slaves, and the poor girls have
hastened to accomplish this prodigious piece of work. First, the applier
of cosmetics has effaced the wrinkles from the brows of her mistress,
and, then, with her saliva, has prepared her rouge; then, with a needle,
she has painted her mistress' eyelashes and eyebrows, forming two
well-arched and tufted lines of jetty hue, which unite at the root of
the nose. This operation completed, she has washed Sabina's teeth with
rosin from Scio, or more simply, with pulverized pumice-stone, and,
finally, has overspread her entire countenance with the white powder of
lead which was much used by the Romans at that early day.

Then came the _ornatrix_, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their
hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore
wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their
statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses
were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in
length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a
Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with
both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her.
The mirrors of those ancient days--let us exhaust the subject!--were of
polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied
upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory;
and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the
Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice
to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"

At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be
pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long
pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who
cuts her nails, f