Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton: The Book of costume or, Annals of fashion: from the earliest period to the present time (London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, 1847)

392

THE TOILETTE IN GREECE.

Greece. In Euripides, when Pentheus threatens
Bacchus to shave his hair, the young god tells him it
would be an impious action, because he designed it as
an offering to some deity:
“ This lock is sacred, this I do preserve
As some choice votive off’ring for the god.”

The ancient Athenians, says JElian, curled their
hair, and dressed it with small golden ornaments
shaped like grashoppers, in token of their being sons
of the earth. Virgil mentions this custom in his
poem entitled “ Circis
“ Wherefore she did, as was her constant care,
With grashoppers adorn her comely hair,
Brac’d with a golden buckle Attick wise.”

Fashion seems to have exercised as much influence
over the head-dresses of the ladies, in the ancient days
of Greece, as she does at the present time ; gold,
pearls, precious stones, flowers, and ribands, were
employed to ornament the tresses. One of their coif-



fures is described as an immense tower of bows and
curls, and appears to have served as a model for the