Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 108 h Magda El-Nowieemy In another poem, De Medicamine Faciei Femineae , Ovid holds a comparison between women of old 42 and those of his time. 43 He addresses the Roman women of his day saying: at vestrae matres teneras peperere puellas. vultis inaurata corpora veste tegi, vultis odoratos positu variare capillos, conspicuas gemmis vultis habere manus: induitis collo lapides oriente petitos, et quantos onus est aure tulisse duos. nec tamen indignum, si vobis cura placendi, (Ov. De Med. Fac. 17–23) "But your mothers have borne tender girls. You wish your bodies to be covered with garments embroidered with gold, you wish to change the dressing of your perfumed locks, you wish to have hands distinguished with gems: you put stones sought from the East around your necks, and it is a load to bear such heavy two burdens on your ears. And yet it is not shameful if your concern is to please." I am led to the conclusion of Seneca in one of his Epistles (86.7), when he said that the Romans had become so luxurious that they would not walk on roads which were not jeweled. This might be termed as Roman preoccupation with luxury. As for perfumes 44 and cosmetics, from the Roman women's point of view, there was a pressing need to use perfumed oils and the like for sexual 42 Spinning wool was the traditional symbol of domestic respectability in connection with women. This was the role of the Roman matrona of old. See Ovid ( De Medicamine Faciei Femineae, 11 ff.); Juvenal (6.287ff.); Columella ( De Re Rustica , 12.9). J. Sebesta, “Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome”, in: M. Wyke (ed.), Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean (Blackwell 1998) 114, argues that the assiduous devotion of the Roman woman to her husband’s home was configured as the task of weaving, which also served as a metaphor for her preoccupation with the material prosperity of her husband’s household. 43 The role of the respectable matrona was not suitable for the girls of Ovid’s day to play. They had no longer supervised wool work. Cf. Columella ( De Re Rustica , 12.9) who argues in the same style of thought that in his time most women abandoned themselves to luxury and idleness. They no longer superintended wool making. They preferred purchased clothes to home-made ones. They spent almost the whole of their husbands' income on their extravagance. 44 For the excessive use of perfumes, see: Seneca, ( Epistles, 86.13). It is agreed among many scholars that the campaign of Aelius Gallus at the beginning of the Principate was due to the ex- pansionist interest of Augustus at that stage in controlling the rich trade in spices and perfumes. On this point, see for one: G. Bowersock, “A Report on Arabia Provincia ”, JRS 61 (1971) 227. Cf. M. Cary et al., A History of Rome (Macmillan 1986) 332f.