Why did the Romans shave their beards ?

[Crispvs]

As Kevin says, the Romans thought of their honourable ancestors as bearded, hence the common depictions of a bearded Marcus Brutus. At least one statue exists of Nero which shows him with a beard and there is a bearded soldier shown on one of the Cancalleria reliefs dating to Domitian's reign. Getting into the second century, as Uwe suggests, Trajan's column mainly shows Roman soldiers who are clean shaven but there are still some who have beards. The mid-second century Croy Hill relief shows three soldiers: two are clean shaven but the man in the middle has a full beard. If we accept the idea that the lower classes copy the fashions of the upper classes (until the 1960s anyway), depictions of emperors and other extremely wealthy people might be instructive. Throughout the first century BC, hair was straight and reasonable short and beards were not worn (except by the dear departed M. Brutus, whose sculptors were obviously too busy to realise that shaving was the current fashion). By the middle of the 1st century AD curly hair seems to have been a bit more fashionable; perhaps beards too, a fashion maybe followed by Nero, princeps and self proclaimed king of style and fashion. By the end of the first century Trajan preferred a generous bowl cut and shaven cheeks and chin but within a few years Hadrian had cut the hair back a bit and grown a beard. This must have been a popular idea as for the next sixty years or so big, curly perms were in, along with big curly beards, which gradually straightened out into Septimius Severus and Clodius Albinus' long and somewhat straggly beards. Pretty soon however, the usurper emperors of the third century (and their men, presumably) were getting crew cuts and were clipping their beards short. Before Diocletian had been on the throne for long however, hair was starting to get a bit longer and beards a bit fuller. By the time Constantine had the one and only new piece of sculpture used on his arch commishioned, beards were quite full again, although the new emperor himself, realising that Christianity was the new fashion, shaved off his tetrarchic beard and grew his fashionable bowl cut a bit longer to look more like Christ (that is, the third to fourth century version of Christ whose depiction does a good job of hiding any reference to Judaism or the Jews). One imagines that a lot of men followed this fashion. I won't go on but I am sure you get the picture by now.<br>
Obviously not all men would have followed the upper class fashions to the letter, but as the Croy Hill relief suggests, some of that fashion may have filtered down to every level of society. The two flanking soldiers aren't bothered but the soldier in the middle exhibits a style which looks quite reminiscent of his emperor: Antoninus Pius. Could this image speak of a reality for perhaps all of Roman history? That perhaps those who could or could be bothered followed the fashion, and the others did whatever seemed right to them, a little like today.<br>
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Does this help or does it just confuse the picture?<br>
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Crispvs <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=crispvs>Crispvs</A> at: 1/21/05 2:04 am<br></i>