Note 99 — Chapter V · CONDITION OF MARRIED WOMEN.

Γύναι, a term of greatest endearment among the Greeks, as with the French “ma femme.” On this point our language is more sophisticated. The practice reprehended by Ischomachos, in the text, was generally prevalent in Greece, where certain classes of the community, who could afford nothing better, used, when they had painted the rest of their skin white, to dye the cheeks with mulberry-juice, and paint the eyelids black at the edge. In hot weather, therefore, dusky streamlets sometimes flowed from the corners of their eyes; and the roses melted from their cheeks, and dropped into their bosoms. They imitated old age, too, by covering their hair with white powder. (Athen. xiii. 6.) It was likewise, at one time, the fashion to bring forward their curls so as to conceal the forehead, as was the practice in France and England during a part of the eighteenth century.—Lucian, Dial. Meret. i. t. iv. p. 123.