Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/112

 girdles. A less numerous class of the community are male ascetics, celibates of a puritanical cast, who love to placard themselves by wearing scarlet clothing and binding their hair with a fillet; also virgins devoted to the service of the churches, who are known by their sombre dress, black hoods, gray mantles, and black shoes. Philosophers adopt gray, rhetoricians crimson, and physicians blue, for the tint of their cloaks. To these may be added the courtesans who try to usurp the costume of every grade of women, even that of the sacred sisterhood. Such is the population who usually crowd the thoroughfares and lend them a gaudy aspect which is still further heightened by numbers of private carriages—literally springless carts—bedizened with paint and gilding, and most fashionable if drawn by a pair of white mules with golden trappings. Such vehicles are indispensable to the outdoor movements of matrons of any rank;