Female Hair-Style Of The Trajanic Period (A.D. 98-117). The honeycomb quiff of the preceding (Flavian) period now gave way to superposed rows of
tightly spiralling curls, with a great interwoven chignon like a bird's nest at the back. The most prominent patron of the new fashion was Trajan's
sister Marciana.
We may know little of fine clothing, but fashionable hairstyles are well known from the sculptured portraits of Emperors and their womenfolk. These
varied considerably over the years. In the first century the studied disorder of Augustus' hair gave way to the carefully styled waves and sideburns of
Nero; and in the second century Trajan's 'Beatle' cut was replaced by the neat Hellenic beard and carefully cultivated coiffure of Hadrian, a fashion
carried to extremes in the full beards and tightly crisped locks of his Antonine successors. The imperial ladies were not surprisingly even more fashion-
conscious. Although Livia and the Julio-Claudian princesses favoured classicizing styles with gently waving hair running from a central parting to
loose ringlets over the ears and a chignon at the nape of the neck, the grandes dames of Flavian and Trajanic times piled up elaborate edifices of spiral
curls or interwoven plaits on wire frames. In the most extravagant examples these scaffoldings, like the onkoi of heroines in Greek tragedy, doubled
the height of the head, and it must have been a great relief to all and sundry when the trend-setters of the second century reverted to simpler styles
reminiscent of the Julio-Claudian period, albeit with a more deliberate crimping of the waves.
Beautification of the female did not, of course, stop with the hair. References in the Latin poets to tooth polish, painted cheeks, penciled eyebrows, and
eye shadow have a familiar ring; and the wearing of excessive jewellery was a practice which legislators had long since given up trying to curb,
though moralists still condemned it. Pliny rails against women who wore pearls on their fingers, on their ear-rings, and on their slippers, and reports
with disapproval how Caligula's first Empress, Lollia Paulina, turned up to a feast wearing emeralds and pearls on her head, hair, ears, neck, and
fingers. Similarly in Petronius' novel it is a mark of Trimalchio's lack of decorum that he flaunts his wife's gold jewellery-anklets, bracelets, and a gold
hairnet. 'She must have six and a half pounds weight on her', he declares.
Numerous items of personal gold jewellery have survived. At Pompeii some of the objects, such as rings and bracelets in the form of snakes, continue
the Hellenistic tradition, but new types also appear-car-rings decorated with pendant clubs, hemispheres, or clusters of plasmas, and necklaces with
crescent or wheel-shaped pendants. Generally speaking the use of inset stones remained popular in Roman times, but in place of a single species we
find a profusion of colours and materials combined, for example sapphires, garnets, and crystals alternating in a single necklace. At the same time the
fine techniques of filigree and granulation declined in favour, giving way to plain surfaces of gold or to a new openwork (interrasile) style of
ornament. Finger rings were widely worn, both by women, as tokens of engagement, and by men, as signets. A popular device was an engraved
portrait of the Emperor, and imperial gold coins or medallions were frequently set as bezels in rings; they also appeared as pendants on necklaces and
as ornaments on brooches. Among the various types of brooches the most successful was the crossbow, widely worn in the fourth century. All this
jewellery retains the technical quality of its Greek forerunners, but there is a certain reduction in artistic sensitivity in favour of bolder and showier
effects.