The ancient Greeks were world-famous for their Beards. All Homer’s heroes are bearded, and Nestor the Sage is described as stroking his as a graceful prelusion to an oration. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are represented with Beards. Apollo is without, as an emblem of perpetual youth. Hercules and the demigods are also well furnished. And Æsculapius the God of Health,—significant fact!—is most abundantly endowed. The mother of Achilles, when supplicating Jupiter, touches his Beard with one hand, with the other his knee.
As might be supposed from their hardy characteristics, the Spartans especially cherished the Beard. When one Nicander was asked why? he replied, “because we esteem it the ornament that preeminently distinguishes man.” It being demanded of another why he wore so long a Beard? his noble reply was, “Since it is grown white, it incessantly reminds me not to dishonor my old age.”[[9]] Plutarch, after mentioning the bushy hair and Beard of the Spartan commander Lysander, says, “that Lycurgus was of opinion that abundance of hair and Beard made those who were fair, more so, and those who were ugly, more terrible to their enemies.” Regarding shaving as a mark of slavish servitude, they compelled their chief magistrates to shave their upper lips during their term of office, to remind them that though administrators of the laws, they were still subject to them.
The Greeks in general continued to wear the Beard till the decay of Athenian virtue brought that free state into subjection to the Macedonian Conqueror, who, according to Plutarch, ordered his soldiers to shave, lest their Beards should afford a handle to their enemies. This must have been when he was in one of his drunken fits, or he might have had them trimmed like the old Greek warriors.[[10]] Be that as it may, Greek freedom and Greek Beards expired together.
Diogenes, cotemporary with Alexander, once asked a smooth-chinned voluptuary whether he quarrelled with nature for making him a man instead of a woman? And Phocion rebuking one who courted the people and affected a long Spartan Beard, said to him, “if thou needs must flatter, why didst thou not clip thy Beard?”
It is a curious fact for those who resolve civilization into shaving, that the only parties in ancient Greece who retained their Beards under all changes were the Philosophers, or lovers of wisdom—they with whom all that distinguished Greek intellect was a special study and profession; who were in fact the most civilized portion of the community.
From the time of the Emperor Justinian the Greeks resumed the Beard, which was worn by all the Greek Emperors down to the last, the unfortunate Paleologus, who died fighting bravely at the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. It was by these Emperors regarded as an ensign of royalty—an attribute of kingly majesty.
Etruscans—Romans.
The Etruscans represented their gods with Beards, and wore them themselves; as did the Romans. Every schoolboy recollects the awe inspired to the invading Gauls when, on entering the Senate-house, they saw the conscript Fathers sitting calm and immovable as the gods, for which the Barbarians at first view took them, till one bolder than the rest plucked at the Beard of the noble Marcus Papirius, who by indignantly raising his staff, unconsciously gave the signal for the murder of himself, and his venerable compatriots.
During all the best ages of the Republic, while the old Roman virtue retained something of its original vigour, and before it had been sapped and undermined by the imported vices and effeminate customs of conquered nations, Rome’s statesmen, heroes, priests and people all wore, and all reverenced, the virile glories of the Beard!
It was not till the year of Rome 454, about three centuries before our era, that one of those corrupt Prætors, who usually returned laden with foreign gold, and pampered with foreign luxury, imported a stock of Barbers from Sicily; and that credulous gossip Pliny libels the younger Scipio Africanus by stating—calumnious on dit!—“that he was the first who shaved his whole Beard.” This is just one of those instances where a foolish custom, like a bad piece of wit, is sought to be fathered on some world-renowned name.