Roman perfumes |
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Roman Perfumes The earliest use of perfumes in Italy was among the Etruscans (in Tuscany) in the 8th to 3rd centuries BC, who used unguents and perfumes on the body and fashioned elegant incense burners, and among Greeks who settled in S. Italy and Sicily from early in the 1st millennium BC. Among the early Romans there was at first little interest in perfumes; an edict of 188 BC even forbade their sale. But by the 1st century BC Roman men and women werebeginning to use perfume materials lavishly. The perfumes of the Greeks, together with the perfumes from Egypt used by the Greeks, were popular, and, as the Empire grew and trade expanded, previously rare or unknown materials began to be imported in quantity. Of local materials, the Romans were particularly fond of the rose (used considerably in the form of fresh rose petals), orris, violet and lily. Balsam of Judaea from Palestine was, as Pliny noted, foremost of all the scents. Saffron, mostly obtained .from Asia Minor, was used widely. But it was the oriental perfume materials brought from Arabia and India which were most widely favoured. Pliny, who has provided a detailed account of the trade in aromatics and spices , commented on the huge drain on the Empire's financial resources occasioned by it. Most important were frankincense, required for burning in the temples and on public occasions as well as in the home, and myrrh, a key ingredient in many perfume preparations, together with the materials then known as cassia and cinnamon and various other gums from Arabia and India. From Syria came storax and galbanum. Perfume materials brought from India included cardamom, clove, costus, malabathrumand spikenard, together with the flavouring spices such as ginger and, most important of all lor use in food preparation, pepper. Many of these materials were sorted and processed in Alexandria, the Empire's industrial capital, before being shipped to Rome. In addition to incenses, the Roman perfume makers produced thret-principal types of perfume: solid unguents (Iledysinala), usually a single scent based on a fat such as hog's lard; liquid unguents {Stymmata), usually a mixture of spices and flowers fixed with a resin, on a base oil such as balanos, sesame or olive, and perhaps with an added colourant such as cinnabar or alkanet; and scented powders (Diapasmata), made from dried materials like orris, marjoram, costus storax, labdanum and spikenard, which were used for sprinkling in garments. Scented oils were obtained from several plants in addition to those mentioned above, including calamus, balsam, melilot and narcissus. Pliny noted the ingredients of a number of compound perfumes used by the Romans, including mendesian (imported from Egypt), melinum, susintim and the imposing royal unguent, originally prepared for the kings of Parthia. Other unguents described by Pliny were based on fenugreek, iris, marjoram and cinnamon ('which fetches enormous prices'). Chypre was brought in from Cyprus. The town of Capua, south of Rome and noted for its roses, became the perfume centre of the Romans; here perfume makers (Utigueiitarir) produced floral unguents from several factories, particularly 'oil of roses', which, according to Pliny, was made with rose and crocus flowers, omphacium, cinnabar, calamus, camel grass, honey, salt or alkanet, and wine. Imported aromatics needed by the perfume makers of Capua could be obtained from the huge spice market set up by Vespasian in about 75 AD in Rome, where apothecaries bought many of the same ingredients for their medicines. In the first two centuries AD the lavish Roman consumption of perfumes reached a peak. The perfume shops of Rome became social meeting places. Perfumes were used not only for the body (where they were even applied by some to the soles of the feet) and for clothing, but also for spraying on the walls and sprinkling on the floors. Horses and dogs were sometimes rubbed with scent. Fountains played perfumed water. At one imperial reception, Nero had the entire surface of a lake in the palace grounds covered with rose petals. At triumphs, the returning armies, bearing perfumed flags and standards, were showered with perfumed materials, while frankincense was burned along the processional route - all very different from earlier days, when Julius Caesar had liked his soldiers to smell of garlic!
The perfume bottles (Ungnentaria) used by the Romans were made of alabaster, onyx or glass, or, for the cheaper unguents, of clay. The glass bottles were in a wide variety of shapes, many of them identical to the scent bottles of the present day.
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