Homer the first ethnic writer who speaks of an article of dress allied to the Corset--The cestus or girdle of Venus--Terentius, the Roman dramatist, and his remarks on the practice of tight-lacing--The use of the strophium by the ladies of Rome, and the mitra of the Grecian belles--The peplus as worn by the ancients--Toilet of a Roman lady of fashion--Roman baths--Fashionable promenades of Ancient Rome--Boundless luxury and extravagance--Cleopatra and her jewels--The taper waists and tight-lacing of the ancient Roman ladies--Conquest of the Roman Empire.
Amongst the ethnic writers, Homer appears to be the first who describes an article of female dress closely allied to the corset. He tells us of the cestus or girdle of Venus, mother of the Loves and Graces, and of the haughty Juno, who was fabled to have borrowed it with a view to the heightening and increasing her personal attractions, in order that Jupiter might become a more tractable and orderly husband. The poet attributes most potent magical virtues to the cestus, but these are doubtlessly used in a figurative sense, and Juno, in borrowing the cestus, merely obtained from a lady of acknowledged elegance of figure a corset with which to set her own attractions off to the best possible advantage, so that her husband might be charmed with her improved appearance; and Juno appears to have been a very far-seeing and sensible woman. From periods of very remote antiquity, and with the gradual increase of civilisation, much attention appears to have been paid to the formation and cultivation of the female figure, and much the same means were had recourse to for the achievement of the same end prior to 560 B.C. as in the year 1868. Terentius, the Roman dramatist, who was born in the year 560, causes one of his characters, in speaking of the object of his affections, to exclaim--
"This pretty creature isn't at all like our town ladies, whose mothers saddle their backs and straitlace their waists to make them well-shaped. If any chance to grow a little plumper than the rest, they presently cry, 'She's an hostess,' and then her allowance must be shortened, and though she be naturally fat and lusty, yet by her dieting she is made as slender as a broomstick. By this means one woodcock or another is caught in their springe."