ger town-houses on the Caelian
Hill, looking across the narrow valley towards the Palatine, somewhere
near the modern church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. It is before day-break
that the loud bell has awakened the household slaves and set them to
their work. In the road below and away in the city the carts, which
are forbidden during the full daytime, are still rumbling with their
loads of produce or building-material. All night long the less happily
housed inhabitants have tolerated this noise, together with the
droning and grating of the mills grinding the corn in the bakers'
shops. It is however, now approaching dawn, and imperial Rome, which
goes to sleep late, wakes early. No few Romans, even of the highest
classes, have already been up for an hour or two, reading by
lamplight, writing letters or dictating them to an amanuensis, who
takes them down rapidly in a form of shorthand. Out in the streets the
boys are on their way to school, the poorer ones carrying their own
lanterns--at least if it is the time of year when the days are
short--their writing-tablets and their reading-books, probably Virgil
and Horace, who were standard authors serving in the Roman schools as
Shakespeare and Pope do in our own. Boys of well-to-do parents are
accompanied by an elderly slave of stern demeanour. In the distance
are heard the sounds of the first hammers and the cries of the venders
of early breakfasts.

Silius rises, and with the help of a valet, who is of course a slave,
dresses himself. His household barber--another slave--shaves him,
trims his hair in the approved style and cleans his nails. At this
date clean shaving was the rule. Every emperor from Augustus to
Hadrian, fifty years later than Nero, was clean shaven, and the
fashion set by emperors was followed as closely by the contemporary
Roman as "imperials" and "ram's-horn" moustaches have been imitated in
later times. The hair was kept carefully neither too long nor too
short. Only in time of mourning was it permitted to grow to a
negligent length. By preference it should be somewhat wavy, but there
was no parting. Dandies had their hair curled with the tongs and
perfumed, so at to smell "all over the theatre." If they were bald,
they wore a wig; sometimes they actually had imitation hair painted
across the bare part of the scalp. If nature had given them the wrong
colour, they corrected it with dye. If the exposed parts of the body
were hairy, they plucked out the growth