his high attainments; for his excellence is not yet duly appreciated in Saxony; his yearly salary, calculated at the very utmost, does not exceed 2001. sterling. As his taste for literature induces him to purchase a vast number of books, as he has a family to support, and must moreover live in a style corresponding with his rank, he is under the necessity of augmenting his income by writing for monthly publications and newspapers. Yet he never complains, for he is warmly attached to his country, and particularly to Dresden. The good old King of Saxony has not a more faithful and affectionate subject than Böttiger, as is evident from the admirable Latin Ode, which he produced last September, in honour of the Royal Jubilee, as well as the speech which he delivered in the presence of several thousand auditors. It is well known with what zeal he has, during late years, exerted himself to relieve the distress which the ravages of war have occasioned throughout his native country. Since Böttiger's residence in Dresden, that city has acquired an augmented celebrity in learning; he has diffused a degree of literary zeal, and a taste for philosophy and art hitherto unknown there. What could not such a man perform, were he released from the anxiety of providing for the immediate wants of a family? Surely such an Archeologist would be a valuable acquisition to England. He would prove a learned and eloquent commentator of the Elgin Marbles, and the other treasures of art in the British Museum! and the many valuable monuments of ancient and modern art in the country residences of the English nobility (which are at present but indifferently known) if described by a man of Böttiger's learning, would prove to astonished Europe the riches which our island possesses. SABINA; OR MORNING SCENES AT THE TOILETTE OF A ROMAN LADY OF FASHION. 417 will, we doubt not, consider a peep into the morning and toilette hours of a lady of that period, as likely to furnish as much amusement as the perusal of a heroic romance relating to our tilting and tournaying forefathers, or a tale of ghosts and goblins in Mrs. Radcliffe's style. A whole host of female slaves, each having her own particular department in the great work of the toilette, attended on the nod of the DOMINA,-for by that name was she called by her domestics, as well as by her lovers and dependants. That great painter of manners, Lucian, has given us a true and lively description of the levée of one of these ladies, which we shall begin with translating. Could any one see this fair creature," he says, " at the moment when she rises from her sleep, he might naturally enough fancy himself to be in the presence of a monkey or baboon-according to all authorities a bad omen to begin the day with. Thus she takes especial care to be invisible to all male eyes at this hour. Now she takes her seat amidst a circle of officious old hags and dainty waitingdamsels, whose skill and dexterity are all zealously engaged to call from their grave the dead charms of their mistress. The room has the appearance of a milliner's shop. Every slave has her own department at the toilette: one bears a silver wash-hand-basin, another a silver ewer, others hold up as many looking-glasses and boxes as the apartment will admit of; and in all these, nothing but deceit, treachery, and falsehoodin one, teeth and gums-in another, eye-lashes and eye-brows, and such like. But the most, both of art and time, are devoted to the hair. Some ladies who take a fancy to convert their natural black locks into white and yellow, besmear them all over with pomatums, and then expose them to the scorching rays of the noontide sun;-others are content to keep them of their natural colour; but they lavish the whole subthat all the perfumes of Arabia Felix stance of their husbands upon them, so breathe from their tresses. Lotions are kept boiling on the fire to crimp and twist what nature has made smooth and sleek. The hair of one must be brought down from the head, and taught to lie close to the eye-brows, lest the Cupids should have too much play-ground on the forehead; but behind, the locks float over the shoulders in bundles of vanity." Our DOMINA, whom we shall call SABINA, without injury to all other VOL. X. 3 H ladies, Roman or not Roman, who may have borne the same name, at first rising in the morning is any thing but lovely. Perhaps Lucian's simile of the she-baboon may not be amiss. According to the custom of the age, she had placed on her face over-night, a plaster of bread soaked in asses' milk. The inventor of this embrocation, by means of which the skin was rendered very soft and white, was the illustrious Poppaa, the wife of Nero, and it had preserved her name. During the night, part of the beautyplaster had been sucked into, and part of it had dried upon her face; so that Sabina's physiognomy resembles, in the morning, a wall with ill-mixed and bursting plaster-and so indeed the great satirist, Juvenal, has described it. Interea fœda aspectu ridendaque multo Pane tumet facies. Tandem aperit vultum, et tectoria prima reponit, Incipit agnosci." If we consider that, in addition to all this, our DOMINA, on retiring to rest, had laid aside with her dress several not unimportant items of the "human face divine," such as the eye-brows, the teeth, the hair, &c. and that therefore she probably bore much more likeness to the death's head over which Hamlet moralizes, than to the living model of the Venus of Praxiteles; we shall, perhaps, be forced to admit, that Lucian's comparison of the monkey, if not the most gallant that might have been selected, was certainly the most piquant and just. Before Sabina enters what is properly called the dressing-room, her own bodydamsel, the much-teased Smaragdis, has already performed certain little services about her person, the signal for which, from these lazy lords and ladies of the world, was merely a crack of the fingers. At last she appears in the dressingroom, where her arrival has been for hours expected by a crowd of slaves and attendants. Her first nod is to the slave that watches the door, (the Janitrix, as she is called,) and then she enquires after the billet-doux, bills, letters, messages, milliners, &c. that may have arrived before she quitted her bed-chamber. Scarcely has the Domina entered the numerous circle of her damsels and tirewomen, ere each, with the zeal of rivalry, proceeds to her task. Ancient historians inform us, that among the Egyptians, each part of the human body had its peculiar physician, so that the ear-doctor, ..the eye doctor, the tooth-doctor, the clyster-doctor, the foot-doctor-each had [Dec. 1, his own little unapproachable division of the general victim to deal with as it might please his fancy; here, too, the surface of Sabina is portioned out among a vast variety of petty governors. Every bit of the polished, painted, pranked body, thanks a different artist for its ornament. The slaves are arranged into troops and sub-divisions like a legion. The first file consists of the painters, the layers on of white and red, the stainers of the eye-brows, and the scrubbers of the teeth. The whole materials made use of by this class, were combined under the general Greek term of Cosmetic-for the rage of the Roman ladies was in these days to call every thing by Greek names, exactly as it has been the rage of German ladies, in our own times, to call every thing by French. From the lover down to the tooth-brush, every thing had its endearing appellation in Greek. The maids employed in this great department were called kosmeta. The first who commences operations is Scaphion,who, with a bason of luke-warm asses' milk, washes from the face the noćturnal incrustation of bread. This mass was called καταπλασμα, and the soaps and essences which were applied after its rémoval, oμɛyμara. The ointments and colours, and the whole apparatus wherewith (as Hamlet says) they disguise God's handy-work, were contained in two caskets of ivory and crystal, which in these days formed the chief ornaments of the female toilette, and were known by the Greek name Narthekia. Our fair readers may be excused for wishing to have a glimpse of the interior of these repositories; but let our gentlemen take warning from the fate of " Peeping Tom of Coventry." We may, however, mention, that with the exception of the ancient and saturnian white lead, which was then quite as fashionable as it is now, the greater part of the ancient paints were derived from the comparatively innocent animal and vegetable kingdoms. While the busy Phiale is engaged in laying on the paint, a third slave, whose nom-de-toilette is Stimmi, prepares a little pot with pounded black lead (appropriately called fuligo) and water. In one hand she holds a very delicate pencil or needle for laying on this tincture; for in those days the Greek and Roman ladies universally made use of methods for increasing the lustre and depth of their eye-lashes and eye brows, similar to the surmé still employed for the same purposes by the Oriental fair. The com mon mixture was called Stibium (a slight alteration of the Greek or, an eyebrow), and it might either be formed from lead, antimony, or bismuth, the very materials still in use among the Easterns. Stimmi, with her culliblepharon, (for this, too, was another name for it, and the most elegant of all), soon transfers Sabina into some resemblance of the ox-eyed hero of Homer. The eye-brows also are delicately touched. Next comes Mastiche to her post, the dentist of the toilette. She applies to the Domina that Chian mastix, from which she derives her own name, and which was the customary dentifrice of the day. From the corner of her beautiful mastix-box she next produces a little onyx phial, containing the urine of an infant, and a golden shell, containing finely pounded pumice stone, which, from the mixture of a delicate marble, sparkles with every variety of colour. But perhaps all this is mere show. The teeth which are contained in the little box of Mastiche have no real occasion for tooth-powder, dentifrice, or pearl essence. These are easily placed with all their beauty in the hollow jaws, and no powder or brush can improve the few and ragged remnants of the aboriginal stumps. The truth is, that the invention of ivory teeth and golden sprigs is as old as the twelve tables.* Martial often speaks in a manner. which proves the universality of the use of false teeth in his times; for instance, in the following, when he introduces the tooth-powder as speaking: Quid mecum est tibi? me Puella sumat, Emptos non valeo polire dentes. The goddess Fashion had in those times not only as many worshippers, but was adored by them with the same incense and morning offerings as now. To many a Sabina of that day a portrait painter might have made the same excuse which Lord Chesterfield has put in the mouth of Liotard-" I never copy Let us hear the address of Martial to Nec dentes aliter quam Serica nocte reponas, Quod tibi prolatum est mane, supercilio. Sixteen centuries later, La Bruyere speaks much in the same way of his coun * Cicero de leg. ii. 24. 419 trywomen: "I have collected the voices of the men, and they were nearly all of my opinion, that it is almost as odious to see a woman with white lead on her face, as with false teeth in her gums, or waxen plumpers in her cheeks. They protested, that before God and man, no part of this deceit and treachery could be laid to their charge.' SUPPLEMENT TO THE FIRST SCENE. digging for a well in the garden belong- this casket are of massy silver, and their The most remarkable of these treasures of antiquity is the silver toilette, or dressing-box itself, two feet in length, a foot and a half in breadth, and one foot in height. The form, the workmanship, the figures upon its exterior, are all of the most elaborate and exquisite kind. The quadrangular box consists of two equal parts, of which the one forms the * Caractères, vol. i. P. 153. box, properly speaking, and the other the lid. The box is thickest at the place where these join; from that point upwards and downwards it is shaped in a pyramidal form; and it terminates both above and below in a small oblong tablet. The earlier taste of antiquity would have rejected this form as too artificial; but it is to be seen in several lids of urns, &c. of the age of Constantine, among others, in the two urns supposed to have contained the ashes of St. Helena and Constantia. As to the use of this box, there can remain no doubt, after the slightest examination of the relievos and inscriptions with which it is covered. Upon the tablet, at the top, appear two half length figures in relief, the one male, and the other female. The lady stands on the right of her husband, and holds in her hand a roll. This is often to be seen on old monuments, where a marriage is the subject of the representation, and the roll has been supposed by some antiquarians, to be the marriage-contract. It is probable that the box itself was the wedding gift of the bridegroom to his bride. The headdress of the lady is elevated to a great height, with curls and ringlets, after the fashion commonly met with in the coins of the age of the Empress Helena. The bridegroom has a short curled beard, like the heads on the coins of Maximus, Julius, and Eugenius.-Over his shoulders is a mantle, (the chlamys)* fastened, as usual, above the right arm, with a clasp of considerable size. The two busts are surrounded with a common border of sufficiently intelligible description. It is a garland of myrtle twigs, held at either extremity by a flying genius-a symbol of the unity of the pair. Three or four declining sides of the lid are adorned with beautiful representations of the goddess of love. One of these is particularly charming, wherein Venus is pictured as making her progress over the calm waves, attended by a group of Tritons and a whole procession of Cupids. One of the Tritons leans forward, and presents to the goddess an oval mirror; a group often seen, with some little variation, on ancient gems and medals. The drapery of the figures * The chlamys, originally entirely confined to military dress, had, in the 3d and centuries, almost superseded the use of ner toga. The clasps were conasing in size, and in elaborate See Rhodius, de acie, c. 5. Antiquitates Neomag. [Dec. 1, on all these three sides is strongly gilt. In these later times, this gilding of silver was the universal taste. The ornaments on the fourth side are also worthy of much attention, although Venus is not visibly introduced. They represent the festal home-bringing of the bride to her husband's house. Another very interesting representation is that on one of the sides of the box, where the lady whom we have just seen introduced to the house is set forth in the retirement of her toilette or dressing-room. She is seated on a splendid stool, while her slaves are busied about her. The stool is hung round with golden chains and ornaments, and is therefore a cathedra. The lady holds in one hand a casket, containing probably her wedding-jewels; with the other she is fastening a band upon her head. Before her stands one of the attendant slaves, with a silver mirror of the common oval shape in her hand, which she is holding up to her mistress. Another stands by her with a dressingbox, containing probably the rouge and the other cosmetic apparatus. A third holds up a rectangular casket, and has an ewer at her feet. This probably is the psecas, the slave whose vocation it is to sprinkle the odoriferous Indian essences over the hair and dress of her lady. The casket which she holds is probably the proper narthezium, or slave-casket, filled with alabaster vases, oil flasks, onyx phials, &c.; and the water ewer below is intimately connected with the use of all these. A fourth slave holds a basin. of a semicircular form. A fifth holds a ring, from which depends a small box pyramidically shaped in its cover, but flat below. In addition to all this rich work, there are still two more female figures, which seem to perform the parts of candelabra; probably this may refer to the well-known nuptial torch-bearing. The subject of this piece, is not, it would seem, any ordinary dressing, but the formal and solemn attiring of a bride. This then is a dressing-box,t exactly of the same nature with those which modern ladies use. The only difference is, that our ladies are generally satisfied The use of the word ducere is evidently derived from this practice. Processions of the same kind are still used among the inhabitants of European Turkey. See Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, vol. ii. p. 51. (edit. Amst. 1718. 4.) + Its proper name was Pyxis, which shews of what materials it was originally formed. with boxes of atlas or rose-wood, inlaid with brass or silver, while the ancient fair condescended not below silver materials and the workmanship of a sculptor. As to the name of the owner, no doubt can exist. On the smooth summit of the lid, the following words are still distinctly visible: Secunde et Projecta vivatis. Secundus is the bridegroom, Projecta is the name of his bride. A prayer for the happiness of both is the meaning of the legend. On some of the smaller pieces there is found, although not so entire, the name Projecta Turci. Now, in the history of the fourth and fifth centuries, several of the first dignities in Rome were held by men bearing the name of Turcius Asterius Secundus; so that there seems to be no reason to doubt that this splendid box was possessed by a Projecta, wife of one of these Asterii. Next to the pyxis itself, the most curious object is a silver capsula, which, from the chains appended to it, appears to have been carried about on the arm. It is one foot in height, and is, at the base, one foot and two or three inches broad. It is a regular polygon of sixteen sides, which corners are all rounded off into a circle, where the lid is inserted. The first glance is sufficient to suggest the resemblance which this bears to the receptacles of book-rolls, which are often to be seen on ancient monuments,- for example, at the feet of the Muses, or wrapped in the folds of the toga; although in general the form of these is either square, or, in the decline of taste, cylindrical or circular. The capsula was used by the Romans, in travelling, for the accommodation of a small library; and in their own apartments, for the purpose of preserving books of an unusual value. The figures in relievo, on the sixteen sides of this capsula, correspond perfectly with this idea of its use. These are the nine Muses, eight of them around the capsula, each alternate surface being occupied by a garland of flowers. The ninth Muse is on the flat summit of the whole,-probably Erato; the Muse who united love and poetry, and therefore, the fittest to preside over the toilette of a pretty woman. On one of the intermediate spaces there is a lock and bolt, for the security of the precious rolls. But why all this learned apparatus at the toilette of a Roman lady? Might the whole capsula not be meant for holding love letters and billets-doux? For this no such formal 421 preparation had been necessary. The safest place for such deposits was in the girdle, or below the bosom band, (the strophium,) close to the heart. But there were learned ladies among the Romans as well as among ourselves; and why might not Asteria be a Blue Stocking? We have Ovid's authority that the Roman ladies were as fond of Menander as ever the French Bas Bleus were of their Florian or Picard. Even of romances, at that time called Milesian tales, there was no dearth.-But luckily there is no need for so much conjecture. The capsula's contents have been preserved, as well as itself. We have all read of the astonishment of a young heir, who, in tumbling over his uncle's library, shook from the centre of one of the fathers a purse of beautiful louis d'or. Our fair readers will guess what was the surprise of the worthyantiquarian, when he lifted the lid of his capsula librorum with the expectation of drawing forth some precious fragments of Menander or Sappho, and found nothing but five salve-boxes and essence vials. Within the capsula is a copper tablet with five compartments, one a larger, and four around it of a smal ler size. In these divisions, originally, no doubt, intended for MSS. were found the receptacles of pomatums and lotions. Alexander threw out the balsams from the casket of Darius, and inserted the Iliad in their stead: our Asteria followed quite a different course; with her the books gave place to the essences. But our readers must not be too severe on Asteria. We have ourselves seen modern books, and pretty books too, which, on èxamination, turned out to be snuffboxes-or counter-boxes; and Prince Potemkin, it is well known, had a number of books-the chief objects of his attention-which were filled with Russianbank assignats. Besides these two principal objects, there are a variety of lesser articles appertaining to the Trousseau, or, as the Roman jurisconsults would have called it, the Mundus Muliebris of the fair Asteria: several small silver patera and ewers, with ciphers on them; one beautiful little vase covered with Arabesques, without doubt for nard or incense; several small toilette-spoons for dropping out essences, or tasting sweetmeats or liqueurs. There is also a silver hollow hand for holding a taper; for the ancients always preferred natural forms to artificial, and hands of this kind are seen on all kinds of monuments,-what |
