On Painting the Face (Medicamina Faciei) (Mozley)

Learn, O women, what pains can enhance your looks, and how your beauty may be preserved. By cultivation was the sterile ground bidden render bounty of wheat, and the devouring briers slain. Cultivation improves the bitter juice of fruit, and the cleft tree gains adopted richness. What is cultivated gives pleasure. Lofty halls are plated with gold, the black earth lies hid under marble buildings. The same fleeces are many times steeped in cauldrons of Tyrian dye : India gives its ivory to be carved into choice figures. The Sabine dames of old under king Tatius would perchance have wished to cultivate their paternal acres rather than themselves : when the matron, sitting rubicund in her high seat, span assiduously with hardened thumb, and herself penned up the lambs her daughter had pastured, herself set the twigs and cleft logs upon the hearth. But your mothers have borne delicate girls. You wish your bodies to be covered with gold-embroidered gowns, you wish to vary the dressing of your perfumed locks, you wish to have hands that shine with gems : you adorn your necks with stones sought from the East, and so large that the ear finds two a burden to bear. Nor is that a fault, if you are anxious to please, for men love elegance in these times of ours. In feminine wise are your husbands made trim, and the bride has scarce aught to add to their smartness. It makes a difference for whom each prepares herself, and what lover may be the quarry ; but by being spruce they will never be wrong. They bury themselves in the country, and yet are trimming their locks ; though lofty Athos hid them, lofty Athos would find them smart. There is pleasure, too, in self-satisfaction, whoe’er one may be ; dear to the heart of girls is their own beauty. The bird of Juno spreads out the feathers praised by man, and in its own beauty many a bird exults. Thus will love inflame us rather than by strong herbs, which the hand of the sorceress gathers as she plies her terrible craft. Trust not to grasses nor to mixture of juices, nor attempt the noxious venom of an infatuated mare ; snakes are not split in twain by Marsian spells, nor does the wave stream backward to its fount ; and though one has clashed the bronze of Temese, the Moon will never be shaken from out her car.

Think first, ye women, to look to your behaviour. The face pleases when character commends. Love '' of character is lasting : beauty will be ravaged by age, and the face that charmed will be ploughed by wrinkles. The time will come, when it will vex you to look at a mirror, and grief will prove a second cause of Wrinkles. Goodness endures, and lasts for many a day, and throughout its years love securely rests thereon.

Learn now in what manner, when sleep has let go your tender limbs, your faces can shine bright and fair. Strip from its covering of chaff the barley which Libyan husbandmen have sent in ships. Let an equal measure of vetch be moistened in ten eggs, but let the skinned barley weigh two pounds. When this has dried in the blowing breezes, bid the slow she-ass break it on the rough millstone : grind therewith too the first horns that fall from a nimble stag (let the sixth part of a solid as be added). And now when it is mixed with the dusty grain, sift it all straightway in hollow sieves. Add twelve narcissus-bulbs without their skins, and let a strenuous hand pound them on pure marble. Let gum and Tuscan seed weigh a sixth part of a pound, and let nine times as much honey go to that. Whoever shall treat her face with such a prescription will shine smoother than her own mirror. Nor hesitate to roast pale lupin-seeds, and therewith fry beans that puff out the body ; with fair discernment let each have six pounds’ weight, give each to the black millstones to be pounded small. Nor let white lead nor foam of red nitre be lacking, nor the iris that comes from Illyrian soil. Give them all alike to be subdued by the strong arms of youths, but when ground their right weight will be one ounce. Spots on the face are banished by a remedy taken from the querulous nest of birds ; halcyon-cream they call it. If you ask with what weight thereof I am content, it is that which an ounce divided into two parts weighs. That they may mix and be properly smeared upon the body, add Attic honey from its yellow combs. Although incense appeases the gods and angered powers, it must not all be offered upon kindled altars. When you have mixed incense with nitre that scrapes off warts, see that on either side the balance there is a third of a pound exact. Add a pound, less its fourth part, of gum stripped of its bark, and a moderate cube of juicy myrrh. When you have pounded these up, sift them in close-set meshes : the powder must be settled by pouring honey on it. It has been found useful to add fennel to the fragrant myrrh (let the fennel weigh five scruples, the myrrh nine), and of dry rose-leaves as much as the hand can grasp, and frankincense with salt of Ammon. Thereon pour the juice that barley makes let rose-leaves and salt together equal the incense in weight. Though it be smeared but for a short time on your soft countenance, a fine colour will remain on all your face. I have seen one who pounded poppies moistened with cool water, and rubbed them on her tender cheeks.