Gladiolus sp

rtesy of greenhem; image source

e c ou : Flic
Im ag kr

Smell like Julius

Caesar: recreating
ancient perfumes in
the laboratory
Even everyday scents
have the power to
take us back in time,
awakening half-
forgotten memories.
With Gianluca Farusi’s
help, you can take your
students 2000 years into the
past, recreating and testing Julius
Caesar’s perfume.

D
ictator of the Roman Republic ceremonies; in public areas to mask fixatives such as gums or resins – to
until 44 BC, he invaded Brit- foul smells – Pliny the Elder (23-79 stabilise the volatile components of
ain and was the first Roman AD) records rose-scented water being the perfume.
general to cross the River Rhine. He sprinkled in theatres; and for moistur- One of the most frequent liquid
was the lover of Queen Cleopatra, ising the skin. bases used was omphacium, an oil
and the month of July is named after Today, most commercial perfumes extracted from green olives or unripe
him. Julius Caesar is famous for many are alcohol-based, but Roman per- grapes. To obtain scented essences,
things – but probably not for his fumes for the skin took the form of the Romans used many methods to
choice of perfume. unguents, or greasy ointments. An extract scent from flowers, seeds,
Perfumes, however, were an im- unguent consisted of a liquid base leaves, bark and other fragrant plant
portant part of life in ancient Rome: and a scented essence, and could also material. Many of these methods are
in the form of incense for religious contain preservatives such as salt, and still used today.

40 I Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 www.scienceinschool.org

 Science education projects

Biology tory of chemistry) lessons. It could also be used as the

Chemistry basis for a discussion on the use of natural as opposed
to man-made substances in beauty products. How sus-
History
tainable is the use of natural products for large-scale
Ages 14+ production?
This article provides an opportunity to link history with Information is provided in the article about different
practical chemistry. Learners will be swept away into methods of extracting scents. As an extension of the
Roman times, to learn why our ancestors extracted project, the students could investigate these methods
scents from plant material and turned them in a form further – both on the Internet and in the laboratory.
that could be applied onto the skin. It is highly ben- Teachers could also extend the activity and bring the
eficial for students to connect their current scientific scents closer to home by using local plant material to
knowledge to its roots. Following the path of our sci- create perfumes: reliving their country’s past through
entific forefathers helps us to understand the develop- plant life. Local universities are usually an excellent
ment of the scientific process as well as how organic source of information on native species. When collect-
REVIEW

substances have been developed into useful materials. ing plant material, attention should be paid to local
The activity could be used in biology (plant histology; safety measures, and endangered species should be
physiology of smell), chemistry (organic chemistry; avoided.
molecular chemistry) and history (the Romans; the his- Angela Charles, Malta

c b a

Image courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei

A decoration of the House of the Vetii in Pompeii, Italy, is extraordinary evidence of how
• Enfleurage: petals were placed on Roman perfumes were prepared and sold. From right to left:
suet (the hard fat from around the a) Two putti hammer the wedges of a press, to squeeze the oil out of unripe olives. On
kidneys) and replaced periodically their left, a psyche stirs a mixture in a cauldron over a fire (probably steeping plants
until the fat was saturated with in warm oil).
fragrance. b) Two putti stir the contents of a deep vessel, which may have to be added to the olive
• Steeping in oil: the scented roots oil. On their left, another putto holds a phial and has both a papyrus scroll and a pair
or leaves were crushed, placed of scales. Behind the putto is a cupboard containing phials and a statue of a deity.
in a loose-textured linen bag and c) The story finishes with the sale: the purchaser tests the perfume on her wrist. Behind
left to soak in oil at a moderate her is a slave girl and a putto stands in front of her holding a phial and a spatula
temperature.
• Steeping in oil and water: a method
common in warm areas such as one to five days. The essential base oils, citrus skins or olives, for
Egypt. The scented roots or leaves oils released by the plant material example, were placed in linen bags
were placed in earthenware jars mixed with the oil floating on and pressed.
and covered in a 50% v/v mixture the water. Once the water had • Boiling and squeezing through
of rainwater and oil. The jars evaporated, the fragrant oil was cloth: to extract resins and oily
were then buried up to the neck strained off. substances from bark.
in the hot sand and left open for • Pressing: to obtain citrus or liquid • An archaeological dig in Pyrgos on

www.scienceinschool.org Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 I 41

Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

The ingredients of the most common and

D most ancient perfumes, according to Pliny.
A: Calumus (Acorus calamus)
C B: Pomegranate (Punica granatum)
C: Myrtle (Myrtus communis)
D: Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus)
E: Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens)

Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

E
A

3-(2-hydroxyphenyl)propanoic acid

B fragment of poetry attributed to Cae-

sar (‘Corpusque suavi telino unguimus’,
‘We anoint the body with fragrant
telinine ointment’), it is thought to be
Cyprus even showed that steam Unguents comprise two elements: the the unguent telinum.
distillation was practised in 2000 juices and the solid parts. The former However, finding the recipe is no
BCw1. generally consist of various kinds of easy task. For one thing, before the
How do we know so much about oils, the latter of odoriferous sub- introduction of Linnaean taxonomy,
Roman perfumery? Partly, of course, stances.… Among the most common there was no consistent naming con-
from contemporary written records unguents today, and for that reason vention. Thus, for example, the name
– but science can also help. Modern assumed to be the most ancient, is that ‘cyperus’ may refer to the many spe-
archaeological analyses of perfume composed of oil of myrtle, calamus, cies of sedge (Cyperus spp), to gladioli
traces in ancient pots can help to cypress, cyprus, mastich, and pome- (Gladiolus spp), to lemongrass (Cym-
identify the perfume, the way it was granate rind.… Telinum is made of bopogon schoenanthus) or even to privet
prepared and even what it was used fresh olive oil, cyperus, calamus, yel- (Ligustrum spp). Moreover, perfume
for. By combining chemical data with low melilot, fenugreek, honey, marum, recipes – then as now – were fiercely
information from contemporary au- and sweet marjoram. It was the most guarded by their manufacturers, so
thors, we can reproduce some of the even though contemporary writers
fashionable perfume in the time of the
perfumes of the ancient world. sometimes recorded the ingredients
comic poet Menander [around 300
of a perfume, they seldom mentioned
BC].
the proportions.
…Ratio faciendi duplex, sucus et Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia In the case of telinum, we were
corpus: ille olei generibus fere constat, (Natural History), book XIII, chapter 7, lucky: in his Naturalis Historia (Natu-
hoc odorum.… E vilissimis quidem paragraph 9 ral History), Pliny the Elder records
hodieque est – ob id creditum et id the ingredients (left) and Pedanius
e vetustissimis esse – quod constat Dioscorides (c. 40-90 AD) records
oleo myrteo, calamo, cupresso, cypro, As part of a larger interdiscipli- somewhat different ingredients but
lentisco, mali granati cortice.… Telinum nary chemistry project (see box), my does mention the proportions in his
fit ex oleo recenti, cypiro, calamo, students (aged 14-15) and I decided to De Materia Medica (On Medical Materi-
meliloto, faeno Graeco, melle, maro, do just this: recreate the favourite per- als).
fume of Julius Caesar. But how did we For our recreation of telinum, there-
amaraco. hoc multo erat celeberrimum
even know what it was? Thanks to a fore, we carried out a series of trials
Menandri poetae comici aetate.

42 I Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 www.scienceinschool.org

 Science education projects

Images courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

Fresh green olives

2H-chromen-2-one

based on these two ancient recipes,

to determine the blend we preferred.
How should we interpret ‘cyperus’,
though? We prepared two versions:
one with lemongrass oil and one with
violet oil (Viola odorata) – because the Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi
roots of both gladioli and Cyperus spe-
cies smell like violets. Finally, because shop-bought olive oil (choose an
marum (Teucrium marum) is thought to odourless one) or if you have access
be carcinogenic, we decided to replace to fresh green olives, pick a carrier
it with catmint (Nepeta cataria), which bag full of them in August, to
smells similar. If not entirely histori- prepare your own omphacium (see
cally accurate, our perfume should at below).
least smell like Caesar’s. • 56 g fenugreek seeds (Trigonella
foenum graecum)
Materials and proportions • 11 g calamus roots (Acorus calamus)
It is not clear from the historical • 5 g dried yellow melilot flower
sources whether dried or fresh materi- heads (Melilotus officinalis)
als were used. We used dried materi-
als, as they contain more scent per
gram and are easily obtainable: try a
chemist or herbalist’s shop.
• 100 g omphacium – either use

Ligustrum sp
Im
ag
ec
ou
rte
sy
of
jw i
nfre
d ; im

The ingredients of our telinum

age s
ource:
Flickr

www.scienceinschool.org Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 I 43

 Images courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

1 Grinding the olives 2 Transferring the ground olives to the tea towel

Preparation The chemistry of scent

• 2 g dried catmint leaves (Nepeta To prepare omphacium for our
cataria) project, I picked the green olives, Once we had appreciated the per-
• 3 g dried sweet marjoram leaves ground them in the kitchen mixer, col- fume of ancient Rome, we returned to
(Origanum majorana) lected the mixture in a tea towel and the 21st century to investigate which
• 5-10 drops violet oil or lemongrass squeezed the oil into a bowl. I then molecules produced the fragrance.
oil (depending on the strength filtered the oil three times using filter Table 1, showing the main aromatic
of the oil – be careful not to let it paper, and centrifuged it twice for 5 chemicals in our telinum (the struc-
dominate the perfume) min each time. tures of some of which illustrate this
• Honey Alternatively, use shop-bought olive article) is available for download
oil.

Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

I divided the class into three groups;
Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

each group prepared a different his-

torical perfume (instructions for pre-
paring cyprinum and rhodinon can be
downloaded from the Science in School
websitew2). At the end of the activity,
each student had a small sample of
(E)-4-(2,6,6-trimethylcyclohex-1-enyl) perfume to take home. (4aS,7S,7aR)-4,7-dimethyl-5,6,7,7a-
but-3-en-2-one 1. Chop the herbs and spices, and tetrahydrocyclopenta[c]pyran-1(4aH)-one
add them to 100 g omphacium.
2. Place the mixture in the oven at from the Science in School websitew2.
40 °C, and stir several times per With older students, this activity
day for three days. could be used to investigate organic
3. Strain the scented oil. chemistry in some detail. With my 14-
4. Add 10% w/w of honey. to 15-year-old students, I concentrated
5. Add the violet oil. on the basics of the chemistry of smell.
For example, I asked them:
Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

1. Can you see similarities between

the structures of different fragrant
Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

The herb and

oil mixture chemicals in the perfume?
2. Why is oil effective for extracting
these chemicals from plant
material?
3. Could we replace oil with
something else?
4. Why, once extracted, do the
(4Z,7Z)-deca-4,7-dienal

44 I Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 www.scienceinschool.org

 Science education projects

3 Squeezing the oil through the colander 4 The collected oil 5 Filtering the omphacium

fragrant molecules leave the oil 6. Why did ancient perfumers lift a copper coin, then smelling it
and enter the air, where you can add honey? (Answer: the without touching it to their nose.
smell them? polysaccharides it contains help to They then did the same without
5. Rub a drop of telinum onto the hold the volatile substances in the gloves (ideally with sweaty
back of your hand and smell perfume.) fingers) – and realised that the
it from time to time. What do ‘metallic smell’ was a volatile
you expect to happen? Does the By the end of the activity, together substance formed on their skin.
fragrance change with time? Can with some associated experiments, the 2. The effusion of a substance is in
you explain what you observe? students had established that: inverse relation to its molar mass
1. A substance has to be in the (Graham’s law).
Safety note: check your national or gaseous state to be smelled. At 3. Molecules with the same chemical
local safety guidelines to see if you are first, many students disagreed group have a similar smell.
allowed to use lab-prepared materials because they thought that metals Students prepared different esters
on the skin. had a distinctive smell. They in the lab – with the same chemical
tested this by wearing gloves to group and similar fruity smells.

Image courtesy of Gianluca Farusi

Studying chemistry with

Pliny the Elder
This activity is part of a larger interdisciplinary project, developed to-
gether with my 14- to 15-year old students, to meet the curriculum
requirements at that age. We began each session (1-4 two-hour lessons) (Z)-1,2,4-trimethoxy-5-(prop-1-enyl)benzene
BACKGROUND

by discussing a passage from Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, then

worked out how to recreate in the laboratory either the event described 4. The chemical structure is not
in the text or something similar. In this way, the students began in the the only determinant of smell.
same pre-scientific state as Pliny and, through laboratory work and dis- Students extracted essences of
cussion, gained modern scientific knowledge on each of the topics. The caraway and peppermint using
process motivated even the most unenthusiastic students. steam distillation and found that
they smelled very different. They
Other activities in the project include extracting indigo from woad, pre-
were amazed when I told them
paring glass tesserae with boric acid, simulating the luminescence of
that the structure of the main
the shellfish Pholas dactylus, and preparing iron-gall ink (Farusi, 2007).
aromatic molecule is the same. We
did not discuss enantiomers at this

www.scienceinschool.org Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 I 45

 Image courtesy of ((o: pattoune :o)); image source: Flickr

Cyperus alternifolius

stage, but the students’ curiosity

was aroused and they understood
that there are several factors that
determine scent.

Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank
Graziella Zacchini of the Officina
Profumo Farmaceutica Santa Maria
Novella, who provided plant materi-
als used in the project.

Reference
Farusi G (2007) Monastic ink: Marketing Ltd. ISBN: Capellas M (2007) Recovering
linking chemistry and history. 978-0963816931 Pompeii. Science in School 6: 14-19.
Science in School 6: 36-40. Pennestrì S (1995) Aromatica. Profumi www.scienceinschool.org/2007/
www.scienceinschool.org/2007/ tra sacro, profano e magico. Selcom. issue6/pompeii
issue6/galls ISBN: 9788886553001 Farusi G (2006) Teaching science
The following research articles pro- and humanities: an interdisciplinary
Web references approach. Science in School 1: 30-33.
vide helpful background informa-
w1 – See the paper ‘Cinyra, Cyprus tion: www.scienceinschool.org/2006/
and the notes of music, of wine and Colombini MP et al. (2009) An issue1/francesca
perfumes’ by Maria Rosaria Belgior- Etruscan ointment from Chiusi To browse all chemistry-related
no, which can be downloaded from (Tuscany, Italy): its chemical char- articles in Science in School, see:
her website (www.erimiwine.net) or acterization. Journal of Archaeological www.scienceinschool.org/chemistry
via the direct link: http://tinyurl. Science 36: 1488-1495. doi: 10.1016/j.
com/65623kd jas.2009.02.011
w2 – Instructions for preparing cypri- Modugno F et al. (2008) Gas Gianluca Farusi teaches chemis-
num and rhodinon, and Table 1, chromatographic and mass try at the technical school (Istituto
can be downloaded from the spectrometric investigations of Tecnico Industriale) Galileo Galilei
Science in School website: www. organic residues from Roman in Avenza-Carrara, Italy, and since
scienceinschool.org/2011/issue21/ glass unguentaria. Journal of 2004, he has lectured in stoichio­
caesar#resources Chromatography 1183: 158-169. doi: metry at the University of Pisa, Italy,
10.1016/j.chroma.2007.12.090 for the degree program in medicinal
Resources
chemistry and technology. He is
The following books include informa- Pérez-Arantegui J (2009) Colorants
also the regional tutor for the Italian
tion about the techniques and the and oils in Roman make-ups – an
ministerial project ‘Insegnare Scienze
plants used by the ancients in their eye witness account. Trends in
Sperimentali’ (‘teaching experimental
perfumes: Analytical Chemistry 28: 1019-1028.
sciences’). He has been teaching for 15
doi: 10.1016/j.trac.2009.05.006
Belgiorno MR (ed.) (2007) I profumi years and nothing gratifies him more
di Afrodite e i segreti dell’olio. Scoperte Ribechini E et al. (2008) An than the delight on his students’ faces
archeologiche a Cipro. Catalogo della integrated analytical approach for when they grasp a difficult chemical
mostra (catalogue of the exhibition characterizing an organic residue concept.
‘The perfumes of Aphrodite and from an archaeological glass bottle
the secret of the oil: archaeological recovered in Pompeii (Naples,
discoveries in Cyprus’). Rome, Italy: Italy). Talanta 74: 555–561. doi:
Gangemi. ISBN: 978-8849212235 10.1016/j.talanta.2007.06.026
Donato G, Seefried M (1995) The You may also enjoy other Science in
Fragrant Past: Perfumes of Cleopatra School articles on similar topics:
and Julius Caesar (catalogue of Börsch-Haubold A (2007) To learn how to use this
code, see page 65.
the corresponding exhibition Small molecules make scents.
in the Emory Museum of Art Science in School 6: 69-74. www.
and Archaeology, Atlanta, GA, scienceinschool.org/2007/issue6/
USA). Oxford, UK: Premier Book scents

46 I Science in School I Issue 21 : Winter 2011 www.scienceinschool.org