Cæsar says of the Britons, B. G. V. 14—omni parte corporis rasa, præter caput et labrum superius—they shave entirely, excepting the head and upper lip.
Half-shaving was accounted, in the days of Samuel, I suppose, as reducing the party to a state of semi-barbarism: thus, in Samuel II. x. 4—“Wherefore Hanan took David’s servants, and shaved off the one half of their beards.”
To be denied the privilege of shaving was accounted dishonorable, among the Catti, a German nation, in the days of Tacitus; for he says, De Moribus Germanæ, 31—Apud Cattos in consensum vertit, ut primum adoleverint, crinem barbamque submittere, nec, nisi hoste cæso—It was settled among the Catti, that no young man should cut his hair, or shave his beard, till he had killed his man.
Seneca, Cons. Polyb. xxxvi. 5, blames Caius, for refusing to shave, because he had lost his sister—Idem ille Caius furiosa in constantia, modo barbam capillumque submittens—There is that Caius, clinging so absurdly to his sorrow, and suffering his hair and beard to grow on account of it.
There is an admirable letter, from Seneca to Lucillus, Ep. 114, which shows, that the dandies, in old Rome, were much like our own. He is speaking of those—qui vellunt barbam, aut intervellunt; qui labra pressius tondent et abradunt, servata et submissa cætera parte—who pull out the beard, by the roots, or particular parts of it—who clip and shave the hair, either more closely, or leave it growing, on some parts of their lips.
Juvenal, ii. 99, and Martial, vi. 64, 4, laugh at such, as use a mirror while shaving. Knives and razors of brass, are of great antiquity, according to the Archæological Æliana, p. 39.—Fosbroke, p. 351, says, that razors are mentioned by Homer. But I am going to a funeral, this afternoon, as an amateur, and it is time for me to shave—not with a razor of brass, however—Pradier is too light for me—I use the Chinese. Hutchinson, i. 153, says, that Leverett was the first Governor of Massachusetts, who is painted without a beard, and that he laid it aside, in Cromwell’s court.
China is the paradise of barbers. There, according to Mr. Davis, they abound. No man shaves himself, the part, to be shorn, being out of his reach. There would be no difficulty in removing the scanty hair upon their chins; but the exact tonsure of the crown, without removing one hair from the Chinaman’s long tail, that reaches to his heels, is a delicate affair. Their razors are very heavy, but superlatively keen.
No. CXLI.
Barbers were chiefly peripatetics, when I was a boy. They ran about town, and shaved at their customers’ houses. There were fewer shops. This was the genteel mode in Rome. The wealthy had their domestic barbers, as the planters have now, among their slaves. I am really surprised, that we hear of so few throats cut at the South. Some evidence of this custom—not of cutting throats—may be found, in one of the neatest epitaphs, that ever was written; the subject of which, a very young and accomplished slave-barber, has already taken a nap of eighteen hundred years. I refer to Martial’s epitaphium, on Pantagathus, a word, which, by the way, signifies one, who is good at everything, or, as we say—a man of all works. It is the fifty-second, of Book VI. Its title is Epitaphium Pantagathi, Tonsoris: