§267. Jewelry.--The Roman woman was passionately fond of jewelry, and incalculable sums were spent upon the adornment of her person. Rings, brooches, pins, jeweled buttons, and coronets have been mentioned already, and besides these bracelets, necklaces, and ear-rings or pendants were worn from the earliest times by all who could afford them. Not only were they made of costly materials, but their value was also enhanced by the artistic workmanship that was lavished upon them. Almost all the precious stones that are known to us were familiar to the Romans and were to be found in the jewel-casket (§230) of the wealthy lady. The pearl, however, seems to have been in all times the favorite. No adequate description of these articles can be given here; no illustrations can do them justice. It will have to suffice that Suetonius says that Caesar paid six million sesterces (nearly $300,000) for a single pearl, which he gave to Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, and that Lollia Paulina, the wife of the Emperor Caligula, possessed a single set of pearls and emeralds which is said by Pliny the elder to have been valued at forty million sesterces (nearly $2,000,000).
§268. Dress of Children and Slaves.--The picture from Herculaneum (§119) shows that schoolboys wore the _subligaculum_ and _tunica_, and it is probable that no other articles of clothing were worn by either boys or girls of the poorer classes. Besides these, children of well-to-do parents wore the _toga praetexta_ (§246), which the girl laid aside on the eve of her marriage (§76) and the boy when he reached the age of manhood (§127). Slaves were furnished a tunic, wooden shoes, and in stormy weather a cloak, probably the _paenula_ (§248). This must have been the ordinary garb of the poorer citizens of the working classes, for they would have had little use for the toga, at least in later times, and could hardly have afforded so expensive a garment.
§269. Materials.--Fabrics of wool, linen, cotton, and silk were used by the Romans. For clothes woolen goods were the first to be used, and naturally so, for the early inhabitants of Latium were shepherds, and woolen garments best suited the climate. Under the Republic wool was almost exclusively used for the garments of both men and women, as we have seen, though the _subligaculum_ was frequently, and the woman's tunic sometimes, made of linen. The best native wools came from Calabria and Apulia, that from near Tarentum being the best of all. Native wools did not suffice, however, to meet the great demand, and large quantities were imported. Linen goods were early manufactured in Italy, but were used chiefly for other purposes than clothing until in the Empire, and only in the third century of our era did men begin to make general use of them. The finest linen came from Egypt, and was as soft and transparent as silk. Little is positively known about the use of cotton, because the word _carbasus_, the genuine Indian name for it, was used by the Romans for linen goods also and when we meet the word we can not always be sure of the material meant. Silk, imported from China directly or indirectly, was first used for garments under Tiberius, and then only in a mixture of linen and silk (_vestes sericae_). These were forbidden for the use of men in his reign, but the law was powerless against the love of luxury. Garments of pure silk were first used in the third century.