Macrobius. Saturnalia

Bk VII. c. 11

(He lived in the 5^th. century AD)

“What is the reason that the sense of shame in the mind produces redness in the body? When anything happens worthy of shame nature seeks the blood from its lowest recesses, with which she suffuses the skin & thence arises redness.

Natural philosophers say that nature being moved by shame spreads the blood before herself as a veil, as we, see any one blushing often put his hands before his face”²

This is a scrap I copied for Uncle Chas because I remember saying I thought there was no passage about hiding the face in ancient literature.³ This however hardly contradicts it