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, lost 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.[1] 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
- ↑ That the Beard, however, sometimes afforded a handle to an enemy in ancient times, when swords, especially the Greek, were very short, is admitted. And I possess an engraving from one of Raphael's Vatican Cartoons, where one soldier is represented in the act of cutting down another whom he has seized by the Beard. He must be a poor master of his weapon, however, who in modern times would allow a man to grasp his Beard without being hewn down or run through in the process.
