NOTE 1. It is one great advantage to the illustrator of ancient costume, that when almost everything in this sort of usages was fixed and determined either by religion and state policy, (as with the Jews,) or by state policy alone, (as with the Romans,) or by superstition and by settled climate, (as with both,) and when there was no stimulation to vanity in the love of change from an inventive condition of art and manufacturing skill, and where the system and interests of the government relied for no part of its power on such a condition,—dress was stationary for ages, both as to materials and fashion; Rebecca, the Bedouin, was drest pretty nearly as Mariamne in the age of the Caesars. And thus the labors of a learned investigator for one age are valid for those which follow and precede.

NOTE 2. Chiton (*) in Greek, and by inversion of the syllables, Tunica in Latin.

NOTE 3. Cheaper materials were used by the poorer Hebrews, especially of the Bedouin tribes—burnt almonds, lamp-black, soot, the ashes of particular woods, the gall-apple boiled and pulverized, or any dark powder made into an unguent by suitable liquors. The modern Grecian women, in some districts, as Sonnini tells us, use the spine of the sea-polypus, calcined and finely pulverized, for this purpose. Boxes of horn were used for keeping the pigment by the poorer Hebrews,—of onyx or alabaster by the richer.

NOTE 4.

Cleopatra had a couple of that value; and Julius Caesar had one, which he gave to Servilia, the beautiful mother of Brutus.

NOTE 5.

Washing the feet was a ceremony of ancient times, adopted not merely with a view, 1st, to personal comfort, in hotter climates; or, 2d, to decorum of appearance, where people walked about barefooted; but also, 3d, to the reclining posture in use at meals, which necessarily brought the feet into immediate contact with the cushions, squabs, &c. of couches.

NOTE 6.

Chemistry had its first origin in Arabia; and it is not impossible that the chemical nomenclature for gold and silver, viz. sol and luna, were derived from this early superstition of the Bedouin dress.

NOTE 7.

The Thalmud is the only Jewish authority which mentions such a utensil of the toilette as a comb, (vi. 39,) but without any particular description. Hartmann adds two remarks worth quoting. 1. That the Hebrew style of the coiffure may probably be collected from the Syrian coins; and, 2. That black hair being admired in Palestine, and the Jewish hair being naturally black, it is probable that the Jewish ladies did not color their hair, as the Romans did.

NOTE 8.

Or rather it was required only in a catarrh, or other cases of checked perspiration, which in those climates was not a case of common occurrence.

NOTE 9. By which was probably meant a color nearer to crimson, than to the blue class of purples.

NOTE 10. It has been doubted whether these trains were supported by train-bearers; but one argument makes it probable that they were not, viz. that they were particularly favorable to the peacock walk or strut, which was an express object of imitation in the gait of the Hebrew women.