The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 · the Elder Pliny
CHAP. 3.—DIAPASMA, MAGMA; THE MODE OF TESTING UNGUENTS.
Those unguents which are known by the name of “diapasma,”[753] are composed of dried perfumes. The lees[754] of unguents are known by the name of “magma.[755]” In all these preparations the most powerful perfume is the one that is added the last of all. Unguents keep best in boxes of alabaster,[756] and perfumes[757] when mixed with oil, which conduces all the more to their durability the thicker it is, such as the oil of almonds, for instance. Unguents, too, improve with age; but the sun is apt to spoil them, for which reason they are usually stowed away in a shady place in vessels of lead. When their goodness is being tested, they are placed on the back of the hand, lest the heat of the palm, which is more fleshy, should have a bad effect upon them. 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,[758] 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 who till then are intent upon something else. In price they exceed so large a sum even as four hundred denarii per pound: so vast is the amount that is paid for a luxury made not for our own enjoyment, 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,[759] 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.[760] There are some persons too who look more particularly for consistency[761] in their unguents, to which they accordingly give the name of “spissum”;[762] thus showing that they love not only to be sprinkled, but even to be plastered over, with unguents. We have known the very soles[763] even of the feet to be sprinkled with perfumes; a refinement which was taught, it is said, by M. Otho[764] to the Emperor Nero. How, 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[765] had the same thing done to his sitting-bath:[766] 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 Nero.
But 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[767] days. I only wish it could, by any possibility, be stated who it was that first taught us this practice. It was, no doubt, under the corrupting influence of such temptations as these, that our eagles achieved the conquest[768] of the world: thus do we seek to obtain their patronage and sanction for our vices, and make them our precedent for using unguents even beneath the casque.[769] CHAP. 5.—WHEN UNGUENTS WERE FIRST USED BY THE ROMANS.
I cannot exactly say at what period the use of unguents first found its way to Rome. It is a well-known fact, that when King Antiochus and Asia[770] were subdued, an edict was published in the year of the City 565, in the censorship of P. Licinius Crassus and L. Julius Cæsar, forbidding any one to sell exotics;[771] for by that name unguents were then called. 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[772] of the body at the same moment.[773] It is a well-known historical fact, that L. Plotius,[774] the brother of L. Plancus, who was twice consul and censor, after being proscribed by the Triumvirs, was betrayed in his place of concealment at Salernum by the smell of his unguents, a disgrace which more than outweighed all the guilt[775] attending his proscription. For who is there that can be of opinion that such men as this do not richly deserve to come to a violent end?
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