ABSTRACT
Why should we care about women's adornment in Roman antiquity? Such information may seem of minor concern, set alongside discussions of the great empire-builders of antiquity, accounts of provincial administration, or descriptions of life in the imperial court. But clothing is an intimate record of human experience, and adornment a field of intentional female activity and feminine agency. Such information adds considerably to our imaginative picture of women's life in ancient Rome; we may even be occasionally enlightened about female self-perception (Llewellyn-Jones 2003: 3). And finally, the ancient visual language of femininity was notably indicative both of female status and ideals of female behavior. A close examination of both literary and artistic sources, in a range of genres, yields a great deal of information about female appearance, and we can come to some new conclusions concerning women and ornament in Roman antiquity.
