plaining that the saucepans are made of silver; but it has been left for us to invent a plan of covering our very carriages with chased silver, and it was in our own age that Poppæa, the wife of the Emperor Nero, ordered her favourite mules to be shod even with gold.’[1] This reference to shoeing has troubled many commentators. Vossius[2] notes from Xiphilinus, that Poppæa's mules were many of them furnished in their feet with shoes made of broom twisted and gilt. He calls their golden shoes επιχρυσια ΠΑΡΤΙΑ. In Dion Cassius' History of Rome, it is mentioned that this Sabina had her mules shod with gold, and that the milk of 50 she-asses was devoted to her lavatory.[3] In the same work, we learn that the barbarous Emperor Commodus (A.D. 190), caused his horses' hoofs to be gilt or covered with gold. ‘When the horses became too old for the race-course, they were sent away to the country, Commodus replacing them by others, and introducing these into the circus with their hoofs gilt, and their backs covered with a cloth of gold. When they were suddenly brought before the people
- ↑ Hist. Nat., Lib. xxxiii. cap. 49. ‘Nostraque ætate Poppæa, conjux Neronis principis, delicatioribus jumentissuis soleas ex auro quoque induere.’ ‘Poppæa, the empresse, wife to Nero, the emperour, was known to cause her ferrers ordinarily to shoe her coach-horses, and other palfries for her saddle (such especially as shee set store by, and counted more dainty than the rest), with cleane gold.’—Holland's Plinie.
- ↑ Ad Catullus.
- ↑ Historiæ Romanæ, Lib. Ixii. ‘Sabina vero hæc adeo delicate vixit (nam ex paucis quibusdam cætera intelligentur omnia) ut mulas, quibus agebatur, haberet auresis soleis calceatas; et ut quingentae asinæ, quæ recens peperissent, quotidie mulgerentur, quo ipsa lacle earum lavaretur.’
