THE FASHION OF ANTIQUITY.
CHAPTER II.
The fashion of ornamenting the hair is an universal vanity, probably as old as the creation; for the earliest records and antiquities introduce us to the mysteries of wigs and beard cases, and such evident and lavish displays of tonsorial art, as remind one more of the skilful artist than the first rude essays of the craft. It has been suggested by a writer in the Quarterly Review that we are indebted to Eve herself for the first principles of the art, and that probably by the reflection in some tranquil stream she made her earliest studies.
In the sculptures from Nineveh we have an exact representation of the fashion of the hair among the Assyrians—thousands of years before Britain had a place in history. The office of coiffeur in those days must evidently have been one of no little importance. From the king on the throne—the mighty hunter, lion slayer, and destroyer of men—his counsellors, and great captains, to the poor slave, the mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, all seem to have passed under the discipline of the curling-irons. The curling and plaiting of the beard and hair, as shown in the sculptures, is doubtless intended as a distinguishing mark of a superior and conquering race. Their colossal-winged bulls and monstrous deities are adorned with the same venerable badge of power and authority. Since nearly all that is known on this subject is directly derived from the researches of Mr. Layard, we cannot do better than refer to the volumes of one to whom not only this nation, but the civilised world, are indebted for his arduous and most successful explorations.
“The Assyrians paid particular attention to the adorning of their persons. Besides wearing numerous ornaments, they most carefully and elaborately platted their hair and beards. The hair was parted over the forehead, and fell from behind the ears on the shoulders in a large bunch of ringlets. The beard was allowed to grow to its full length, and, descending low on the breast, was divided into two or three rows of curls. The moustache was also carefully trimmed and curled at the ends. The hair, as well as the beard, appears to have been dyed, as is still the custom in Persia; but it has been doubted whether the hair, represented in the sculptures, was natural or artificial.
“According to Herodotus (Lib. 1, c. 195) the Babylonians wore their hair long. The great regularity of the curls in the sculptures would certainly lead to the impression that part of the hair, at least, was false; but we can scarcely suppose that the warriors, as well as the king and the principal officers of state, wore false beards, for all the sculptured beards are equally elaborate and studied in the arrangement. The mode of representing hair in the bas-reliefs is most probably conventional. Most Eastern people have been celebrated for the length and beauty of their hair, and if the Assyrians were as well provided with it as the inhabitants of Persia were in the days of Darius, or as they now are, they would have had little occasion for a wig.”
The hair of females, in the sculptures, is usually represented in long ringlets, sometimes plaited and braided, and at other times confined in a net. The modern fashion of wearing the hair in a net is therefore a revival of a very ancient one. Isaiah alludes to “the caps of net-work,” (chap. III., v. 8).
It is to ancient Egypt we must look for the earliest instance of a people investing themselves with that symbol of wisdom and gravity—the wig. It was reserved for the courtiers of Louis XIII. to re-introduce and remodel the ancient perruque, but its origin certainly dates from a very remote antiquity. The Egyptians as a nation were “all shaven and shorn:” they shaved even the heads of young children, leaving only certain locks as an emblem of youth. All classes among the people, the slaves imported from foreign countries not excepted, were compelled to submit to the tonsure. The universal custom of shaving the head led to the use of wigs. “It may appear singular,” says Wilkinson, “that so warm a covering to the head should have been adopted in the climate of Egypt; but we must recollect the reticulated texture of the ground-work, on which the hair was fastened, allowed the heat of the head to escape, while the hair effectually protected it from the sun: it is evident that no better covering could have been devised, and that it far surpassed, in comfort and coolness, the modern turban.” Wigs were worn both within the house and out of doors, like the turban of the present day. A wig in the British Museum, from the temple of Isis, and one in the Berlin Museum, still attest the skill of the Egyptian artist. For the use of those who could not afford the more expensive wigs of real hair, an imitation appears to have been made of wool and other stuffs. A most singular custom of the Egyptians was that of tying a false beard upon the chin, which was made of plaited hair, and of a peculiar form, according to the rank of the person by whom it was worn. Private individuals had a small beard, scarcely two inches long; that of a king was of considerable length, square at the bottom; and the figure of gods were distinguished by its turning up at the ends. The women always wore their hair long and plaited. The back part was made to consist of a number of strings of hair, reaching to the shoulder-blades, and on each side other strings of the same descended over the breast. The hair was plaited in the triple plait, the ends being left loose, or, more usually, two or three plaits were fastened together at the extremity by woollen strings of corresponding colour. Many of the mummies of women have been found with the hair perfectly preserved, plaited in the manner described, the only alteration in its appearance being the change of its black hue, which became reddened by exposure to great heat, during the process of embalming.
The Hebrews wore their hair generally short, and checked its growth by the application of scissors only. They seem at an early period to have availed themselves of the assistance of art, not only for beautifying the hair, but increasing its thickness; while the heads of the priests were anointed with an unguent of a peculiar kind. The custom of anointing the head became a general mark of gentility, and an essential part of the daily toilet. The Lawgiver of the Jews did not think it beneath the dignity of his code to introduce into it an especial ordinance concerning the fashion of the beard—“Thou shalt not mar the corners of the beard”—(Leviticus XIX., v. 27). By the “corners” the commentators understand the extremities; and this precept, no doubt, like others in the same chapter, arose from the leading policy of the theocracy, which sought to create a people in everything distinct from, and unmixed with, the idolators by whom they were surrounded.
It was the noble destiny of the Greeks to add beauty and refinement to the creations and speculations of a previous age. The love of the beautiful was a passion with the Greeks; it was stamped, so to speak, on the meanest objects of every-day life, and found its loftiest expression in their poetry and the magnificent works of art, which every civilized people regard as models for imitation. Even in the mere matter of a head-dress, we are struck with the beauty of the classic forms in Greek sculpture, which show a rare perception of the beautiful, in wonderful contrast to the barbarism of earlier, and, we may add, succeeding ages. In Homer the Greeks are repeatedly spoken of as the “long-haired Greeks,” and to almost every character in the Iliad and Odyssey some epithet is applied in allusion to the beauty of the hair. It is enough to allude to the fair-haired Helen, the nymph Calypso, Circe, and Ariadne; the flowing locks of Achilles, the curls of Paris, and the auburn hair of Ulysses. It will be remembered that Achilles made sacrifice of his yellow hair at the funeral pyre of Patroclus, in honour of the friend he loved.
The ancient practice of wearing the hair long was adhered to for many centuries by the Spartans. The Spartan boys always had their hair cut quite short; but, as soon as they reached the age of puberty, they let it grow long. They prided themselves upon their hair, and called it the cheapest of ornaments. Before engaging in battle, they combed and dressed their hair with much care, as did Leonidas and his followers at Thermopylae.
The custom of the Athenians was different. They wore their hair long in childhood; but the youths cut off their flowing locks at a certain age, and, as a religious ceremony, consecrated them to some god: on attaining the age of manhood, they again let the hair grow. In ancient times at Athens the hair was rolled up in a kind of knot on the crown of the head, and fastened with golden clasps in the shape of grasshoppers. The Athenian females, also, wore the hair much in the same fashion. It was usually confined in a net-work of silk or gold thread, or a cap or turban of close material, and, at times, by broad bands of cloth of different colours wound round the head.
The Greek philosophers were distinguished by their majestic beards, and Socrates, it would seem, pre-eminently so. Homer’s description of the venerable beards of Nestor and Priam is doubtless familiar to most readers. The Greeks wore their beards till the time of Alexander; and Plutarch mentions that the beards of the Macedonian soldiers were cut off to prevent the enemy from seizing hold of them in battle.
Pliny says that the Romans wore their hair long till the year 454 A.U.C., when P. Ticinius Mena first introduced a number of barbers from Sicily. Those bearded ancestors of the Romans, with their long hair, came, in after times, to be regarded with no little reverence, as the true type of manly virtue and integrity, “the fine old Roman gentleman.” At the time of the invasion of the Gauls, Livy tells us, as the soldiers entered Rome, they were struck with awe and astonishment at the noble beards and venerable aspect of the old magnates seated at their thresholds; and, that a soldier venturing, out of mere curiosity, but to touch the beard of one of them, the affront was resented by a blow with his ivory sceptre, which was the signal for a general slaughter.
The hair was usually worn short and crisp till the time of Commodus, who was particularly luxurious in the dressing and ornamenting of his hair, which was powdered with gold. Having, however, a somewhat uneasy conscience, he resorted to the singular practice of burning off the beard, “timore tonsoris,” says Lampridius.
Scipio Africanus first set the example of shaving. Persons of quality had their children shaved for the first time by a person of the same or greater quality, who, by this means, became godfather or adopted father of the children. The day was observed as one of rejoicing, and the hair of the beard made an offering to some god. The beard of Nero, we are told, was put into a golden box adorned with pearls, and consecrated in this way to Jupiter Capitolinus. Hadrian was the first emperor who wore a beard; Plutarch says he wore it to hide the scars in his face. Constantine was distinguished by the title of “Pogoniatos;” and we should do injustice to Julian’s beard to omit mention of it here. Gibbon says, “the Emperor had been insulted by satires and libels; and, in his turn, composed, under the title of the ‘Enemy of the Beard,’ an ironical confession of his own faults, and a severe satire on the licentious and effeminate manners of Antioch.” He descants with seeming complacency on his own “shaggy and populous beard”—a phrase which we may interpret literally or not, as we please. The historian adds, “This imperial reply was publicly exposed before the gates of the palace, and the MISOPOGON remains a singular monument of the resentment, the wit, the humanity, and the indiscretion of Julian.” Probably no nation ever patronized the tonsor with more assiduity than Rome in the decadence of the Empire. The young patrician exquisites of those days devoted hours daily to the barber and the bath; and no lady’s train of slaves was complete without the ornatrix, whose duty it was to attend the toilet of her mistress, for the special purpose of dressing her hair.
An elegant simplicity at one time characterized the head-dress of the Roman ladies, who generally adopted the fashion of the Greeks, which usually, however, soon degenerated into extravagance and coarseness. They piled upon their heads imitations of castles and crowns, cumbrous wreaths, and other absurdities, and knotted the hair with tiresome minuteness.
“With curls on curls they build their head before,
And mount it with a formidable tower:
A giantess she seems, but look behind;
And then she dwindles to the pigmy kind.”
The calamistrum or curling irons, had a busy time of it, for the craving after novelty was intense, and any artificial arrangement of the hair welcomed as a change.
“More leaves the forest yields not from the trees,
Than there be fashions of attire in view,
For each succeeding day brings something new.”
Poppea, Nero’s wife, was so conspicuous for the beauty of her hair, that he composed a poem in honour of it.
It was the custom of the Romans to let their beard and hair grow during the period of mourning; as we are informed by Suetonius, Augustus did his, after the terrible Varian catastrophe. The slaves had the hair cut close as a mark of servitude. Wigs and false hair were worn by the Romans, more especially by the females; thus Martial——
“The golden hair which Galla wears
Is her’s—who would have thought it?
She swears ’tis hers; and true she swears,
For I know where she bought it!”
Juvenal describes Messalina putting on a wig of flaxen hair to conceal her own black locks when she left the palace in disguise:
“Et nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero.”
Among the Gauls (Gallia comata) long and flowing hair was greatly esteemed. Cæsar says that he always ordered the long hair of the conquered races to be shaved off, in submission to the Roman arms; and, during the decline of the empire, whenever a province revolted, the patriot leaders urged the adoption of the opposite fashion of wearing long hair, as a mark of freedom and independence. Thus the fashion of the hair, as in later times, had a political significance, and took part in revolutions and the great struggles for social freedom.