a the earth. It is for this they pierce their ears." These earrings were extremely long, and sometimes of so great a price, says Seneca, that " pair of them would consume the revenue of a rich house;" and again, that "the folly of them (the women) was such that one of them would carry two or three patrimonies hanging at her ears." Green and vermillion were favourite colours both with Greek and Roman females. Such garments were called "vestes herbidæ," from the hue and juice of the herbs with which they were stained. The rage for green and vermillion was of long duration, for Cyprian and Tertullian, inveighing against luxury, name particularly those colours as most agreeable to the women; and Martian Capella, who wrote in the fifth century, even says, "Floridam discoloremque vestem herbida palla contexuerat." At banquets, and on joyful occasions, white dresses were made use of. Among the many colours in request with gentlewomen, Ovid reckons "albentes rosas" (De Art.' iii. v. 189); and at v. 191, he says— "Alba decent fuscas: albis, es Cephei placebas." In Tibullus we meet with the following passage: "Urit seu Tyria voluit procedere palla; Urit seu nivea candida veste venit."-Eleg. iv. 2. Having thus given a sketch of the general costume of the Romans, we will proceed to notice such peculiarities as are requisite to distinguish the dramatis personæ of the Roman plays of Shakspere. The dress of the ancient Roman consuls consisted of the tunic, called from its ornament laticlavian, the toga prætexta (i. e., bordered with purple), and the red sandals called mullei. Of all the disputed points before alluded to, that which has occasioned the most controversy is, the distinguishing mark of the senatorial and equestrian classes. The latus clavus is said to have been the characteristic of the magistrates and senators, and the angustus clavus that of the equites or knights. That it was a purple ornament we learn from Pliny and Ovid; but concerning its shape there are almost as many opinions as there have been pages written on the subject, not one of the ancients having taken the trouble to describe what to them was a matter of no curiosity, or Stuekius, Ant. Con.,' ii. 26. b Lib. 9, cap. xxxix. | by accident dropped a hint which might serve The learned Père Montfaucon, in his ‘Anti- Upon this Montfaucon ingeniously remarks, that, presuming the clavus to be a stripe or band of purple running round the edges of these cloths, it would not be difficult by laying them one over the other to show nothing but their borders, and thereby present a mass of purple to the eye, which might of course be very properly compared to the habit of a prince, but that this could not be effected were the cloths merely studded with purple knobs, or embroidered with purple flowers, as in that case the white ground must inevitably appear. In addition to this he observes that St. Basil, in explanation of a passage in Isaiah, says, he blames the luxury of women "who border their garments with purple, or who insert it into the stuff itself;" and that St. Jerome, on the same passage, uses the expresion of "clavatum purpura." Now, though these observations go some way towards proving the clavus to have been a band or stripe (broad for the senators and narrow for the knights), we are as much in the dark as ever respecting the direction it took. It could not have bordered the tunic, or surely, like that of the Spaniards, it would have been called prætexta (as the toga was when so ornamented). On the line in Horace Those of our readers who would like to plunge into the depths of unfathomable controversy are recommended to a perusal of the essays of Rubenius and Ferrarius. d Livy, speaking of the tunics of the Spaniards, says 1 "Latam demisit pectore clavum."-Sat. 1, 6, 28. a commentator (Torrentius) says, "recto ordine descendebat insuti clavi vel intexti"-the clavi sewn on, or woven into, the garment, descended in a right line; but if he founded this conjecture simply on the word "demisit," he did not recollect that the ornament gave its name to the garment, and that the tunic itself is repeatedly called the latus clavus by the ancient writers. Horace might, therefore, merely allude to the tunic of the wearer hanging loosely and negligently down upon the breast, an affectation of wearing it which is imputed to Julius Cæsar. Nothing, in short, appears likely to solve this difficulty but the discovery of some painting of Roman times, in which colour may afford the necessary information. Noble Roman youths wore the prætexta, and the bulla, a golden ornament, which, from the rare specimen in the collection of Samuel Rogers, Esq., we should compare to the case of what is called a hunting-watch. It has generally been described as a small golden ball; but, unless the one we have seen has been by accident much compressed or flattened, we should say they were not more globular than an oldfashioned watch. Macrobius says they were sometimes in the shape of a heart, and that they frequently contained preservatives against envy, &c. On arriving at the age of puberty, which was fourteen, youths abandoned the bulla, and exchanged the toga prætexta for the toga pura, which was also called the "toga virilis," and “libera :”—“virilis,” in allusion to the period of life at which they had arrived; and "libera," because at the same time, if they were pupilli, they attained full power over their property, and were released from tutela. There is no ascertaining the age of young Marcius, in the tragedy of Coriolanus; but as he only appears in the scene before the Volscian camp when he is brought to supplicate his father, he should wear nothing but a black tunic, the toga and all ornaments being laid aside in mourning and times of public calamity. Of Julius Cæsar we learn the following facts relative to his dress and personal appearance. Suetonius tells us that he was tall, fair-complexioned, round-limbed, rather full-faced, and with black eyes; that he obtained from the senate permission to wear constantly a laurel they were of a dazzling whiteness, and bordered with purple -id est prætexte." An exactly similar one is engraved in Montfaucon. crown (Dion Cassius says on account of his baldness); that he was remarkable in his dress, wearing the laticlavian tunic with sleeves to it, having gatherings about the wrist, and always had it girded rather loosely, which latter circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sulla, "Beware of the loose-coated boy," or "of the man who is so ill girt." Dion Cassius adds that he had also the right to wear a royal robe in assemblies; that he wore a red sash and the calcei mullei even on ordinary days, to show his descent from the Alban kings. A statue of Julius Cæsar, armed, is engraved in Rossi's 'Racolta di Statue Antiche e Moderne,' folio, Rome, 1704, pl. 15; also one of Octavianus, or Augustus Cæsar :-the latter statue having been once in the possession of the celebrated Marquis Maffei. Octavius affected simplicity in his appearance, and humility in his conduct; and, consistently with this description, we find his armour of the plainest kind. His lorica, or cuirass, is entirely without ornament, except the two rows of plates at the bottom. thorax is partly hidden by the paludamentum, which was worn by this emperor and by Julius Cæsar of a much larger size than those of his successors. Although he is without the cinctura, or belt, he holds in his right hand the paragonium, a short sword, which, as the name imports, was fastened to it. The Suetonius tells us that Octavius was in height five feet nine inches, of a complexion between brown and fair, his hair a little curled and inclining to yellow. He had clear bright eyes, small ears, and an aquiline nose, his eyebrows meeting. He wore his toga neither too scanty nor too full, and the clavus of his tunic neither remarkably broad nor narrow. His shoes were a little thicker in the sole than common, to make him appear taller than he was. In the winter he wore a thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a flannel stomacher, and wrappers on his legs and thighs. He could not bear the winter's sun, and never walked in the open air without a broad-brimmed hat on his head. "Cicero also says that Cæsar sat in the rostra, in a purple toga, on a golden seat, crowned: "Sedebat in rostris collega tuus, amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus."-Phil., 2, 34. • Rubenius thinks he wore the sleeved tunic for the same reason, to show his descent, through those monarchs, from the Trojans, to whom Numanus objects, in Virgil, as a proof of their effeminacy "Et tunicæ manicas et habent redimicula mitræ." Æn. ix. 616. From the time of Caius Marius the senators wore black boots or buskins reaching to the middle of the leg, with the letter C in silver or ivory upon them, or rather the figure of a halfmoon or crescent. There is one engraved in Montfaucon, from the cabinet of P. Kircher. It was worn above the heel, at the height of the ancle; but this last honour, it is conjectured, was only granted to such as were descended from the hundred senators elected by Romulus. In conclusion, it may not be amiss to say a few words respecting the purple of the ancients. Gibbon says "it was of a dark cast, as deep as bulls' blood."-See also President Goguet's 'Origine des Loix et des Arts,' part ii. 1. 2, c. 2, pp. 184, 215. But there were several sorts of "Nam ut quisque insanus nigris medium impediit crus Pellibus, et latum demisit pectore clavum." Horace, i., Sat. 6, v. 27. purple, and each hue was fashionable in its "In my youth," says Cornelius Nepos turn. (who died during the reign of Augustus; Pliny, ix. 39), "the violet purple was fashionable, and sold for a hundred denarii the pound. Some time afterwards the red purple of Tarentum came into vogue, and to this succeeded the red Tyrian twice dyed, which was not to be bought under one thousand denarii." Here, then, we have three sorts of purple, worn during The red purple is menthe life of one man. tioned by Macrobius: he says the redness of the purple border of the toga prætexta was admonitory to those who assumed it to preserve the modesty of demeanour becoming young noblemen; and Virgil says that the sacrificing priest should cover his head with purple, without noticing whether its hue be red or violet. Indeed, purple was a term applied indiscriminately by the ancients to every tint produced by the mixture of red and blue, and sometimes to the pure colours themselves. J. R. P. 'THE Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra' was first printed in the folio collection of 1623. The play is not divided into acts and scenes in the original; but the stage-directions, like those of the other Roman plays, are very full. The text is, upon the whole, remarkably accurate; although the metrical arrangement is, in a few instances, obviously defective. The Life of Antonius, in North's 'Plutarch,' has been followed by Shakspere with very remarkable fidelity; and there is scarcely an incident which belongs to this period of Antony's career which the poet has not engrafted upon his wonderful performance. The poetical power, subjecting the historical minuteness to an all-pervading harmony, is one of the most remarkable efforts of Shakspere's genius. "Of all Shakspere's historical plays," says Coleridge, "Antony and Cleopatra' is by far the most wonderful." He again says, assigning it a place even higher than that of being the most wonderful of the historical plays, "The highest praise, or rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the 'Antony and Cleopatra' is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of 'Macbeth,' 'Lear,' 'Hamlet,' and 'Othello.'" The epithet "wonderful" is unquestionably the right one to apply to this drama. It is too vast, too gorgeous, to be approached without some prostration of the understanding. It pours such a flood of noonday splendour upon our senses, that we cannot gaze upon steadily. We have read it again and again; and the impression which it leaves again and again is that of wonder. it The ANTONY of this play is of course the 1 Antony of Julius Cæsar;'-not merely the historical Antony, but the dramatic Antony, drawn by the same hand. He is the orator that showed dead Cæsar's mantle to the Roman people; he is the soldier that after his triumph over Brutus said, "This was a man." We have seen something of his character; we have learnt a little of his voluptuousness; we have heard of the "masker and the reveller;" we have beheld the unscrupulous politician. But we cannot think meanly of him. He is one great, either for good or for evil. Since he fought at Philippi he has passed through various fortunes. Cæsar thus apostrophises him : "When thou once Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st Did Famine follow; whom thou fought'st against, There came an after-time when, at Alexandria, "Our courteous Antony, Whom ne'er the word of No' woman heard speak, This is the Antony that Shakspere, in the play before us, brings upon the scene. Upton has a curious theory, which would partly make Shakspere to belong to the French school. The hero of this play, according to this theory, does not speak "the language of the people." Upton says"Mark Antony, as Plutarch informs us, affected the Asiatic manner of speaking, which much resembled his own temper, being ambitious, unequal, and very rhodoThis style our poet has very artfully and learnedly interspersed in Antony's speeches." Unquestionably the language of Antony is more elevated than montade. ■ 'Critical Observations,' p. 100. |