Chap. 4.] 



UNGUENTS. 107 



CHAP. 4. (3.) THE EXCESSES TO WHICH LUXURY HAS RUN IN 



UNGUENTS. 



These perfumes form the objects of a luxury which may be 

 looked upon as being the most superfluous of any, for pearls 

 and jewels, after all, do pass to a man's representative, 86 and 

 garments have some durability; but unguents lose their 

 odour in an instant, and die away the very hour they are 

 used. The very highest recommendation of them is, that 

 when a female passes by, the odour which proceeds from her 

 may possibly attract the attention of those even Avho till then 

 are intent upon something else. In price they exceed so krge 

 a sum even as four hundred denarii per pound : so vast isthe 

 amount that is paid for a luxury made not for our own enjoy- 

 ment, but for that of others ; for the person who carries the 

 perfume about him is not the one, after all, that smells it. 



And yet, even here, there are some points of difference that 

 deserve to be remarked. We read in the works of Cicero, n 

 that those unguents which smell of the earth are preferable to 

 those which smell of saffron ; being a proof, that even in a 

 matter which most strikingly bespeaks our state of extreme 

 corruptness, it is thought as well to temper the vice by a little 

 show of austerity. 88 There are some persons too who look more 

 particularly for consistency 89 in their unguents, to which they 

 accordingly give the name of " spissum ; 89 * thus showing that 

 they love not only to be sprinkled, but even to be plastered over, 

 with unguents. "We have known the very soles 90 even of the 

 feet to be sprinkled with perfumes ; a refinement which was 

 taught, it is said, by M. Otho 91 to the Emperor Nero. How, 



86 " Heres." The persorf was so called who succeeded to the property, 

 whether real or personal, of an intestate. 



87 See B. xvii. c. 3, where he quotes this passage from Cicero at length. 

 It appears to be from De Orat. B. iii. c. 69. Both Cicero and Pliny pro- 

 fess to find a smell that arises from the earth itself, through the agency of 

 the sun. But, as Fee remarks, pure earth is perfectly inodorous. He sug- 

 gests, however, that this odour attributed by the ancients to the earth, may 

 in reality have proceeded from the fibrous roots of thyme and other plants. 

 If such is not the real solution, it sterns impossible to suggest any other. 



b8 jgy giving preference to the more simple odours. 



83 "Crassitude" *** Or "thick" unguent. 



so We learn from Athenaeus, and a passage in the Aulularia of Plautus, 

 that this was done long before Nero's time, among the Greeks. 



9i Who succeeded Galba. He was one of Nero's favourite companions 

 in his debaucheries. 



