Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair (6 page)

One question remains, however. Why had classical Greek artists chosen to render mythic heroes such as Achilles and Heracles nude and beardless, and what sort of heroism was that? Before 500 BCE, a period art historians refer to as “archaic,” Greek painters had invariably depicted heroes and gods in the image of actual Greek warriors, that is to say, fully clothed, long-haired, and bearded. The great exception was Apollo, who was stuck, as it were, in eternal youthfulness. In the decades that followed, however, artists began to make significant changes, and by the end of the fifth century, most heroes and gods had shed both their clothes and their beards, excepting only the most senior gods, Zeus and Poseidon. Achilles lost his beard almost immediately after 500 BCE, and his clothes a generation later. It was the other way around for Heracles; first he was rendered without clothes and later lost his prodigious beard as well.

To some extent, the artists who made Achilles youthful and smooth-chinned were following verbal cues in the
Iliad’s
descriptions of him. He was said to be
kalos
, or “beautiful,” a word that in classical times (after 500 BCE) was used most commonly to describe attractive young men whom older men admired.
12
Artists may also have had in mind Homer’s
description of the god Hermes late in the
Iliad
: “He took the form of a handsome young prince, with the first slight traces of hair on his lips and cheeks, in the loveliest prime of youth.”
13
A beardless Achilles or Hermes in this sense reflected the homoerotic interests of classical Greeks of the elite class. The artist of the cup shown in
figure 3.2
gave Patroclus a beard, suggesting that he was an older admirer of Achilles. The social life of ancient Greece, particularly in the privileged classes, was largely segregated by sex, and a pattern developed of intimacy between older and younger men. The older man, called the
erastes,
typically initiated a relationship with a youth, known as an
eromenos
or
paidika
, and acted as the youth’s mentor and lover. The beard was the distinguishing feature of a mature
erastes,
just as beardlessness was the sign of the youthful
eromenos
.
14
The passage from youth to manhood, signified by the first appearance of a beard, was a sublime and poignant
moment, when a young man reached his fullest glory. This is what Socrates referred to when he declared his opinion that all men “who had just grown up” were beautiful.
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It is understandable, then, that artists would make Achilles beautiful in this sense, but what can be said for a beardless Heracles, a hero known for his fierce personality and stupendous physical labors? If any man should be bearded, it was he. Yet Heracles too was stripped first of his clothes, at the beginning of the fifth century, and later his manly hair. The change is illustrated in
figure 3.3
. In the first image, an early fifth-century vase painting, one sees Heracles with his distinctive club and full beard. The second painting, depicting Heracles in battle with the Hydra, dates to about a century later and reveals the new ideal of a smooth-faced hero. What can explain his beardless nudity?
16

The answer is that both youth and nudity had come to represent immortality in classical Greek art. In the century before 500 BCE, Greek sculptors began carving statues called
kouroi
, stylized male nudes that were placed in temples or cemeteries to memorialize important men. These statues commemorated particular individuals, but they were not portraits. Indeed, they all looked more or less the same: a youthful male nude with a standard smile and stiff pose. Originally, they were painted
to look more lifelike, and recent chemical analyses have revealed that many once had light, downy facial hair painted on their chins. This reinforced the impression of youth at the threshold of manhood that Plato’s Socrates so deeply admired. The
kouros
was meant to be an idealized figure who defied time and decay by remaining forever at the apex of vitality, neither young nor old. In this sense he was the image of immortal perfection. The
kouros
was also nude to reveal human excellence in his physical body, and to reenact Greek rites of passage to adulthood that involved shedding the clothes of immaturity to enter the natural birthright of adulthood.
17
After 500 BCE Greek sculptors developed this idea further, rendering gods and heroes as idealized nudes and infusing their forms with movement, life, and grace, as one can observe in Praxiteles’s famous
Doryphoros
(Spear-bearer) (
figure 3.4
).

The real audacity of Alexander’s choice to shave is now apparent. He meant others to see him as a hero on a par with Achilles and Heracles. The most impressive thing, in retrospect, is that he pulled it off, and that the Greek world eagerly embraced his example. A smooth-faced man commanded new respect because, like Alexander, he was an improvement on nature, superior to ordinary manhood in the same way that a hero was greater than a common mortal. In the centuries that followed, barbers became a necessary feature of civilized life.

To be sure, there were sticks-in-the-mud like Chrysippus, an Athenian Stoic philosopher who lived a few generations after Alexander and did not approve of this new manly style. He complained that even in cities such as Rhodes and Byzantium, no prosecutor dared enforce the laws still on the books against shaving. Chrysippus was proud that he, and virtually all his fellow philosophers, held the line for bearded manliness.
18
To some degree, it was simple conservatism, but there was principle involved as well. Philosophers were history’s first pro-beard lobby, though for centuries they stood little chance of breaking the spell cast by the greatest icon of Greek manliness.

It was not long before Greek barbers marched on Rome. The Roman author Varro reported that in the first century BCE a monument was erected in city of Ardea to commemorate the arrival of the first barbers
in Italy from Sicily about twenty years after Alexander’s death.
19
This was the arrival, though not the triumph, of barbers in the Roman world. It would take several more generations for Greek culture and Greek ways to be fully adopted there. By the middle of the second century BCE, however, Romans were also being convinced of the superiority of shaved manliness. According to the first-century CE Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, it was the conqueror of Carthage, Publius Scipio Aemilianus, who was the first Roman to shave every day.
20
Whether or not he really was the first, it made perfect sense to point a finger at Scipio because he was precisely the sort of man who would be inclined to embrace the Greek argument for shaving, and the sort of man whose celebrity would inspire many imitators. To know Scipio Aemilianus is to know why Romans abandoned their beards and adopted the new look of respectable manliness.

Publius Cornelius Aemilianus was born the second son of an illustrious Roman family at the forefront of military and political life. His father was Lucius Aemilius Paulus, who conquered Alexander’s Macedonian heirs in 168 BCE. Publius served in his father’s campaign with distinction, and by this time he had become, according to a common Roman practice, the adopted son of a childless senator of even more illustrious lineage, Publius Cornelius Scipio. Thereafter young Publius became known as Scipio Aemilianus. The young Scipio’s adoptive grandfather was the legendary Scipio Africanus, the man who saved Rome by defeating Hannibal. The newest Scipio had big shoes to fill, and he was determined to do so.

In his quest for greatness, Scipio had the advantage of two famous fathers, one natural and the other adopted, who together secured for him the best possible military and academic education. According to Plutarch, Scipio was surrounded by the best Greek scholars, sculptors, painters, and hunting instructors that money could buy.
21
Not surprisingly, he developed a real passion for all things Greek. As he traveled with his birth father on official visits around Greece, he met Greek intellectuals and collected a library of Greek literature. In 155 BCE, when Athens sent three philosophers on an embassy of friendship to Rome, Scipio was among the crowd of young men who flocked to hear them lecture. He eventually gathered around himself a circle of Greek and Roman historians, writers, and philosophers who attempted
to meld the best ideas from the two civilizations. Always a patriotic Roman, Scipio was nevertheless more closely attuned to Greek thinking and manners than his contemporaries.

In spite of his extensive intellectual interests, Scipio was statesman first and foremost, a true political innovator whose career foreshadowed those of later iconoclasts such as Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. Rather than following the usual practice of building political support through a network of trusted clients and protégés, Scipio relied for political support on his illustrious military record, his reputation for competence, and his personal charisma. When a senatorial rival taunted him for his lack of connections, Scipio’s half-jesting reply was telling: “You are quite right; for my concern has been not to know many citizens but to be known by all.”
22
This strategy, in combination with his famous name, fostered an aura of greatness that won him unprecedented power. In 147 BCE, the citizenry elected him to the consulship, the chief office of state, even though he was still too young to hold that office. Soon after, the Plebian Assembly selected him to command the final assault on Carthage, bypassing the Senate, which normally made such important military appointments. Scipio’s popularity campaign had succeeded brilliantly. In their enthusiasm for a hero, Rome’s commoners brazenly trampled long-standing precedent to promote their man. When the younger Scipio followed his adoptive grandfather’s footsteps, defeating Carthage yet again, his title “Africanus” and his larger-than-life reputation were secured.

Such was the first Roman to shave every day. His extraordinary face was part of his heroic performance. A man who would be “known by all” did well to seize any opportunity to distinguish himself in the public eye. In an age when Greek ideas, Greek art, and Greek styles were increasingly admired, Scipio presented himself in Alexandrian magnificence. Partly through his example, the shaved face became an emblem of sophistication and statesmanship, inspiring respectable Romans to keep barbers busy for the next three centuries. It seemed that the more ambitious a man was, the more careful he was about this hair regimen. At least that is the impression one gets from Julius Caesar’s behavior. The Roman historian Suetonius tells us that Caesar, who took control of Rome a century after Scipio’s Carthage triumph, “was so nice in the care of his person, that he not only kept the hair of his head closely cut
and had his face smoothly shaved, but even caused the hair on other parts of the body to be plucked out by the roots.”
23
A misplaced hair, after all, threatened ruin to his heroic aura. Unfortunately for Caesar, advancing baldness made him appear even older than he was, and he tried his best with a comb-over. Several artists obliged him, however, producing flattering portrait busts with suitably abundant scalps.

Caesar’s adoptive heir and successor, Augustus, also cultivated a heroically shaved countenance. The tour de force of Augustan propaganda was a memorial statue now called the
Augustus of Prima Porta
, which was commissioned at his death by his widow Livia (
figure 3.5
). It was a larger-than-life effort to bestow Alexandrian charisma upon the Roman emperor by fusing recognizable features of the real Augustus with the idealized youthfulness of classical Greek sculpture, notably the widely admired
Doryphoros
(
figure 3.4
). Like similar images of Achilles, Heracles, and Alexander, it affirmed the emperor’s divine status by placing him forever at the apex of life, neither young nor old. And though Augustus was not nude, he was not entirely covered either. What Scipio Aemilianus had started, this sculpture fully accomplished. The ruler of the known world had successfully appropriated the shaven image of divine heroism.

Rome dominated the Western world, and so did shaving. A smooth face was the mark of a refined and honorable man, cast in the image of heroes, both mythic and historic. It was not a fashion statement but an ideal, and it would take more than just time to dislodge it. In fact, it would take nothing less than history’s first beard movement to reform both the ideal and style of manly honor. This was the project of professional philosophers, who persistently held out for shagginess during the long era of smoothness.