Wiesbaden is one of the oldest watering-places in Germany, and may be regarded as the capital of the Taunus spas. The springs mentioned by Pliny (Hist. nat. xxi. 2) as Fontes Matthiaci were known to the Romans, who fortified the place c. 11 B.C. The massive wall in the centre of the town known as the Heidenmauer was probably part of the fortifications built under Diocletian. The name Wisibada (“meadow bath”) appears in 830. Under the Carolingian monarchs it was the site of a palace, and Otto I. gave it civic rights. In the 11th century the town and district passed to the counts of Nassau, fell to the Walram line in 1255, and in 1353 Wiesbaden became with Idstein capital of the county Nassau-Idstein. It suffered much from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War and was destroyed in 1644. In 1744 it became the seat of government of the principality Nassau-Usingen, and was from 1815 to 1866 the capital of the duchy of Nassau, when it passed with that duchy to Prussia. Though the springs were never quite forgotten, they did not attain their greatest repute until the close of the 18th century. From 1771 to 1873 Wiesbaden was a notorious gambling resort; but in the latter year public gambling was suppressed by the Prussian government.
See Roth, Geschichte und historische Topographie der Stadt Wiesbaden (Wiesbaden, 1883); Pagenstecher, Wiesbaden in medizinisch-topographischer Beziehung (Wiesbaden, 1870); Kranz, Wiesbaden und seine Thermen (Leipzig, 1884); Pfeiffer, Wiesbaden als Kurort (5th ed., Wiesbaden, 1899); and Heyl, Wiesbaden und seine Umgebungen (27th ed., Wiesbaden, 1908).
WIG (short for “periwig,” an alternative form of “peruke,”
Fr. perruque; cf. Span, peluca; conjecturally derived from
Lat. pilus), an artificial head of hair, worn as a personal adornment,
disguise or symbol of office. The custom of wearing wigs
is of great antiquity. If, as seems probable, the curious
head-covering of a prehistoric ivory carving of a female head found
by M. Piette in the cave of Brassempouy in the Landes represents
a wig (see Ray Lankester, Science from an Easy Chair, fig. 7)
the fashion is certainly some 100,000 years old. In historic
times, wigs were worn among the Egyptians as a royal and
official head-dress, and specimens of these have been recovered
from mummies. In Greece they were used by both men and
women, the most common name being πηνίκη or φενάκη, sometimes
προκόμιον or κόμαι πρόσθετοι. A reference in Xenophon
(Cyr. i. 3. 2) to the false hair worn by Cyrus's grandfather
“as is customary among the Medes,” and also a story in Aristotle
(Oecon. 4. 14), would suggest that wigs were introduced from
Persia, and were in use in Asia Minor. Another origin is
suggested by Athenaeus (xii. 523), who says that the Iapygian
immigrants into Italy from Crete were the first to wear προκόμια
περιθετά,
and the elaborately frizzled hair worn by some of the
figures in the frescoes found at Cnossus makes it probable that
the wearing of artificial hair was known to the Cretans. Lucian,
in the 2nd century, mentions wigs of both men and women as
a matter of course (Alex. 59, Dial. mer. 11). The theatrical wig
was also in use in Greece, the various comic and tragic masks
having hair suited to the character represented. A. E. Haigh
(Attic Theatre, pp. 221, 239) refers to the black hair and beard
of the tyrant, the fair curls of the youthful hero, and the red
hair characteristic of the dishonest slave of comedy. These
conventions appear to have been handed on to the Roman
theatre.
At Rome wigs came into use certainly in the early days of the
empire. They were also known to the Carthaginians; Polybius
(iii. 78) says that Hannibal used wigs as a means of disguise.
The fashionable ladies of Rome were much addicted to false hair,
and we learn from Ovid, (Amores, i. 14. 45) and Martial (v. 68)
that the golden hair imported from Germany was most favoured.
Juvenal (vi. 120) shows us Messalina assuming a yellow wig for
her visits to places of ill-fame, and the scholiast on the passage
says that the yellow wig was characteristic of courtesans.
The chief names for wigs were galerus, galericulum, corymbium,
capillamentum, caliendrum, or even comae emptae, &c. Galerus
meant in the first place a skull-cap, or coif, fastening under the
chin, and made of hide or fur, worn by peasants, athletes and
flamines. The first men's wigs then would have been tight-fur
caps simulating hair, which would naturally suggest wigs of
false hair. Otho wore a wig (Suetonius, Otho § 12), which could
not be distinguished from real hair, while Nero (Dio Cass. lxi. 9)
wore a wig as a disguise, and Heliogabalus also wore one at times
(ibid. Ixxix. 13). Women continued to have wigs of different
colours as part of their ordinary wardrobe, and Faustina, wife
of Marcus Aurelius, is said to have had several hundred. An
amusing development of this is occasionally found in portrait
busts, e.g. that of Plautilla in the Louvre, in which the hair is
made movable, so that by changing the wig of the statue from
time to time it should never be out of fashion.
The Fathers of the Church violently attacked the custom of wearing wigs, Tertullian (De cultu fem. C. 7) being particularly eloquent against them, but that they did not succeed in stamping out the custom was proved by the finding of an auburn wig in the grave of a Christian woman in the cemetery of St Cyriacus. In 672 a synod of Constantinople forbade the wearing of artificial hair.
Artificial hair has presumably always been worn by women when the fashion required abundant locks. Thus, with the development of elaborate coiffures in the 16th century, the wearing of false hair became prevalent among ladies in Europe; Queen Elizabeth had eighty attires of false hair, and Mary queen of Scots was also in the habit of varying the attires of hair she wore. The periwig of the 16th century, however, merely simulated real hair, either as an adornment or to supply the defects of nature. It was not till the 17th century that, the peruke was worn as a distinctive feature of costume. The fashion started in France. In 1620 the abbé La Rivière appeared at the court of Louis XIII. in a periwig made to simulate long fair hair, and four years later the king himself, prematurely bald, also adopted one and thus set the fashion. Louis XIV., who was proud of his abundant hair, did not wear a wig till after 1670. Meanwhile, his courtiers had continued to wear wigs in imitation of the royal hair, and from Versailles the fashion spread through Europe. In England it came in with the Restoration; for though the prince of Wales (Charles I.), while in Paris on his way to Spain, had “shadowed himself the most he could under a burly perruque, which none in former days but bald-headed people used,” he had dropped the fashion on returning to England, and he and his Cavaliers were distinguished from the “Roundheads” only by wearing their own flowing locks. Under Charles II. the wearing of the peruke became general. Pepys records that he parted with his own hair and “paid £3 for a periwigg”;[1] and on going to church in one he says “it did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would.” It was under Queen Anne, however, that the wig attained its maximum development, covering the back and shoulders and floating down over the chest. So far, indeed, whatever the exaggeration of its proportions, the wig had been a “counterfeit hair” intended to produce the illusion of abundant natural locks. But, to quote the inimitable author of Plocacosmos, “as the perukes became more common, their shape and forms altered. Hence we hear of the clerical, the physical, and the huge tie peruke for the man of law, the brigadier or major for the army and navy; as also the tremendous fox ear, or cluster of temple curls, with a pig-tail behind. The merchant, the man of business and of letters, were distinguished by the grave full bottom, or more moderate tie, neatly curled; the tradesman by the long bob, or natty scratch; the country gentleman by the natural fly and hunting peruke. All conditions of men were distinguished by the cut of the wig, and none more so than the coachman, who wore his, as there does some to this day, in imitation of the curled hair of a water-dog.”[2]
- ↑ This was cheap. The author of Plocacosmos says that “when they first were wore, the price was usually one hundred guineas”; and the article in Diderot's Encyclopédie says that it sometimes cost as much as 1000 écus.
- ↑ Plocacosmos, p. 203. The writer goes on to describe the fashions on the stage. “So late as King William's reign, in one of Rowe's pieces, Lady Jane Grey, the Lord Guildford Dudley is dressed in all the modern fashion of laced coat, cravat, high peruke, &c., while the heroine is simply drest, her hair parted in the middle, hanging carelessly on her shoulders.Nearer our time, in the tragedy of Cato, Mr Booth is dressed a-la-mode, with the huge peruke.Mr Quin
