200 NATURE AND LIFE. 
fragrance totheir baths, their rooms, their beds, and their 
- drinks. They poured them on the heads of guests. The 
awning shielding the amphitheatre was saturated with 
scented water which dripped, like a fragrant rain, on the 
spectators’ heads. The very Roman eagles were anointed 
with the richest perfumes before battle. At the funeral of 
his wife Poppzea, Nero burned on the pyre more incense 
than Arabia yielded in a whole year. It is related, too, 
that Plancius Plancus, proscribed by the triumyvirs, was 
betrayed by the perfumes he had used, and thus discovered 
to the soldiers sent to pursue him. Besides the odors ex- 
tracted from mint, marjoram, and the violet, which were 
the most common, the ancients made much use of the roses 
of Peestum, and various aromatic substances, such as spike- 
nard, megalium, cinnamon, opobalsamum, etc. 
It is singular to notice that the use of perfumes, brought 
from Rome with Grecian manners, was in its turn conveyed 
to France and Northern Europe with Latin manners, 
and chiefly by the Romish religion. It is from religious 
rites, indeed, that it passed into ceremonies of state, and 
thence into private life. Among the presents sent by Ha- 
roun-al-Raschid to Charlemagne were many perfumes. In 
the middle ages, among princes and men of highest rank, 
they washed their hands with rose-water, before and after 
eating ; some even had fountains from which aromatized 
waters flowed. At this period, too, it was the custom to 
carry the dead to their burial-place with uncovered face, 
and to place little pots full of perfumes in the coffin. The 
French monarchy always showed an unrestrained passion 
for enjoyments of this nature, which seemed created as 
a necessary attendant upon all others. Marshal Riche- 
lieu so extravagantly indulged his passion for perfumes 
under every form, that he lost the perception of them, and 
lived habitually in an atmosphere so loaded with scents, 
that it made his visitors ill. Madame Tallien, coming from 


