The philosophy of beards : a lecture : physiological, artistic & historical / by T.S. Gowing.
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Borne's statesmen, heroes, priests and people all wore, and all reverenced, the virile glories of the Beard! It was not till the year of Koine 454, about three cen- turies before our era, that one of those corrupt Praetors, who usually returned laden with foreign gold, and pam- pered 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. Long after the above date, the Beard was only partially shaved or trimmed; and the same word (tondere) is some- times used to mean either. Of course when once the fashion had set in, it was, as with us, considered unbecom- ing to wear a Beard; and Marcus Livius on his return from banishment, was compelled by the Censors to shave, before appearing in the Senate. With the increasing growth of vice and effeminacy among this once hardy race, the decreasing Beard kept pace.* Osesar, the real founder of the empire, by whom * Besides shaving, the Bomans as they progressed in luxurious effeminacy, used depilatories, tweezers and all sorts of contrivances to make themselves as little like men and as much like women as possible; and their satirists abound with passages impossible to quote with decency on the causes and consequences of this abroga- tion of the distinctive peculiarities of the two sexes. D 2