L ead-coated combs dipped in vinegar left a useful dark residue on the hair. To color gray hair, the Romans used a mixture made from ashes, boiled walnut shells, and earthworms. To dye hair black, Pliny the Elder suggests applying leeches that have rotted in red wine for 40 days!

In those days, hair treatments required ingredients like decomposed leeches, urine and pigeon droppings. “From the front you would take her for Andromache, but from the back she isn’t so tall-you wouldn’t think you were looking at the same person!” Juvenal the poet made fun of one lady who piled her hair up high: This may be where the position of nomenclator (human version of the blackberry) came in to tell people the names of their own slaves! Business in the front, party in the backīy Flavian times (50 AD), hairdos became great towers studded with jewels. One Statilius Taurus, consul in the year 765, had at least 370 servants. A tutolo ornatrix specialised in high hairstyles (a la Marie Antoinette). In one household, you might bump into a secundus or regulator of hot and cold water for a bath, a Eutactus or keeper of overcoats, and many, many vestiplici or folders of clothes.Įven the position of ornatrix was subdivided. Positions in a wealthy household were specialised to an almost ridiculous extent.

Ornatrix