adornment: Greece 11 green turtle was used in the Mediterranean, while loggerhead turtle shell had a northerly distribution The high cost of the small tortoiseshell ornaments made them a luxury item limited in use to only the wealthy members of society The Gauls were known to favor bold colors and used garnets in jewelry and other adornment Gauls also preferred coral and enamels as decorative stones Coral was often associated with lucky amulets, and workers even tried to imitate its color in enamel, a completely Celtic industry Gaul craftsmen also made rings and bracelets from jet and ignite The use of adornment sharply diminished after the fourth century of the Common Era The art of cutting gems declined rapidly, as did the use of amber By the fift h century the only continuous jewelry-making practice within Europe was the cutting of garnets for cloisonné, or raised enamel work set into a metal background GREECE BY SPYROS SIROPOULOS It has been said that the fift h century b.c.e was the age of vanity This is what the thousands of beautiful statues, painted with lifelike colors, spread all around Athens signify Greeks liked to see beauty around them They certainly appreciated beauty and thought naught of enhancing it In mythology the goddess of love, Aphrodite, was adorned by the Horae (female goddesses of the seasons) as soon as she was born Then when Hera, the first lady of Olympus, needed to seduce Zeus to avert his attention from the battlefield of Troy, she called Aphrodite to make her up and help her with a beautifully adorned garment Adornment was popular among the Athenians of the Classical Period (480–323 b.c.e.), especially women Archaeological excavations have unearthed a great number of artifacts used by the women of classical Athens, which are very similar to items used by women today Among these are tweezers, pliers, mirrors, jewelry, and other means of enhancing one’s natural beauty The Greeks knew nothing of soap In order to clean themselves they used lead carbonate made of pure soda (ore); a solution of potash, made of wood ash (useful also for washing clothes); or a special clay, consisting of silica with chalk (kimolia in Greek) Even today the island of Kímolos in the heart of the Aegean Sea is famous for producing a light stone, rich in soda, called kimolia For washing their hands, the ancient Greeks also used a kind of paste Women powdered their faces with a fine white powder called psimythion In the fift h century b.c.e Athenians thought much of women who stayed indoors and gave no reason for talk of them in public Of course, only aristocratic women had no reason to go out to work in the sunshine, and thus a white complexion was associated with women of aristocracy, a detail often depicted in vase paintings from the same period Women also liked to use red rouge for their cheeks and wore high shoes, to appear taller The courtesans known as hetaerae Greek marble head, from about 350 b.c.e., showing headdress of snailshell curls (© The Trustees of the British Museum) used the white color of carbonic lead and the red powder of a plant’s roots, as well as dyeing their eyebrows The use of makeup was sometimes frowned upon, however The philosopher Plato (ca 428–347 b.c.e.) complained that using makeup was “harmful and deceptive” (Gorgias) Even the fift h-century b.c.e playwright Euripides, in his tragedy Medea, seems to associate adornment and vanity with destruction Planning to take revenge on her adulterous husband, Jason, Medea offers to his future bride, the princess of Corinth, fine veils and a golden headband, anointed with some kind of poison Death finds the ignorant princess while she admires herself in front of the mirror Perfumes were bought from a myropoleíon (“perfumery”), and they were of animal or plant origin, usually imported A woman selling perfumes to a slave girl is depicted on one side of a pelike (a ceramic container for storing liquids) dating to about 460 b.c.e.; on the other side we see the girl carrying the small perfume jar home to her mistress Perfumes were used by men, too, especially at symposia and wrestling halls, but it was considered disreputable for a man to sell perfumes