.
PERI´SCELIS Greek and Roman women, like those in the East of to-day, wore anklets and bangles. These are frequently shown on the monuments, appearing not only on vase-and wall-paintings (cf. the following illustration from a Pompeian wall-painting, Museo Borbonico, vi. tav. xxxiv.), but on statuettes (cf. two bronze
Pompeian painting showing Periscelides.
statuettes of the Portici Collection, Barré, Herc. and Pomp. vi. pl. 13). In literature the custom of wearing them is spoken of by the Scholiast on Horace, Hor. Ep. 1.17, 56, and by Isidorus (19.31, “crurum ornamenta mulierum quo gressus earum ornantur” ); while, as late as the third century after Christ, Cyprian inveighs against it (Hab. Virg. 16).
Pliny (Plin. Nat. 33. § § 39, 152) says that the plebeian women wore anklets of silver, whereas the patricians wore them of gold. Such anklets were sometimes called compedes (Plin. l.c.), but the Romans borrowed also the Greek name περισκελίς,--a word which occurs in inscriptions as part of the catalogue of the jewellery of a temple (Dittenb. Nos. 367-401), as well as in Menander (Incert. 405) and other passages (Longus, 1.5; Plut. 2.145 C). Periscelis is mentioned in Horace (Hor. Ep. 1.17, 56) and Petronius (67, 4), and periscelium in Tertullian (de Cultu Fern. 2.13). A certain amount of confusion as to the meaning of the word has been caused by the use of the kindred words περισκελῆ and περισεκ́λια, which were interpreted by the lexicographers as being βράκκια φεμινάλις, i. e. drawers reaching from the navel to the knee (cf. Hieron. Epist. ad Fabiol.), a use which is found in the Septuagint (Exod. 28.42, 39.28; Levit. 6.10, 16.4), but the two words are distinct in meaning. These ornaments are also called περισφύρια (Clem. Al. Paed. 2.12, 122; cf. Hdt. 4.176), but elsewhere are referred to by more general names, such as πέδαι (Aristoph. Fragm. 320, 11 K.), or ἀμφιδέαι (Hesych. sub voce). [Cf. Iwan Müller, Handbuch, iv. p. 435; Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 705; Hübner in Hermes, i. p. 354.]
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
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