168 
PLINY'S NATUKAL HISTOIlY. 
[Book XIII. 
I should like to know, could a perfume be at all perceptible, 
or, indeed, productive of any kind of pleasure, when placed 
on that part of the body ? We have heard also of a private 
person giving orders for the walls of the bath-room to be 
sprinkled with unguents, while the Emperor Caius^^ had the 
same thing done to his sitting-bath : that this, too, might not 
be looked upon as the peculiar privilege of a prince, it was 
afterwards done by one of the slaves that belonged to I^ero. 
Eut the most wonderful thing of all is, that this kind of 
luxurious gratification should have made its way into the camp 
even : at all events, the eagles and the standards, dusty as 
they are, and bristling with their sharpened points, are 
anointed on festive days. I only wish it could, by any pos- 
sibility, be stated who it was that first taught us this practice. 
It was, no doubt, under the corrupting influence of such temp- 
tations as these, that our eagles achieved the conquest of the 
world : thus do we seek to obtain their patronage and sanc- 
tion for our vices, and make them our precedent for using 
unguents even beneath the casque.^® 
CHAP. 5. — WHEN UNGUENTS WEEE FIRST USED BY THE ROMANS. 
I cannot exactly say at what period the use of unguents 
first found its way to Eome. It is a well-known fact, that 
when King Antiochus and Asia ^'^ were subdued, an edict was 
published in the year of the City 565, in the censorship of P. 
Licinius Crassus and L. Julius Csesar, forbidding any one to 
sell exotics ; for by that name unguents were then caUed. 
But, in the name of Hercules ! at the present day, there are 
some persons who even go so far as to put them in their drink, 
and the bitterness produced thereby is prized to a high degree, 
in order that by their lavishness on these odours they may 
thus gratify the senses of two parts of the body at the same 
moment.^ It is a well-known historical fact, that L. Plotius,^ 
92 Caligula. ^3 Solium. 
9^ After victories, for instance, or when marching orders were given. 
This is said in bitter irony. Sub casside. 
^"^ Asia Minor more particularly. ^8 Exotica. 
99 The organs of taste and of smell. 
1 We have this fact alluded to in the works of Plautus, Juvenal, Martial, 
and -Lilian. The Greeks were particularly fond of mixing myrrh with 
their wine. Nard wine is also mentioned by Plautus. Miles Gl. iii. 2, 11. 
2 Or Lucius Plautius Plancus. He was proscribed by the triumvirs, 
