CALIENDRUM
CALIENDRUM a tall female head-dress, but whether a wig of
false hair or an arrangement of draperies it is not easy to determine. The
Cruquian scholiast on the
locus classicus of
Horace (
Sat. 1.8, 48) gives both explanations,
without attempting to decide between them ( “peplum capitis aut crinis
suppositicius sen capillamentum aut galericulus capitisve
ornamentum” ). But
galericulus (or
-um) may mean a wig (Suet.
Oth. 12,
with Casaubon's note); and the humour of the passage is decidedly in favour
of this rendering: one of the two old women drops her false teeth in her
flight, the other her false hair. A fragment of Varro quoted by the same
scholiast suggests a stage peruke ( “tantis cothurnis accipit Critona
caliendrum” ). Of the only other passages where the word occurs,
Arnobius (5.26, p. 209) mentions
caliandria among
female vanities; Tertullian, on the contrary (
de Pall. 4),
seems to imply a staid and sober covering which the immodest women of his
time had discarded.
[
W.W]