or never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman
either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation
with their own hands. It was to the barber or _tonsor_ that this
office was assigned, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally
speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed
you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you
with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so.
Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.

[Illustration: Lamps of Earthenware and Bronze found at Pompeii.]

Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small
pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors),
acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task--a most grave
affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves.
Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed _chironomy_. Like
a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice.
Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,--"the
subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand"
of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and
Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here:

"Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur,
Cui digiti pingues, cui scaber unguis erit."[E]

The nail-paring over, there remains the dressing of the person, to be
accomplished by other slaves. The seamstresses (_carcinatrices_)
belonged to the least-important class; for that matter, there was little
or no sewing to do on the garments of the ancients. Lucretia had been
dead for many years, and the matrons of the empire did not waste their
time in spinning wool. When Livia wanted to make the garments of
Augustus with her own hands, this fancy of the Empress was considered to
be in very bad taste. A long retinue of slaves (cutters, linen-dressers,
folders, etc.), shared in the work of the feminine toilet, which, after
all, was the simplest that had been worn, since the nudity of the
earliest days. Over the scarf which they called _trophium_, and which
sufficed to hold up their bosoms, the Roman ladies passed a long-sleeved
_subucula_, made of fine wool, and over that they wore nothing but the
tunic when in the house. The _libertinae_, or simple citizens' wives and
daughters, wore this robe short and coming scarcely to the knee, so