Like a Barbarie Queen On the Euphrates shore, In purple and fine linen was she pall'd, Her tresses for their garland wore But through the rigid pride and pomp unbending Of beauty and of haughtiness, 66 To thrall my soul in soft imprisonment. And, place (she said) thy hand within my hair, And all around thou'lt see On golden feet come dancing unto thee. Sits by his side in state On the eternal throne. Great Neptune to my will the ocean gives, And o'er them take my stand with foot sc rene; The Eolian caverns under The wings of the rude winds I chain, To Heaven to colour the red Comet's train. shore The Indians empire; by Orontes set It was my lavish gift, The triumph and the song Around the youth of Pella loud uplift, My royal spirits oft Their solemn mystic round On Rome's great birth-day wound: And I the haughty Eagles sprung aloft fate, From them thy haughty verse presages Deems 'tis in triumphal motion Thou liv'st, with want within, and raiment coarse without; And none upon thy state hath thrown To new and lofty venture call thee out; Yet in my mind I bear Than the kingdoms thou canst lavish, And though my spirit may not comprehend Yet neither doth her sight offend Horror to her is not Of this coarse raiment, and this humble cot: She with the golden muses doth abide, And oh! the darling children of thy pride Shall then be truly glorified, When they may merit to be wrapt around She kindled at my words and flam'd, as when She burst in wrathful menace then : Of wandering Scythians fears, Me the rough mothers of Barbarie kings; The purple tyrants stand; Treats my proffer'd boons with scorn, And knows he not my works of scathe; Branding the bosom with deep tracks of death; The tresses and imperial wreath, And bar'd them to the pitiless element. Upon the formidable bridge to clasp The fair neck of the Egyptian Queen around; Ere that within the mined cave, I gave. And Rome through me the ravenous flame In the heart of her great rival, Carthage, cast, That went through Lybia wandering, a scorn'd shade, Till, sunk to equal shame, Her fierce and ancient vengeance she appeas'd, Over the ruins vast Of the deep-hated Latin majesty. I will not call to mind the horrid sword Hair-dressers-Salves-Hair-painting -Mirrors-Hair-pins. BEAUMARCHAIS, that witty merchant, that incomparable painter of manners, whose memory is kept fresh among our fair readers by the Figaro and the Tarare, found a little silk cloak one night, in the Pantheon at Vauxhall, and had the skill to extract from it alone the age, the height, the complexion, nay, more wonderful still, the inclinations and propensities of its beautiful owner-her true and her false nature-her life and her love. It must be allowed, that Beaumarchais deserves more credit for this than the which enabled them, from the colossal English themselves do for the science hand they picked up in Egypt, to ascertain, that the statue to which it had belonged must have been precisely one hundred and twenty feet tall. Would that we could light upon some fragment of the head-dress, some knot or pin that had belonged to our Sathat kind would, I am sure, enable bina! A single fortunate discovery of my fair and intelligent readers to understand, without the smallest difficulty, every part of the dressing-scene which follows. How active and alert would be their fancy, could they but have before their eyes some actual relic of Sabina's toilette! I wish we had which there are said to be so many in at least one of those dressing-pins of the Museum Gabinum, that mine of rarities dug from the ruins of Gabii, by the insatiable Prince Borghese, and his friend Gavin Hamilton! Who knows but some of these, picked out of urns and cemeteries, might have once been the property of our Domina herself? But, alas! the ideas of the Italian collectors have been sadly changed, by means of French requisitions on the one hand, and English guineas on the other; and I fear we could expect very little, even from more generous people than Prince Borghese.* As it is, my friends must be contented with the best that a poor, though an indefatigable, Cicerone can afford them. The smoothened, polished, painted Sabina, with her new-born teeth and eyebrows, now summons her circle of hair-dressing girls, who to-day must exert, to the utmost, every art of adorning that lies within their province. To-day is the 15th of Julyto-day is the solemn mustering of the Roman knights; and every Roman lady that pretends to any admiration, either of horses or horsemen, has secured a place in the balcony of some of her friends that live in the holy street (via sacra) where the procession is to pass. The young Saturninus, long the faithful dangler of Sabina, her beau at every promenade and every assembly, is to ride in the front of this festal parade of Castor and Pollux (the tutelaries of the day), and is no doubt to witch, with noble horse manship," the eyes and hearts of all the window-gazers around him. What a spur does all this give to the toiletteslaves of Sabina! How fervently does the Domina wish that she may look so beautiful in her balcony, as to disgrace the choice of her lover neither in his own eyes nor in those of her rivals. Gold-yellow hair, with a tendency to the fire-red, has been, ever since the conquests in Gaul and Germany (where hair of that sort was then universal), the rage among the Roman This prince, with all his love for collecting, was so mean, that when his wife has gone with him to a party, he has been known to sell the antique rings and cameos off her person. + All the authorities, for this fact, may be seen most diligently collected, for the honour of his country, by the Dutch philologist Joannes Arnzen, in his learned treatise de Capillorum Coloribus et Tinctura. The red or yellow-staining pomatum is, by the way, called in Martial (viii. 33.) Spuma Ba ladies-the sine qua non of beauty. She who has not received such hair from nature, must thank art for the boon; and so is it with our Sabina. In vain has she as yet tried every outlandish pomade, and caustic-soap, for the colouring of her locks.* Their dark brown has indeed become lighter in its die, but they still want the high golden lustre, the exquisite reddish. Already had she almost made up her mind to take the bold step recommended by some, but strenuously condemned by others of her advisers, of cutting off, unmercilessly, her stubborn locks, and buying, in their stead, a beautiful blonde periwig, from an old woman by the Temple of Hercules, who had just received a supply of the genuine Sicambrian yellow from the banks of the Rhine. But, in these days, a peruque was considered as the dernier resort, a thing never to be used unless every possible means of avoiding it failed; because one who wore a periwig could not hope to conceal her trick from the company she met with in the Public Baths. How much does Horace laugh over the ill luck of the witch, Sagana, who in her tava. Luveau, in his histoire de France avant Clovis, gives, as the causes of the change which has taken place in the colour of French hair, the use of mustard and the mixture of Italian blood. He might perhaps have added, the increased use of wine, and other changes in the mode of living. How strange are the variations of fashion! At present, every lady in France or England, who has any tinge of the red in her hair, is sure to employ means for altering it. Exactly the reverse was the case with the ancient Roman ladies. The caustic soap (the spuma caustica of Martial (xiv. 26), the mode of preparing which is justly described by Pliny, xxviii. 12. Compare Wesseling on Diodorus, t. 1. p. 35Î)— which was sent for from France for the purpose of reddening the hair, when it was applied to any other part of the body, producing a most unhealthy and bloating effect. Read the history of a certain heroic Roman in Plutarch (t. ii. p. 771, ed frank.), and compare it with some passages in Beckman's History of Inventions, vol. iv. S. 5. The burning effect of the application is mentioned in a fragment of Cato's origines, preserved by Servius-" Mulieres nostras cinere capillum ungitabant ut rutilus esset erinis." Isaac Vossius (in Catullum, p. 142) deduces, from the use of this soap, the name Cinerarius, which occurs as applied to one of the attendants of the Roman lady's toilette: panic parted with her wig!* Sabina, therefore, would fain avoid having recourse to this anchor of necessity. Luckily Nape, the eldest and most confidential of her hair attendants, has received the recipé for a totally new gold-salve, from a Gallic perfumer who has his booth near the Circus Maximus. The hair must be care fully washed over and over with this new water of deceit, and then suffered to dry and crisp in the sun. Sabina, in order that she may have perfect leisure to try the effect of this new remedy, has passed some days in the country, at a celebrated bath.-Yesterday morning she had her hair completely saturated for the last time with a dry golden powder and this far-famed salve, curled with a hot-iron, and then packed up into a sort of cap, which is again covered with a species of bladder. In this attire has she been into * Sermon. I. 8. 48, altum Sagana Caliendrum, &c. But we must not forget that there is a great difference between the different periods of Roman fashion, and perhaps, in the text, this is a little overlooked. It is true, that the earlier Roman poets do speak about crines emptæ, bought hair, &c. but it is always with disgust and in derision. When Messalina, for example, wishes to assume the appearance of a Mulier perdita, she covers her black hair with a yellow wig (nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero). The careful historiographer of peruques, Nicolai (uber d. gebrauch der falschen haare und perucken in alten und neuen zeiten mit 66 kupfern Berlin 1801), has distinguished, with great accuracy, between the early period when periwigs were worn only from the last necessity, or by courtezans, and the later, in which the use of false hair was as universal at Rome as it has ever been in Paris. The bald marble busts at Potsdam, from which one can remove the marble periwigs, are a sufficient proof of the universality of the mode at one time. But indeed, with regard to these, Visconti has made a very delicate observation, viz. that the statues might have been made bald by the order of their vain originals, simply that they might be, from time to time, altered so as not to disgrace their fashion, or, perhaps, betray their age. See Muscum Pio-Clementinum, t. ii. t. 51. p. 91. The name of a hairdressing girl in Ovid. Bartolinus asserts, that the modern Italian ladies make use of the sun's rays for colouring their hair.-See Reinesius Inseript, class. ii. 89. The iron with which the hair was curled was called xaλapıs, or calamistrum. 66 the city-in this has she spent the whole night; and now is come the important moment, when the bandages are to be removed by Nape, and the efficacy or inefficacy of the spell to be ascertained. "Oh! how red!" Aurora herself is not more golden haired!" Such are the unanimous exclamations of the attendants, and Sabina, between her own wishes and their assurances, is persuaded, when she looks into her mirror, that her hair is red! She smiles with joyful satisfaction, and seats herself loftily in the Cathedra, where four attendants are to finish the last and most costly part of her coiffure, while Kalamis applies the iron which she has made hot in a little silver basin of charcoal, and crisps the hair in the front into small curls and ringlets (meches et crochets.) Psecas, with a dexterity which only long practice could produce, tinctures the long floating locks that are to be bound upon the summit with costly nard-oil and oriental essences, in order that for the whole day they may exhale the breath of Ambrosia. What the comical Lucian says is the passage already quoted by us, that " they lavish the whole substance of their husbands upon the hair, so that all Arabia seems breathe from the locks of one of them," is now proved to be no exaggeration. The Greek historians inform us, that the Queen of Persia had the revenues of great cities and provinces set apart for their salve-money; and perhaps our Sabina is scarcely less extravagant in her ideas. It is true, that she is ignorant of many sweet smelling powders and extracts afterwards known by the names of Pompadour, Kingston, Portland, &c. but what are all these when compared with the apparatus of salve-flasks and Narthekia, possessed by a Roman lady of the first rank? to The slaves who applied it were called by the very singular name of Ciniflones. The cap for covering the hair was called properly Calantica. The use of the bladder is mentioned by Martial (viii. 33). Fortiter intortos servat vesica capillos, The hair was sometimes put into a net-cap or redesilla; the proper Greek name for this was xexgupaλes, which is rendered by Hesychius cataxation dramoreixon. The Greek ladies used this kind of cap as commonly as the Spanish or Italian ladies do at this day their redesillas. The perfume dealers of Antioch and Alexandria had, with wonderful inventiveness, subdivided these articles of luxury, and enhanced their price. Two articles of Indian produce, the root of the plant kostum, and the leaf of the spikenard, were in general the principal and the most costly ingredients in those salve-oils. But these perfumes were so varied by their minor refinements, that in the work of an ancient physician upon the art of the toilette, five and twenty different species are enumerated. So soon as Psceas has finished her work, Kypassis begins hers, a negress slave, active, cunning, flattering, the best of all gobetweens, the confidante and favourite of Sabina. The principal management of this department of the toilette falls to her share. It is hers to arrange the locks already combed and perfumed by the others-it is hers to form them into that high and swelling shape which, in the language of the Roman fair, was called generally Nodus, the knot, but of which there were a thousand varieties, and a thousand minor appellations. The dark Kypassis now selects from the casket of her mistress the large and sculptured dressing-pin, which is to bind together the whole mass of locks; nor is her choice without its difficulties. The object is to select that whose ornaments may express, by the happiest allusion, something of the secret wishes of the wearer. The first she pulled out was one, the head of which represented a rich Corinthian capital, sustaining a statue of Psyche, with The first of these was called (par excellence) radix, the root; the second folium, the leaf. Our first accurate information concerning the nature of each has been derived from the English writers who have visited Calcutta ; as, Sir W. Jones in the Asiatic Miscellanies, and Gilbert Blanc in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. cxxx. p. 2. The great consumption of these articles in the cosmetic art was one principal cause of the enormous traffic in the spices of India, which was then to the gold what China is now to the silver of Europe. See Dr Robertson's Historical Disquisition, s. II. p. 54. &c. + Crito, physician to the Empress Plotina. See his list of these essences and salves in Fabricus Bibl. Græc. vol. xii. p. 690. Negress slaves practised the same arts, and attained the same favour among the Roman ladies as they do now among the lazy Creole, or European Ladies in the West India Islands and Brazil. VOL. IV. But a luckier Cupid in her arms. thought at last recalled to Kypassis a pin which bore on its summit a goddess of plenty (Abundantia) with a dolphin on her left, and in her right hand the cornucopia; on her head the two high horns, the well-known symbols of Isis. Sabina had been wont to wear this pin when she attended the worship of Isis by the side of Tiber; and on one of these occasions her Saturninus had of late attended her by the appointment of Kypassis. The pin itself, moreover, was a new year's gift of the youth, and Sabina well understood the meaning of Kypassis in selecting it. It was at that time the custom for Roman gallants to send such articles of dress to their mistresses, wrapped up in little pieces of parchment, containing love mottos. Of these the poet of fashion and gallantry, Martial, had composed an innumerable variety for every possible occasion, and every possible ornament. The golden pin of Saturninus was unfolded from a covering which bore on it these words:* "Tenuiane madidi violent Bombycina crines, Figat acus tortas sustineatque comas !"+ Nape, the superintendent of the whole band, herself a scientific mistress of hair-dressing, now terminates the labour of her inferiors. Her lady has taken care to have her educated in the theory as well as the practice of the art, so that she can pronounce a skilful judgment concerning every variety of coiffure, and tell with the precision of an artist, what suits and what does not suit every particular shape of head, every form of coun *The same thing which was called by the Greeks κοριμβιον or κροβυλος was, in Latin, Nodus. The pin or needle which fastened this was the acus discriminalis. This pin, which was of many inches in length, was at times hollow, and might be made to contain poison, like the ring of Hannibal. This use seems to have been made of it by the ce lebrated poisoning woman Martina (see Ta citus, Annal. III. 7.); and indeed it has been thought by many, that Cleopatra terminated her existence by means of a poison-pin of the same kind, fashioned in the shape of an asp. See Dio Cassius, s. 644. 24. with the note of Reimarus. In countries where the excise is very strictly attended to, we sometimes hear of modern ladies smuggling lace under their periwigs. The ancient dames concealed in the same way the instrument of death. Who need wonder, after this, at the naif and heroic style of the Antique? + Martial, xiv. 24. Y |
