20 июня, 2015 
Malyar The first professional perfumers (unguentarii) plied their trade in Capua, which became a trading centre of the industry. Perfume was used in abundance at the Games, both as a present for the crowds, and as a mask for the malodours of a bloodstained and offal-dappled arena. It is estimated that in the first century ad Romans were consuming nearly 3000 tonnes of frankincense and over 500 tonnes of the more expensive myrrh. Roman Emperors, of course, used perfume to excess, instanced by Nero and his wife Poppaea, who had a kind of ‘perfumed plumbing’ in their palaces, with false ceilings designed to drop flower petals onto dinner guests and scented doves which fragranced the air with their perfumed wings. When Poppaea died, it was said of Nero that he burned a whole year’s supply of incense on her funeral pyre. A fragrant fortune which would have amounted to hundreds of tonnes. Towards the end of the Empire, Heliogabalus showed the true excesses of wealth and power. According to contemporary accounts he sported gilded lips, henna-dyed hands and feet and eyes decorated in concentric rings of blue and gold. This Emperor of Rome hailed originally from Syria, Land of Roses, which, as with Nero, were his favourite blooms.
When Rome succumbed to the barbarian hordes, the lights went out in all the incense burners throughout Europe, and the rose petals went out with the bath water.
Опубликовано в рубрике 