Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/310

258 Not that Rome was as objectionable as Athens. There, we are told that both men and women painted their faces with white lead, their eyelids with kohl, and their nails with henna; and in order to draw attention to their depravity, they perfumed their hair with marjoram, rubbed their arms with mint, their legs with ivy, and the soles of their feet with baccaris. In Greece this idea of attention to personal beauty was a perfect cult—the latest recipes for artificial adornments were engraved on tablets and exhibited in the temples of Aesculapius, and, this done, the state imposed a fine for a slatternly appearance; but for all that it was decadent and nasty. People, of course, still spend money on their personal appearance, but patchouli, thank heaven! has gone, even from Piccadilly.

The Emperor's fondness for fish was tempered by its rarity. He would never eat of its living things whilst he sojourned near the sea; he would have them transported to the immense salt-water tanks he had constructed amongst the mountains and in the interior of the country, both for their preservation and his own amusement. We are told that he invented a method of fishing in which oxen figured, a conceit which later years has not revived.

First in history he conceived of sausages made from lampreys' roes, soft-shelled oysters, lobsters, and crayfish, and fed the country peasants on the same. Indeed, his generosity here, as in Rome, was unbounded, the chroniclers relating how he would throw from the windows as many dishes as he offered to his own guests then at table. There