History of perfume dates back to Theophratus [audio 6min]

When it came to perfume, the Greek philosopher Theophratus was in no doubt what men and women should be wearing. Men, he advised should wear something light: lily or rose perhaps. Women, being constituted of a much baser and thus a more pungent nature, were advised to use something stronger to mask their natural scent: myrhh, burnt resin, cinnamon or marjoram were all"hard to disperse" and thus thought more likely to be up to the job. In the next in our series on the history of cosmetics, our reporter Anna McNamee, Anne Emblem, a lecturer in cosmetic sciences, and archaeologist Sally Pointer get their noses stuck into the subject of perfume. Pointer is author of The Artifice of Beauty (Sutton Publishing Ltd).