Again, in the matter of _earrings_, we quote from the same valuable and trustworthy authority. No adornment of the head claims priority to earrings. They have been fashionable, as Montfaucon justly observes, in all ages and almost all nations. It is evident from Homer that the Grecian women bored their ears for the admission of these ornaments. The poet gives earrings to the goddess Juno, and the words he uses on the occasion are literally these:--"In her well-perforated ears she put the earrings of elaborate workmanship, having three eyes in each"--that is, three pendants or jewels, either made in the form of eyes, or so called from their brightness. The extravagance of the Grecian and Roman ladies in the purchase of these articles of adornment almost exceeds belief. Pliny says, "They seek for pearls at the bottom of the Red Sea, and search the bowels of the earth for emeralds to ornament their ears;" and Seneca tells us that "a single pair of earrings was worth the revenue of a large estate, and that some women would wear at their ears the price of two or three patrimonies." We read that the earrings worn by Cleopatra were valued at £161,458, and that Servilia, the mother of Brutus, was presented with a pair by Julius Cæsar, the value of which was £48,457.
Bracelets are also ornaments of high antiquity, as are rings and brooches of various forms for fastening the dress.
Rich gold chains and jewelled fastenings were in common use during this period. The annexed illustration represents a Roman lady of rank about the reign of Heliogabalus. Little alteration appears to have taken place in the general style of costume for some very considerable period of time, and the patrician ladies concealed beneath their flowing draperies a kind of corset, which they tightened very considerably, for a slight and tapering waist was looked upon as a great beauty in women, and great attention was paid to the formation of the figure, in spite of all that has been written about the purely natural and statuesque forms of the Roman matrons. On the conquest of the Roman Empire by the wild and savage Hunnish tribes, fashion, art, taste, literature, and civilisation were swept ruthlessly away, and a long, weird night of mental darkness may be said to have reigned throughout the land from the tenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, and we see little or nothing of Roman elegance or magnificence of dress to distinguish it above other nations from that period.