The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene, Including the Address to the Emperor Arcadius and the Political Speeches. Translated … with Introduction and Notes by Augustine Fitzgerald. 1930.
Synesius of Cyrene: In Praise of Baldness
[1168] A book was written in praise of hair by Dio of the Tongue of Gold, so brilliant a work that the bald man, in the face of its arguments, must be covered with shame. The argument, indeed, uses nature to its own advantage, for by nature we all desire to be beautiful - to which end, in large measure, the tresses with which Nature has rendered us familiar since childhood, contribute. For my own part, I was wounded to the heart,[1] when the terrible thing began, and my hair began to fall off.
When it proceeded further, and one hair went after another -then two at a time, and finally several- and the war became keenly contested, my head being plundered, then indeed I esteemed myself to suffer more harshly than did the Athenians at the hands of Archidamus when their groves at Acharnae were destroyed,[2] and soon I appeared as one of those benighted Euboeans who, according to the poem,[3] made the expedition to Troy with hair hanging from the back of their heads. Which one of the gods, which of the demons did I pass over without accusation in this matter? I was even inclined to write something eulogistic of Epicurus, not as one holding the same opinions as he concerning the gods,[4] but as one prepared to get my teeth in them in turn as far as I could.
[1169]And so I said: “Where is the action of Providence to be found in that which is contrary to each men's deserts? What wrongdoing have I committed that I should appear more unsightly to the fair sex?” No great matter this, in the case of the women of the neighborhood, for in what concerns Aphrodite I am the most righteous of men, and I could dispute the palm with Bellerophon in continence.[5] But even a mother, even sisters, they say, set some store on the beauty of the men of their household. And Parysatis made this clear, for she lost her love for Artaxerxes the King, all on account of the handsome Cyrus.[6]
Note 1: Plato, Symposium, 281A.
Note 2: Reference to the Spartan invasion of Attica at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE. The story is told by Thucydides, 2.19-22.
Note 3: Homer, Iliad, 2.542.
Note 4: Epicurus stated that the gods had no concern for human beings.
Note 5: Homer, Iliad, 6.156-195.
Note 6: Parysatis was the wife of the Achaemenid king Darius II Nothus. They had two sons: Artaxerxes and Cyrus. According to the Greek historian Xenophon, she loved the handsome Cyrus more than Artaxerxes, the lawful king (Anabasis, 1.1.4 with 1.9).
[1169] Thus then I lamented aloud, and thought my misfortune no small matter. But when time had made me more accustomed to it, reasoning entering in its turned struggled against my discomfiture, and it gradually retired. I thus became easier in my mind and recovered.
But this very Dio has now himself retaliated with another torrent, and has resumed the attack on me accompanied by a supporter. Against two adverseries, even Heracles, the proverb says, was of no avail, for he could not resist the sons of Molione [1] when they fell upon him from out their ambush; and also, when he fought the Hydra, for they were engaged in single combat some time, but when the Crab came to her rescue, he might have renounced the struggle had he not invoked the alliance of [his nephew] Iolaus against her. Of a truth it seems to me that I have suffered a similar experience at the hands of Dio, and -alas!- I have no Iolaus for nephew. For long, now, forgetful of myself and of my arguments, I have been writing elegies and dirges concerning my hair.
Yet one might say to me: You then, since you are the noblest of the bald, and seem to be a man of generous character -one, moreover, who troubles not about the misfortune, but who even fancies himself over it, as if in good fortune, when pea-soup is laid on the table and the scrutiny of brows begins[2] - cannot you, I say, endure this essay of Dio? Nay, keep your soul in calm, as the saying goes, even as Odysseus remained undainted in the face of the dissoluteness of women.[3] Make a struggle to suffer nothing at its hand. What! You would not be able, you say? Nay, you will be quite able. Only listen to this. You need not unroll the volume at all, for I will myself hold forth. It is not multi-linear, it is withal polished in style and its beauty abides in the memory, so that I could not forget it even if I would.
Note 1: Eurytus and Cteatus were the sons of Poseidon and Molione, and ambushed Heracles. The two enemies Synesius has in mind, are the opinions of women and the treatise by Dio.
Note 2: An unexplained allusion. Perhaps it was a way to decide, on the basis of age, who should be served first.
Note 3: At the beginning of Book 20 of Homer's Odyssey, we read how Odysseus' acted when he noted, not without some irritation, that his maids abandoned their work to meet their lovers.
[1169] [Dio's In Praise of Hair; 1] “After rising in the morning and praying to the gods, as is my custom, I attended to my hair; I happened to be in poor health at the time, and it had been too long uncared for. The most of it had become knotted and entangled, as that which hangs about a sheep's legs, but much coarser than this, for it is tangled with fine hairs. The hair was accordingly uncouth and heavy to behold. And it was difficult to unravel; the most of it was torn out and subjected to a strain.
Thus the idea came to me of praising those who make a cult of their hair, who love beauty, and give their hair great importance, and who not merely give it serious attention but even keep a sort of reed in the hair itself, [1172] with which they comb it when they are at leisure. And this is the most difficult thing; they guard against touching the earth with it when sleeping on the ground, for they have to place a small piece of wood under the head that it may be separated from the earth as much as possible; and they think much more of keeping their hair clean than of sleeping agreeably, for it would seem to make them fine looking and awe-inspiring, whereas sleep, however sweet, only makes them sluggish and careless.
The Lacedaemonians, too, seem to me to be not neglectful of such a fact, as they came forward before the great and terrible battle at the time when they alone of all Greeks were to engage the king.[2] At that moment numbering only three hundred, they sat them down and dressed their hair.
Again, Homer seems to me to consider such a thing worthy of the greatest care. It is not often that he praises handsome men for their eyes, nor does he think to make beauty evident most of all therein. He makes no encomium on the eyes of any of the heroes, except Agamemnon, and that only in praising the rest of his body besides;[3] and he not merely describes the Greeks as men of quick-glancing eyes, though no less to Agamemnon does he apply the epithet common to Greeks, but he praises them all for their hair; in the first place Achilles
and she [Athena] seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.[4]
Then Menelaus he calls blond because of his hair,[5] and he mentions Hector's hair in these words:
and round about his dark hair was dragged in the dust.[6]
So when Euphorbus, the fairest of the Trojans, had died, he deplored nothing else but this, saying
His hair like to the Graces was dyed with blood and his tresses adorned with gold and silver.[7]
And of Odysseus, whenever he wishes to show how beautiful he had become at the hand of Athena, he says
his hair turned black.[8]
And again about the same hero:
down from his head
she sent curling hair to grow like the flower of the hyacinth.[9]
Now adornment of hair seems to become men more than women according to Homer, for when he discourses of the beauty of women, he does not so often seem to have recalled to mind their hair. He praises those amongst the deities who are female, in other ways, he makes Aphrodite “golden”, Hera “ox-eyed” and Thetis “silver-footed”; but in the case of Zeus he praises his hair most of all:
The ambrosial locks of the king floated waving from his head.[10]
Note 1: One gets the impression that Synesius does not quote the full text of Dio's speech. For example, Dio missed a chance by not digressing upon the expression euplokamos, “with beautiful braids”, when he describes Homer's praise of female beauty. The text appears to be too short and it has been argued that what we have is the product of careless copiist. However, the Byzantine scholar Photius, who was interested in Dio's oeuvre, does not know a speech In Praise of Hair, and it is not unreasonable to assume that Synesius polemizes against a speech he has first invented. Alternatively,
Note 2: A reference to the battle of Thermopylae in 480, in which the Spartan king Leonidas and three hundred elite warriors fought themselves to death against the army of the Achaemenid king Xerxes. According to Herodotus (Histories, 7.208), the Spartans combed their hair before they engaged. Unlike Synesius' Dio states, they were not alone: they were supported by Phocians and Thebans.
Note 3: Homer, Iliad, 2.478-479.
Note 4: Homer, Iliad, 1.197.
Note 5: A.o. Homer, Iliad, 3.284.
Note 6: Homer, Iliad, 22.401-402.
Note 7: Homer, Iliad, 17.51-52.
Note 8: A reading of Homer, Odyssey, 16.176 that is not in the surviving manuscripts.
Note 9: Homer, Odyssey, 6.230-231.
Note 10: Homer, Iliad, 1.529.
[1172] There you have the words of Dio. Nevertheless, as I am no mean prophet, I knew that I should see Thrasymachus blush.[1] In my own case no such calamity has as yet happened. True, I was at first vanquished by the argument, but I think now that Dio was a man clever enough in speech, though one who had nothing to say, and yet went on speaking through a superfluity of power; [1173] and that he would have shown himself to far greater advantage of he had chosen to praise the very opposite case - namely, that of my own head!
For what might not a man resourceful in difficulties have accomplished, if he had fallen in with a subject suited to his powers? But now that he has both hair and skill, he employs his skill on his hair. How roguishly he has insinuated himself in this essay! For in this discourse of his, there is no other lover of hair who beautifies it with a reed save only himself, and it is with this very reed that he has written his discourse. But if I in turn am bald and withal able to speak, and if the one subject is found more noble than the other, or if I am inferior to Dio, why, then, should I not strip for the contest and make trial both of myself and of my argument, to see if after all I could transfer the reproach to the men adorned with hair?
I will speak then, neither making a vigorous and trenchant preface such as orators arm their fighting speeches with, as men arm triremes with beaks, nor first sounding, like Dio, a clear measured prelude to the speech like a harpist's overture, such as “After rising in the morning and praying to the gods, as is my custom, I attended to my hair; I happened to be in poor health at the time, and it had been too long uncared for.” While he is thus going through the evidences of carelessness, he is bringing us, without being conscious of it, to the point of praising him for the care he takes of his hair.That is what the clever fabricators of speeches do to us; at one moment they charm us, at another they astound us.
Now I can grasp facts as well as any other man, but am not addicted to rhetoric. I have been practicing two arts all my life, the culture of plants and the training of dogs against the most fearless of wild beasts, and these fingers of mine have been rubbed against shovels and hunting-spears rather than reeds; unless by reed you should mean the reed that is an arrow, instead of the author's.
So now it is not to be wondered at if my fingers have clung to that one. I shall never disgrace my ancestral rusticity, nor shall I come on the scene rounding off little periods, forewords, and preludes or the like. I shall pursue what I consider the best course, even for the nature of a rustic, by setting the naked expressions of thought in full view. I shall fight, with facts as weapons, only by turning the pitch of my voice from argument to vehemence, from the Dorian note, as they say, to the Phrygian. But I need breath adequate to my undertakings, breath which, I prophesy, my heart will render me in abundance.
Note 1: Plato, Republic, 350D.
[1173] My argument, then, will lay it down that of all men a man who is bald has least reason to feel ashamed. For what matter it if his head is bald, so long as his mind is shaggy, as was the case with the descendant of Aeaceus, whom poetry sang of? This man cared little for his locks of hair, which, actually, he presented to a corpse; they are indeed a sort of corpse, a lifeless portion attached to living beings.[1]
[1176] Thus those animals who are the more deprived of intelligence, are clothed with hair all over their bodies, whereas man, inasmuch as his lot in life is more brilliant, is the most bare of this natural burden. But that he may not boast of having no taint of fellowship with what is mortal, he is covered with hair in a few places. He, therefore, who has no hair anywhere is to the normal man what man is to the brute.
And just as man is the most intelligent, and at the same time the least hairy of earthly creatures, conversely it is admitted that of all domestic animals the sheep is the stupidest, and that this is why he puts forth his hair with no discrimination, but thickly bundled together. It would seem that there is a strife going on between hair and brains, for in no one body do they exist at the same time.
And huntsmen also must needs contribute something to the argument, for these men are dear to me as also the art they pursue. The cleverest hounds are those whose ears and bellies are bare; the hairy ones are stupid and rash and are better kept away from the chase; and if Plato, the sage, speaks of the unjust soul, attached to the chariot driven by the soul, as being deaf and with ears covered with hair, how can he think any good of hair? [2] Of course, even if Plato did not tell us so, it would of necessity follow that he would be deaf who had hair in that organ by which we hear, as one would also be blind who had hair in the organ by which we see.
That would be a monstrosity, if it ever came to pass. Already cases have occurred of the growth of a double row of eyelashes, and it seems the last of calamities that hair has made its home close to the eye, and against such hairs every violent means is set in motion lest they should precipitate the undermining of the eye. Nature does not permit the baser elements to grow with the nobler, and the noblest parts of the animal are his perceptive faculties, for in these parts of the body most of all resided the principle of life, and to these first the soul has distributed its own powers. Now sight is the most divine of all faculties,[3] but at the same time the least hairy.
Again, as in an individual the nobles parts are the baldest, so must the best elements of the race itself be related to the race itself. This was shown a little while ago to be the case throughout the human race, which is as far removed from the brutes as it is from hairs. Now if man is really the most sacred of all animals,[4] of men who have had the good fortune to lose their hair, the bald man would be the most divine thing upon earth.
Note 1: Homer, Iliad, 23.141-3. The descendant of Aeaceus is Peleus' son Achilles.
Note 2: Plato, Phaedrus, 253E.
Note 3: Plato, Phaedrus, 250D.
Note 4: Plato, Laws, 766A.
[1176] You may look at the pictures in the Museum, I mean those of Diogenes and Socrates, and whomsoever you please of those who in their age were wise, and your survey would be an inspection of bald heads.
Let not Apollonius confuse the argument, or anyone who was a wizard and an adept in demoniac practices. For although such men are not really adorned with hair, they are able to appear so by gaining a power over the masses of mankind. But perhaps the faculty of these wizards is not knowledge, [1177] but some capacity to work miracles, and is not any sort of science but rather a power. For thus it was that while legislators regarded wisdom as one of the things most to be honored, they kept hangmen to deal with wizards; so that even if Apollonius did become bedecked with hair, this has no bearing on my argument. Moreover, I am kindly disposed to this man and would like to include him in my catalogue. But from what has been said, the argument seems to admit of the converse with soundness. If anyone is wise he is also bald, and if he is not bald, neither is he wise.
And thus it is with demons also, as he who has seen the ceremonies of Bacchus will agree. As much of the company as is shaggy is adorned, some with their own hair, and others with borrowed locks, for nothing is so proper to Bacchus as the goatskin; and some of them borrow their hair even from pine trees. One has seen them all shaking themselves and reveling, mayhap overcome in their disorderly leaping dances by wine, whatever wine enters at any time into the initiations; yet they seem to have been reduced to the discordant phase of nature.
There too is the chair of Silenus and his lash. He has been appointed the guardian slave of Dionysus. For I think that, being bald, he must have been also a man of sense, to keep his self-control in the midst of such aberrations. Yet I deem it no small matter that he should be preferred by Zeus to all the demons, with a view of attending upon and teaching his little son wisdom.
For Dionysus has also to taste the pure juice of the grape and to rave at times with natural desire and approach the point of madness, until finally he joins the Bacchic women in dances. But Silenus moderates his madness lest, oft-times unconsciously, he run wild in both directions, lest he become too difficult for his father to bring up.
But we must speedily come back to our point, having obtained adequate proof that brains are there whenever hair has taken its departure, and that hair is there where brains have taken their departure.
Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, a moderate man in other respects and beyond anyone of his associates most chary of self-praise, could not but feel pride in his resemblance to Silenus;[1] for his whole desire was in this - to prepare his head as receptacle of mind. But like many other of the thoughts of Socrates, this also escaped the comprehension of the dull-witted, namely that he prided himself overmuch on his likeness to Silenus. The fact that the blossom of hair well befits youths at the moment of life when we have not yet begun to reason, but flits away from age and does not await maturity which manifestly makes mind and thought to dwell with living creatures, this you must surely admit condemns the nature of hair as bereft of reason.
“But if a man has hair even although aged?” you say. Well, some old men may also be devoid of sense, nor perchance do all men attain the perfection of manhood. The case therefore stands thus, that mind and hair do not await each other but yield place as darkness does to light. Now to those seeking the cause of this the answer is somewhat cryptic. We will attempt, however, to say what is sufficient for the present purpose, taking care to enshroud with purity all that is inviolable.
Note 1: Plato, Phaedo, 215A; Xenophon, Symposium, 4.19.
[1180] The first of existing things are simple, but as nature ascends in the scale she becomes varied, and matter is last in order of existing things and therefore the most varied. Matter itself when it receives anything divine does not at once receive it to the full extent, but only certain appearances and germs of it; with these it becomes intertwined and the greater part of it is centered in them. Perhaps therefore it keeps these by overpowering the divine element through the inevitable encounter at their first meeting, before the appearance has been perfected. Each of these two states would be possible, nor are the words at war although they might seem to be.
But since our discussion is not concerning these things, and since they have been introduced only because of other considerations, let us proceed to show in regard to the facts that nature grows stronger in the immature and yields to those which are strengthened. Are not the principles of the seeds which are cast into the earth something divine, even if this is only the last stage of the divine? The fruit is the consummation of these, but behold the pride of nature, behold its beauties, before this stage has been arrived at. There are roots, stem, barks, awns, husks, and other husks covering these last, but the fruit itself is still unformed and hidden.
Now when once this has appeared, all the playthings of matter are dried up and disappear, for the perfected work now needs no adornment, and that already is perfected in which there is another promise of seed. It is in memory of this that Eleusis celebrates the revelations of Demeter.[1]
If then mind is the most divine of the seeds that have come from above, and if it is settled in the head, and if the material mind is the fruit of this principle, as is the wheat of that, then nature is pursuing her accustomed course. She works her wonders around the head, and adorns it with the beauties of hair, as if with thorns and husks, or -by Zeus!- even as if with blossom, the like of that wherewith she graces plants before the fruit appears. But there is no fruit on a plant before the blossom fades, and so mind will not take its place in the head before, brought to perfection, it has cast aside in due course the superfluous elements, as if by the winnowing fan of time, and has discarded all the folly of nature; so that we might regard all this as a sign that the head already been shown forth as a perfect fruit.
If then you see one conspicuously denuded, be sure that mind has pitched its tent there, and regard that head as a temple of God. Mysteries would therefore rightly be solemnized concerning the head, to be called perhaps, for the sake of the profane, “Unveiling mysteries”; but the wise would understand that they were festivals for the advent of the mind. And that man who has just now arrived among the bald, is the one newly initiated into the mysteries of the gods' appearance among men.
Again, just as wheat, pomegranates, and nuts become bad and rot in their shells and their pods, so heads may be evil, having no share in the divine element and for the most part enveloped in dead matter. I have myself observed that those who serve the divinity in Egypt do not endure even the hair of the eye-lids. They were, it is true, laughable to behold, but they had a certain wisdom in their minds as exceptional men and Egyptians; for it is not befitting to approach with dead portions [1181] natures which are eternal, and whose being is incorporated in life. If, therefore, the man shaved by his own hand is pious, the bald by nature is by that very nature more closely united to God; for perchance the divinity itself is of such a nature. May it be propitious to my discourse, for it will indeed be uttered in a pious spirit!
Note 1: It is possible that Synesius was initiated in the Eleusine Mysteries.
[1181] With regard to such part of the divine nature as is hidden, why should anyone trouble about it, since it is unwilling to be revealed?[1] Be that as it may, all that is seen consists of exact spheres, the sun, the moon, all the stars, both that are fixed and the planets. Whether they are greater or less, they are all of like shape. Now, what could be balder than a sphere, and what more divine?
There is a saying too, that the soul wishes to imitate God. This is the third god, the soul of the world which its own father [2] and demiurge of the bodily cosmos brought into the cosmos, having completed it, perfect and whole, out of seeds and bodies, giving it on this account also a figure the most comprehensive of figures.
Of those figures that have equal perimeters, that which has the most angles is always the greater, and the circle exceeds in superficies any angular figure, just as the sphere exceeds amongst those who have solidity. This is known to experts in geometry and mensuration of solids. Wherefore the entire soul animates the whole cosmos, which is a sphere, and the souls which pour out of the entire cosmos and have become fragments of it, desire, each one of them, that which the entire soul wishes, to wit, to control bodies and to be moving spirits of universes, the very thing which was the cause of their partition. In this wise Nature stood in need of particular spheres; so then above were molded the stars, and below the heads, that these might be the mansions of souls, small universes in the universe.
For it was necessary, I think, that the cosmos should be a living thing, should be composed of living creatures. To the simpler souls it is a matter of indifference that they must take up their abode in a hairy head, far removed from the clearly defined pattern, but each wise soul according to its own deserts has received as its portion - one a star to dwell in, another a bald head. For if nature here below is weak at producing perfect precision, nevertheless she does not tolerate the part of us which looks upward and towards heaven to be formed otherwise than as a universe in its shape.
Baldness, then, appears plainly to us as also a heaven, and as many praises a one might sing of a sphere, so many does one relate of baldness also.
Note 1: Plato, Laws, 821A.
Note 2: Plato, Timaeus, 33B, 34B.
[1184] And do let Homer write and let Phidias model, if he pleases, proofs in support of Dio, granting to Zeus his clustering locks, and thick hair at that, wherewith he may shake the heaven when he desires. For as to the Zeus seen in heaven, we all know what he is like: but supposing that there is some other Zeus, though I know not whether there is some other bodily one, but granting this, if anybody holds such an opinion, in any case he must be either the first one, or the one subsequent to him. Whether one or the other, he is such as that one who is evident to all men, as far as the condition of his nature permits of resemblance. But the poetic and plastic arts and indeed all mimetic arts seem, least of all, truth-loving, but merely as plausible as may be, and such as seek to create what they create according to appearances, not according to truth.
By the ignorant hair is held in honor, for the opinion of the mob admires all external things, such as landed possessions, carriages, houses, and groups of dwellings, all that are not part of the nature of those possessing them but, like hair, an alien element to their nature. For the ignorant are far from mind and from God, and in place of mind and God, Nature and Fortune direct them.
Now this matter is still more alien: for the foolish congratulate the recipients of Fortune's and Nature's gifts. Whoever therefore writes and speaks to the masses, must of necessity be plebeian in opinion, in order to model his style and deliver his speech in a manner pleasing to them. And inasmuch as they are uninstructed, they are obstinate and are determined champions of their absurd opinions, to such an extent that if anyone disturbs any point of their ancestral notions, he will before long drink the hemlock.[2] What penalty do you think Homer would have suffered from the Greeks, if he had told the very truth itself concerning Zeus, and had said nothing of those portentous things with which children are terrified?
Note 1: Hesiod, Works and Days, 528-529.
Note 2: As Socrates had been forced to do.
[1184] Now the Egyptians are wise in this way also, that amongst them the race of prophets do not allow the vulgar and the artisans to make images of the gods. This is in order that they may not infringe the laws in any such matter, and while they mock at the masses with those beaks of hawks and ibises, which they carve in the precincts of their temples, they themselves, descending to their sacred crypts, watch over whatever works they may have completed, and they have at their reunions little chests, which conceal, so they say, those spheres, which will enrage the mob if it sees them, and the frivolous will laugh to scorn, for the mob will have jugglery. How else can they behave, being a mob?
For this reason, I think, beaks of ibises have been placed on all the statues. There is one deity, however, which they do not conceal, but openly exhibit; that is Asclepius, and you may see him much balder than a pestle.[1] Yet this god at Epidaurus is adorned with hair; the reason of this being that, amongst the Greeks, zeal for truth is languid, and it is for that defect that a historian has justly blamed our race.[2] But the Egyptians see Asclepius daily, and converse with him, not merely the man whose hearth he frequents, nor in such manner nor as often as he may prefer.
[1185] Now I hear it said that the Egyptian man has an art for working upon the gods, as also certain enchantments, and that by pronouncing a few foreign words he can, when he pleases, draw all the divine nature to follow such spells. From foreigners therefore, and not from the Greeks, we must obtain the truer images of the divine nature.
And yet, as I said a little while ago, the man who has examined the sun and the stars is satisfied not to inquire curiously into anything else; and admitting that there is any star with long hair, yet it is no star at all (for the body carried around in a circle marks the place of stars, in which nothing new ever takes place): but the space underneath the moon is the very frontier of generation and contains the combustible matter of the stars falsely so called. In the one place they move together and are in succession subject to the others, in the other, being inharmonious in movement, they do not partake of the same nature. One had come all the way from the Altar to the sign of the equinox, and from there it will be carried on to the North Pole if it is not first destroyed. Of these you may see some of immense length, and today, if chance favors, one extending over the length of the zodiac, on the third day it will be not even a third of that size and on the tenth and the thirteenth it has rightly disappeared, dying out little by little, and becoming nothing at all.
It is not even pious, in my opinion, to call these stars, but if you wish to call them so, this much at least is clear, that hair is an evil, inasmuch as even in a star it produces a perishable form. And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and the soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings, nothing small or moderate, but everything that exceeds the disastrous.
Nowise has perished as yet an unknown star from high heaven, e'en from what time we were borne and listened…[3]
Whatever it be that has perished, it is not a star, for all the happy bodies are spherical.
Let this good then be with me and mine, one that maketh me like to the gods. For there are no other forms except those of this sort like to the gods, nor any other which it is more befitting to describe as divine in form and in image, and to endow with all the other epithets of divine beauty. And this is not that which should be, but which happens otherwise; nay, you may hear people using a nickname and calling bald men 'little moons' to their faces.
Note 1: A reference to Imhotep, a deified doctor like Asclepius.
Note 2: Thucydides, 1.20.1.
Note 3: Aratus, Phaenomena, 259-260.
[1185] Now one thing had almost escaped me, the most fit of all to mention, I refer to the moon and her phases, which the sons of the bald share in name and in form. This moon, so dear to me, begins in the form of a crescent, becomes a half moon, then again is gibbous, and ends by being a full moon. And assuredly those who have found their way to the summit of good fortune I call the 'full moons': it is even lawful to call them 'suns'. For they no longer return to phases, [1188] but continue with a perfect circle shining in the face of those in heaven. As an instance: Odysseus is made sport of by the suitors, striplings with long hair and waning with dissipation, but soon to perish foully, more than a hundred in number, all of them at the hands of one bald man.[1]
Him they counsel, when he is torch-bearing and kindling a light produced by man's hand, to desist from his work for that his head sufficed to light the whole house. Now this very thing is the most divine, and is not only like to the gods, but also akin to man, namely to have light and to make it. Of this splendid glitter smoothness is the cause, and smoothness in the head is nothing but the total absence of hair; for at the same moment, one leaves the worse and approaches the better things, just as when we pointed out that there is an antithesis between the corpse and the living being.
Now life and light, and all such things, belong to the category of the good and are so esteemed to belong. And again, if light is befitting to the bare surface, we must conclude that hair befits darkness, for this perhaps is not logical, but in every respect it is inevitable. Howbeit, we must needs bring some persuasive force to the argument, and not dwell upon the mere cogency of our demonstration. In sooth all men think and say that hair is a natural parasol, and the most noble of poets, Archilochus, in praising it, praises it on the person of a courtesan. These are his words:
And her hair
overshadowed her shoulders and her waist.
But a shadow is nothing else than darkness, for absence of light is indicated by each of these words; and to those who approach nearer and investigate the matter, it is easy to see that the night is the greatest shadow, the earth opposing, as it does, a barrier to the beams of the sun. But even in the daytime dense forests have no share in light, for they are excessively shaded and bearded with hair.
Note 1: Homer, Odyssey, 18, 354-355.
[1188] So much then in behalf of the divine nature of this thing and of its dedication to the most brilliant of the gods in the air. And if health is also a fair thing, nay, the fairest of fair things, it is for its sake that I see many men possessed of hair fleeing for refuge to the razor, and to the pitch plaster, so as to be bald and at the same time free of disease.[1] Moreover, if ophthalmia, catarrh, and dullness of hearing and all other troubles that afflict the head itself, were removed together with this burden, even this would be a great result, and a much greater one still if both the feet and the intestines benefited. There are those who, unfortunate in this respect, are compelled by the physicians to submit to so-called circles, and of these the beginning, the middle, and end is the pitch plaster, which attacks our hairs with more precision than iron.
Surely it is a reasonable idea that from a higher position, as from a citadel, namely from the head, the cables of disease and health should be attached to the whole body. [1189] We, bald people, therefore, have a share of health not equal to other men, but, if God permit, be it said, even greater. And it would seem that those wooden images of Asclepius,[2] denuded of hair, as the Egyptian manner is, hint darkly of this very thing.
There may be a lessen here for us all, and the most salutary prescription in the realm of medicine, and it seems almost to say that whoever desires to be in good health, should imitate the discoverer and champion of medicine [the Egyptian Asclepius]. A cranium which is free from hair, that basks in the sun and is exposed to all the seasons, would not excite your wonder should it be turned quickly from bone into iron.
In this state it would be most proof against the inroad of all diseases. Thus of spearhandles those made of marsh-grown trees and trees of the plain, are inferior, and the mountain-grown wood is stronger. Inquire the cause of Homer, and you will hear him say that these last are reared and trained by the wind.[3]
Again, do not imagine that the wise [centaur] Chiron was acting to no purpose when he cut the lance for Peleus from the neighborhood of Tempe, not from any hill slope or ravine where they grow smooth and tall, but from the summit of Pelion, where it was exposed to the impact of the winds. For these reasons the wood was good, and sufficient even to his succeeding line. The same is true of these two heads, the shaggy and the smooth. The one is of the marsh, for it is grown in the shade, the other is of the mountain, where it is exposed to all winds, and therefore the latter is strong, but the former is easily pliable.
Note 1: Plato, Phaedrus, 244E
Note 2: A reference to Imhotep, a deified doctor like Asclepius.
Note 3: Homer, Iliad, 11.256.
[1189] Now they can test this argument who stand on the spot where the forces of Cambyses and those of Psammetichus met in deadly conflict in the attack on Egypt from Arabia. For these two armies then making trial of one another, and each thinking that the present moment was the decisive one of all, were at length with difficulty separated. A great slaughter took place, and the disaster was too severe to admit of the removal of their dead, and so the survivors did nothing else for those who had perished but to separate them from the enemy corpses, mingled together, just as each one had happened to fall in the line of battle.
So now there are two heaps of bones, the one of the Egyptians, the other of the Medes.[1] Herodotus (for it seems that this excellent man approached the skulls) is indeed surprised at the thinness and weakness of the latter, for he says that you might pierce them by throwing a pebble against them, and at the thickness and solidity of the former, for these met his assault as hard and rigid objects, and even a whole sling stone would not be sufficient to break them, nay, he would need a club for the purpose. And the cause, they say, to which we invoked this experiment as a witness, was the bonnet of the one race, and of the other constant exposure to the sun.[2]
And even if it is difficult to decide upon a voyage beyond the frontier passing through so many races of men, and granted that it is an unholy thing to smash the skull of corpse with a stone, and admitting that you do not trust Herodotus, nevertheless, I and many other people in the town, have Scythian servants who let their hair hang loose in the Scythian fashion. Now, if anyone should strike one of these men with his fist, he would kill him.
But there is a man at the theater who furnishes a frequent and diverting spectacle to the public, and whom you may see at the holy period of each month if you seize the opportunity. [1192] This is one of the artificially, not one of the naturally bald, for he goes to his barber many times a day, and appears before the public for the very purpose of showing the strength of his head, to which no fearful thing is fearful, for he exposes it to seething pitch, and butts with it against a trained ram, one that tosses his head famously even when far away, and the Megarian vases collapse broken on his noble cranium. This is cut and cut to pieces, and not one of these exhibitions fails to make the beholders shiver, when they see how leaps are taken on it with more precision than on an Attic slipper.
When I beheld this man, I congratulated myself on my good fortune, for I too could do all these things, but he certainly exceeds my daring, and moreover in the poverty that has brought him to this point of audacity. At all events I need not make the trial, and may I never have to!
But there is another boon than this, a right great one, and which falls short of none of those enumerated. For if it is our lot to attain what Pindar prayed for,[3] and we are able to live on our own means, we shall take a good seat in the theater and become hearers and spectators of what is being exhibited there and if supplies be needed for the city, and if the people ask for largesses, we shall employ our property lavishly. But should the demon be adverse, and should our daily bread be lacking -and may such a fate never befall one of the divine race- at all events the last of evils, hunger, is far from us, since we can all be wonder-workers; we can improvise and present on the stage, at the cost of a few blushes, an art well worth seeing.
Note 1: “Medes” is another name for Persians.
Note 2: Herodotus, Histories, 3.12.
Note 3: Pindar, Olympian Ode, 5.23.
[1192] Now as to the man who thinks with Dio that hair is much more fitting to men than to women, is he not taking up a position quite opposed to the evident facts of the case?
For what sort of reason is there in allotting to the destiny of the stronger what weakens its very possessors? Assuredly a distinction had been made both by nature and by custom. By custom, inasmuch as hair is not esteemed beautiful in all males nor in all places, nor all times in the same males; for the Argives, before Thyrea, wore their hair long.[1] There are plenty of nations who have not adopted it in the past, nor do they today.
But always and in every place it has been thought a beautiful thing for each woman to make the care of her hair a most serious affair. The woman does not exist, nor has ever existed, who has submitted her head to a razor, unless on account of some ill-omened and horrible calamity, if so be that time has brought such misfortune. For my part I have never seen or heard of such an one.
Then again nature is in harmony with custom: for no woman who ever lived has shown herself as bald. And do not tell me that their hair-nets conceal this, for our comedies pierce all such subterfuges; and if any woman has lost her hair, this is a result of some illness, and with a little care she returns to her natural condition.
But of men worthy to be called men it is not easy to recall one who has not first reached this natural state. [1193] For this very thing seems to be the fulfillment of nature, even if it does not fall to the lot of all. And just as the sons of husbandmen, understanding from the vigorous growth of healthy sapling that it is their desire and nature to grow straight upward; just as these men, I say, prop up with stakes and supports as many of them as are not strong enough of themselves to accomplish this growth; so, since all those whose nature is best appear to be in a condition (of baldness) approaching my own, we must correct with the razor those not in such a state and thus assist nature.
Note 1: During the legendary battle of Thyrea, the story of which is told by Herodotus, Histories, 1.82, the Argives were defeated by the Spartans and lost control of the eastern coast of the Peloponnese.
[1193] Is it worth while calling to mind at this point how the Lacedaemonians dressed their hair before the battle of Thermopylae, that battle which Dio calls a great one for the very reason that the Lacedaemonians combed their hair before it, though not a man survived in the face of this evil omen.
Now I say this not with any wish to repeat what has already been said, namely that hair even in the living is a dead body; but because it grows from the dead. For this fact has been universally reported by the Therapeutae in Egypt; how a certain man whose hair had been close shaven died, and yet the year after displayed thick hair and beard.
Those then of the Greeks who perished most gloriously he has drawn into his story, but he deliberately omits those who won the noblest and greatest victories and who inflicted punishment upon the barbarian king both on behalf of these very men and for the rest of Greece. I allude to the Macedonians and to the Greeks who went inland with Alexander, and whom the Lacedaemonians did not join. These before the battle of Arbela,[1] which we may justly describe as a great battle, having learned by experience that hair is a disadvantage to soldiers, made the whole host of them shave, and with God, fortune, and valor to help them combined in the struggle of all the Greeks.
Now the reason for the prejudice against hair was the following, as Ptolemy son of Lagus related in his history, one who knew, for he was present at these events, and, because he was king at the time when he wrote his history, did not lie.
Note 1: Other name of the battle of Gaugamela.
[1193] A Macedonian with hair unusually long and a thick drooping beard, was attacking a Persian, but the Persian, although in danger, with excellent judgment drops the well-known oblong shield and spears from his hands, as insufficient for coping with the Macedonian. He then charges him, and contriving to slip in under his enemy's guard, seizes him by the beard and hair, and thus throws the soldier, who had not struck a blow, to the ground, drawing him to himself by the hair like a fish, and once fallen slays him with his drawn scimitar.
Some other Persian also saw this, and another and another, and soon they were all throwing away their shields, and in full pursuit of the enemy through the plain, where one would catch one man buy his hair, and another, another; for it now passed through the Persian army like a signal that these troops could be captured by their hair, and no one probably of Alexander's phalanx stood his ground except that portion which was bald. [1196] Meantime the king was in sore straits, exposed to unarmed men, against whom when fully armed his army was irresistible.
As it was, Alexander might have been compelled to retreat to Cilicia in disgrace, and to become the laughing-stock of the Greeks, as one who had been defeated in a battle of the hair! But as matters were (for it was already destined that the Heraclids should deprive the Achaemenids of their scepters), speedily understanding the danger, he orders the trumpets to sound the retreat, and when he has led his army as far away as possible, and has placed it in a good position, he lets loose the barbers upon it, and induced by the gifts of the king, they shaved the Macedonians en masse.
As to Darius and the Persians, the campaign no longer proceeded according to their hopes, for as there was no longer anything to hold on to, they were condemned to struggle in armor against much superior adversaries.
[1196] Hair neither makes men terrible nor makes them seem so, unless they be boogies to frighten children with; for we see soldiers, at the moment when they desire to intimidate the enemy, cover their heads with helmets. And the helmet, both in its name and its function, is nothing else than a brazen cranium. And if these are bedecked with horsehair, anyone who has ever put on a helmet must know what this is designed for.[1] But we ought to teach those who do not know that it is behind that they arrange it with hair fixed in rows between the felt lining and the helmet proper, nor could even Hephaestus himself manufacture the curved exterior as a support for hair. Standing as it does, it presents the clearest possible image of baldness, and in this way it is the most terrible of all things that soldiers wear.
Achilles, therefore, says that the Trojans again plucked up courage, not because they no longer saw this horsehair plumes floating in the wind, but - how does he put it?
Because they see not the front of my helmet flashing near them…[2]
Its shining surface, its smoothness, this precisely would be baldness and a bugbear. And if Achilles had long hair (for this also he asserts), we must remember that he was young, at the age which inclines to sudden anger, a time of life which has not yet reached perfection either of soul or of body. And it is natural that a young man's head should surge with hair, and his heart with wrath. Bus just as anger in the soul is not praised because of Achilles, so in the body hair is not commended as a marvel.
None the less I admit that, as he was born of [the goddess] Thetis, he was by nature the best endowed for the development of every virtue, and I express my belief concerning Achilles that, had he survived, he would not have been without his share both of baldness and of philosophy. When he was young he was in some way versed in music and in medicine, and moreover, he held in so light esteem whatever hair he had, that he purified it and dedicated it to a sacred tomb.[3]
Then again, Aristoxenus [4] says the very same thing about Socrates, namely that he was rough by nature to the point of anger, and that when overcome by passion he ran the gamut of all unseemliness. Socrates, however, was not yet bald at that time, for he was only twenty-five years of age when Parmenides and Zeno had come to Athens, according to Plato, to see the Panathenaic festival.[5] [1197] If anyone later had spoken of Socrates as harsh or as a long-haired man, I think that the speaker would have raised a great laugh at his own expense amongst those who knew the man, for of all men who had pursued philosophy up to that time, he was at once the baldest, and at the same time the gentlest.
Do not therefore condemn the hero to a head of hair, for at the time to which you refer he was only a springal who, a short time before, had not passed out of adolescence. Moreover, you could instance nothing as a proof that Achilles' hair would have remained until his old age. But I have many things which prove that it would not have remained, namely the case of his father and his grandfather, for I have actually seen their statues. He came from the race of the gods, and what has once been said concerning the form of the gods is sufficient.
Note 1: Synesius refers to the felt cap under a helmet.
Note 2: Homer, Iliad, 16.70-71.
Note 3: Homer, Iliad, 23.141ff. The tomb was of Patroclos.
Note 4: Aristoxenus of Tarentum was a pupil of Socrates' disciple Spintharus and Aristotle.
Note 5: Plato, Parmenides, 127B.
[1197] Why then as if you had picked up a windfall, do you hold fast these words:
She [Athena] seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.[1]
Again, why do you call attention to a morsel of salt fish for yourself, instead of dragging the whole line into view? Well then, since you will not do so, you make it necessary for us to produce it, as thus:
She stood behind, and seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.
Well done, Dio, for it is not redundant syllables that you have repressed, but those which contain the direct opposite of your argument. From this I divine that even at that moment of his age Achilles was somewhat bald. The goddess, the poet says, came behind him and caught him by the hair. Why anyone could catch hold of me, or of Socrates himself, nay even of the oldest man of the Greeks behind! For there the symbols of our perishable nature are left us. It is a possession belonging to neither man nor demon but clearly to a divine destiny and nature, to be altogether removed from participation in the mortal element.
She stood behind, and seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.
To catch him by his hair, she stood behind him: therefore, there was nothing front wherewith to catch him.
Note 1: Homer, Iliad, 1.197.
[1197] On the whole there is nothing good in Dio's argument on behalf of the growth of hair. And yet, if there had been any good in the case, Dio would have found it out, and if it had been small, would have represented it as great, for, even as matters are, he has gone a long way to find an example in the Lacedaemonians, an example quite valueless for his argument, at least as anyone else would think.
He seizes upon Homer as a sacred anchor and holds on to him to the end of his book, but he employs argument with entire injustice and rhetorically, as in the present instance, where he has cut out a bit of the verse as if it were a statute, and elsewhere calls up as witnesses parts of verses which do not exist, as though they existed. For he flatly defames Hector or rather Homer, and perhaps both Homer and Hector. Now the latter is represented to us as resembling the wisest men in the matter of cutting off his hair, and he who has written the truest things concerning the heroes makesthis clear, inasmuch as, I think, [1200] he made the campaign with some of these, and so served against the others, he who says these very things about Hector.
And if you go to Ilium, the moment you enter there any Ilian will conduct you to see the temple of Hector. His statue is easy to see, and those who see it are inclined to say that it was constructed with the intent to represent him as he held himself when he taunted his brother with his artificial beauty, to wit the care which he took with his hair.[1] As to what Dio wrote down as said by Homer concerning Hector,
and round about him
his dark locks were dragged,
let anyone show me where this occurs in the epic compositions of Homer.[2] I do not think Ion the rhapsode himself could find it. Moreover, how could Homer have made a hairy man of the very person whom he introduces into his poem as one who taunted another with his foppishness? It is as if Phileas had accused Andocides of sacrilege, just as if he were not himself the man who had filched the Gorgon's head from the shield of the goddess on the Acropolis. Such is your case in regard to this hero.[3]
Note 1: Homer, Iliad, 3.55.
Note 2: Homer, Iliad, 22.401-402. Probably, Synesius owned a defective copy. On the other hand, the essay is obviously a play, and as it can not be excluded that Dio never wrote an In Praise of Hair at all, Synesius may have tried to entertain his audience by presenting an argument that boomeranged himself.
Note 3: Unclear reference.
[1200] Again, if Menelaus had a fair-headed head, he was not long-haired, at least as far as we can learn from the narration, nor is that an encomium on hair. The poet only shows things as they existed, nor when Homer mentions a thing must this mention be regarded as of the nature of praise. But to Dio a mention of hair and a eulogy of it are one and the same thing for the sake of his own volubility. He proceeded on the one hand to attribute to the poetry what is not there, and on the other to deprive it of what is there, and this he has done with such boldness that in order to convince us by his argument that hair is much more becoming to men than to women, he says
of the deities Homer has other ways of praising the females, as when, for instance, he speaks of “ox-eyed” Hera, and “silver-footed” Thetis, while in the case of Zeus he praises most of all his hair.
Perchance his copy of Homer had been mutilated of many good line such as these,
Apollo king whom fair-haired Leto bore [1]
or
Place him at the fair-haired knees of Athena.[2]
And concerning Hera's plot to put Zeus to sleep,[3] he says that the goddess beautified herself in all other ways, and that in this she will have need also of her girdle, which, of its many powers, possesses one, the greatest of all, namely, of stealing away the mind from its possessors. Then in the same passage he says that she anointed herself with sweet oil and that
her hair
she combed, and bound up with her hands her shining tresses
fair, ambrosial.[4]
This is worthy then of a host of praises. It would also be quite worth while, now that the argument touches upon Zeus, of anyone would quote the many passages overlooked by Dio, and especially those which he knew quite well but pretended not to know.
[1201] I too know these passages, and I do not drag in false ones for the sake of my argument, nor could I admit that any one of the dwellers in heaven is hairy. The argument is the same alike for male and female. Zeus is not merely defined in his spherical shape than is the Aphrodite who dwells among the stars. And this has been said in like sense concerning Zeus also, whom Dio has brought in as the finishing touch to his argument, namely that of the things Homer relates concerning the gods, the greatest part are in accordance with popular opinion, and few in accord with truth. One single point is in accordance with popular opinion, to wit, those hairs which gather strength from the head of Zeus and together shake the very heaven, a conception which has received the assent of the masses and the sculptors. But apart from Homer and the Lacedaemonians there is not a shred left of Dio's argument.
And even they be present, he has not, as I observed just now, found anything to say that is worth while concerning the nature of hairs, either by discovery of his own or by borrowing from them. He has not said of what sort they are, he has not taught their nature, he has not shown how they are beneficial to those who possess them, nor how they are evil to those who do not possess them. The present argument, examining the real nature of the facts, has discovered that baldness is divine and related to the divine, that it is the fulfillment of nature, and a real shrine to the god through whom we have wisdom.
I pass in review other innumerable benefits which it brings to body and soul, what their character is and their cause; and thus our argument has brought forth nothing which is unsupported by a luminous exposition. And it has become clear, moreover, that hair has all the opposites of these things, lack of reason, animal propensities, and all that is of the part opposed to God. Locks have been shown to be as it were awns and pods of the animal, the playthings of nature, mere excrescences of imperfect matter.
Note 1: Homer, Iliad, 1.36.
Note 2: Homer, Iliad, 6.273.
Note 3: Homer, Iliad, 14.159.
Note 4: Homer, Iliad, 14.175-177.
[1201] Now I think it is befitting to divide all men according to their races and pursuits, and to show which the one argument praises, and which the other. The adulterers certainly come from the men who care for their hair. Homer depicts the seducer as one fingering his shining locks,[1] in the sense that his hair was adorned for the ruin of women. And assuredly this man is himself an adulterer, the prince of adulterers, he against whom the reproach was uttered.
This one race of men is the most treacherous and the most hostile within the homes of his own countrymen. And those in defense of whom we take the field in war, for whom we incur danger, that they may bot be outraged -I speak of our daughters and wives- those very ones, if the occasion arises, some fashionably dressed young man seizes upon and carries away to whatever quarter of the sea or land he desires, and if not to the sea or land far distant, to some dark corner or hiding place. Yet the heart of a wife who has been made a prisoner in wartime might remain true to the man who had married her. But the adulterer is that very thing which has first plundered her good will from the soul of him who is the partner of her life, and the loss of his erring wife is not merely half a loss. With justice then do the laws arm the executioner against these men, and the gardeners grow Attic radishes with which the first punishment is meted out to them as soon as they are taken in the act. It is this one class of men of the sort that has ruined many homes, [1204] and already certain cities also. And adultery became the pretext for a clash of two continents one against the other and for the crossing of the Greeks against Priam's realm.
There is another vice which is much worse than this, one which exposed Alexander to our censure, and to which were addicted people like Cleisthenes,[2] the Timarchi, and all who dispose of their beauty for money, or if not for money then for something else, and if for no other end, simply for their abominable pleasure. In a word, let it be said that these effeminate wretches all make a cult of their hair. There are some who are to be found openly in the brothels, and yet they think they are gaining their end, since it is the best way to display fully the effeminacy of their character. And whoever is secretly perverted, even if he should swear the contrary in the marketplace, and should present no other proof of being an acolyte of Cotys save only in a great care of his hair, anointing it and arranging it in ringlets, he might well be denounced to all as one who has celebrated orgies to the Chian goddess and the Ithyphalli. For Pherecydes covered himself with his cloak, said, 'It is evident from my skin,' and showed the malady on his finger. But we can recognize by his hair a young man under influence of unnatural passion.
Note 1: Homer, Iliad, 11.385.
Note 2: Cleisthenes is mentioned in three comedies (Acharnians 117, Clouds 355, Thesmophoriazusae 574-564) by Aristophanes as a well-known pathicus, a man who liked to play the passive role (being penetrated) during homosexual intercourse. The Alexander referred to is Alexander of Abonutichus.
[1204] Now if the proverb is a wise thing (and how can it fail to be wise, when Aristotle says of it that proverbs have been saved, owing to their conciseness and clearness, as remnants by which to recall the old philosophy that perished in the great destructive revolutions of humanity?)[1] - this, too, is a proverb, and it is also an aphorism which embodies a self-evident principle in the antiquity of that philosophy from which it is derived, and so we look at it intently. In every way the ancients were more skilled in unravelling truth than we of today. What, for instance, is the following aphorism, and what does it mean?
There is no man graced with hair who is not…
The fag end you may yourself fit in to the rhythm of the trimeter; I will not utter that fearsome word, nor the thing signified by it.
Well done, you fitted it carefully - well what think you now?
Bless me! This is the truth!
The oracular utterance is before you. It is self-evident; but how many witnesses does it drag into court, both those who are now using it and as many as have used it before! For what makes proverbs immortal is the very fact that people are continually using them, because the matters themselves with which they deal are always calling them to memory. For things we observe in what is continually happening call them to witness, and give evidence (for them) by examples themselves.
Note 1: Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1074B.
[1204] But although this is the case, it is wonderful what an argument Dio has brought in favor of hair. What further need have we of a Plato to refute this, when the rhetorician has made it evident that rhetoric is merely a hair-dressers' art? Or does it seem likely to you that the hair-dyers would make locks of hair lovelier, because a pure Greek praised such a possession before a crowded house?
I think that those who have been emasculated in [1205] the rites of Cybele will give him [Dio] abundant thanks for his discourse, and also the man who looks upon his neighbor's wife with unholy eyes. Assuredly he has drenched the head of everyone of these with his discourse, as though with perfumed oil. It is inevitable that what is in popular esteem should be zealously aimed at, and most of all when he who distributes praise happens to be a man of distinguished reputation. And it follows from this, that such a man is quite capable of augmenting in our city the list of these most baleful creatures.
But as to baldness, what types of men does it oppose to these? What men have we praised in place of adulterers? Those evidently from whom spring men who live in hallowed precincts, priests, prophets, and acolytes; again, in the schools, schoolmasters and guardians of youth; and those in the ranks of the army in prosperous circumstances, namely generals and colonels; and those esteemed everywhere by the majority of men to have superior intelligence. And I think that the bard also whom Agamemnon left behind him as guardian of Clytaemnestra was of our race.[1] For he would never have entrusted to a long-haired man a wife who came of a family already discredited.
Painters also furnish us with excellent testimony in favor of our argument, when they do not paint from the original, but also profess that they have found a model appropriate to the task. For should one of them be given a commission to paint an adulterer or effeminate wretch on a panel, if he selects a long-haired man to pose for him, he has fulfilled his order. If you order of him a philosopher or acolyte, a dignified bald man will certainly take his place on that panel, for this the device on the coin.
Note 1: Homer, Odyssey, 3.267.
[1205] I have therefore made a present of this discourse to philosophers, priests, and temperate men of every description. In it I have expressed all piety to the divine part, and have given good counsel towards men.
If my work when once published is well thought of by the multitude, with the result that thereafter the wearers of long hair are put to shame and that they adopt at least a rather moderate and restrained cropping of their hair, and if it inclines them to congratulate those who need not the barber, they need not thank me for this. Let this only be the merit of my view of the case, that through it the merest tyro in speech appears to be somebody, although compared with the most brilliant man.
If, on the other hand, I do not succeed in convincing these people by my discourse, then let them blame me, for actually failing, with all the facts in my favor, to withstand the simple grace of Dio.
May it also profit the multitude to have taken up this essay in their hands!