Note 809 — Chapter III

Ep. 54: “Polire faciem purpurisso" he exclaims, “et cerusa ora depingere, ornare crinem, et alienis capillis turritam verticem struere.” Cyprian suggests that the Almighty might not recognize them at the resurrection. They should not dye their hair or clothes, as violating the saying that “thou canst not make one hair white or black;” and God had not made sheep scarlet or purple.—De habitu Virginum, 14-16. “Nevertheless,” says Clement, “they cannot with their bought and painted beauty avoid wrinkles or evade death.” Tertullian denounces their flame-coloured heads, “built up with pads and rolls, the slough perhaps of some guilty wretch now in hell.”—De Velendis Virginibus, ii, 17. “One delicate neck,” he says, “carries about it forests and islands”—saltus et insulæ; that is, their price.—Ibid., i, 9. At the court of the Eastern Empire, effeminacy and oriental luxury still further degraded the Christian character. Clement of Alexandria denounces with indignation the extravagance and vice of the so-called Christian community of that city. The wealth that should have been devoted to the poor was expended in gilded litters and chariots, splendid banquets and baths, in costly jewelry and dresses. Wealthy ladies, instead of maintaining widows and orphans, wasted their sympathies on monkeys, peacocks, and Maltese dogs.—Pæd., iii, 4. “Riches,” he adds, “is like a serpent which will bite unless we know how to take it by the tail.”—Ibid., 6. He compares the Alexandrian women to “an Egyptian temple, gorgeous without, but enshrining only a cat or crocodile: so beneath their meretricious adorning were concealed vile and loathsome passions.” The sumptuary laws of the Theodosian code prohibited the use of gold brocade or silken tissue, (x, tit. 20; xlv, 10.)