Fig. 41.
monuments, but, as a rule, ladies did not carry them themselves, but were accompanied by a slave, who performed this office for them. The sunshades were
Fig. 42.
usually round (compare Fig. [42]), but there are also examples of a fan-shaped kind, which enabled the servant who walked behind to hold the sunshade by its long handle comfortably over her mistress without going too near her. Sometimes we even see men on vase pictures with sunshades. This, however, was regarded as effeminate luxury. The stick belonged to the ordinary equipment of a man. Old people walked with the help of a heavy knotted stick, or leant on it as they stood, like the Athenian citizens on the Parthenon frieze; and young people also used them. They seem always to have used natural sticks; but the Laconian canes, with curved handles, were considered specially convenient, and were used at Athens by those who liked to imitate Spartan manners and customs. In the fourth century the use of sticks seems to have become less common.
The last heading to be considered is the fashion of wearing the hair; and, although the writers and statues give us considerable information, there are several difficulties here which have not yet been solved.
In the heroic period long curly hair was regarded as a suitable ornament for a man. This is proved by the favourite epithet, “The curly-haired Achaeans,” and by other quotations from epic poetry; various indications prove that the curls were not always left to fall naturally, but that artificial means were sometimes adopted for facilitating and preserving their regular arrangement. When the “effeminate Paris” is said to rejoice in his “horn” (κέρᾳ ἄγλαε), old commentators state that this horn was a twisted plait. It is possible that this might be produced by the mere use of stiffening pomades or other cosmetic means, which had been introduced from the East in the Homeric period; but the statements in the Iliad about the gold and silver “curl-holders” of the Trojan Euphorbus clearly point to artificial aids. The oldest sculptures and vase pictures give sufficient proof that this mode of wearing the hair in regular curls continued for a long time, for they almost always represent hair falling far down the neck, generally in regular stiff locks with horizontal waving, while small curls surround the forehead, arranged with equal accuracy. As to the means employed for producing these curls, Helbig’s opinion is that the spirals of bronze, silver, or gold wire found in old graves in several parts of the Old World were used as a foundation for the curls, which were twined around them. Certainly these spirals have often been found in Etruscan graves, near the spot where the head rested, and generally one on each side. This might, however, be explained by the other interpretation that they were a kind of primitive ear-ring. Perhaps the “gold and silver” with which Euphorbus “bound together” his locks, according to Homer, was not a particular kind of adornment, but only flexible gold and silver wire.
The monuments as well as the writers teach us that men wore their hair long, in the next period also, down to the fifth century; we sometimes find hair of such length and thickness depicted that it seems almost incredible that a man’s hair could have been so much developed, even by the most careful treatment. However, it did not often hang quite loose, but it was tied back somewhere near the neck by a ribbon, and, unlike the Homeric head-dress, where each curl is separately fastened, the whole mass of hair was bound together, and then spread out again below the fastening, and fell down the back. Sometimes the hair, after being tightly tied together in one place, was interwoven with cords or ribbons lower down, so that it fell in a broader mass than where it was tied together, but by no means hung loose. Another kind of head-dress is that in which the hair is tied together in such a manner as to resemble a broad and thickish band, something like our head-dress of the last century. The hair falls a little way below the neck, and is then taken up again and tied in with the other piece by a ribbon in such a manner that the end of the hair falls down over this ribbon. Here, too, we find variety, for the hair sometimes fell some way down the back, sometimes was fastened up again at the back of the head. An example of the former kind is the bronze head from Olympia represented in Fig. [44]; of the latter, Fig. [43], from a vase painting of the fifth century.