Facial Hair

[Theodosius the Great]

Here's another pre-Hadrianic example of a bearded soldier: note the standard bearer (aquilifer) in the background. And a Praetorian aquilifer no less!

I have been led to believe that around the time of Caesar that Roman society had a really negative attitude towards beards and it wasn't until Hadrian bucked the trend that it became acceptable

Having seen all the pre-Hadrianic evidence for beards on this thread I don't think we can say Hadrian made it acceptable but he certainly made it fashionable. A modern parallel would be Abraham Lincoln. If you look at this list of US Presidents you'll see that all of Lincoln's Republican successors sported a beard until McKinley. Though I think Lincoln did make it acceptable as well as fashionable.

Theo,

I think you have a good point. Always an unconventional character in every unit. I'm lucky-- I portray a barbarian. And as we all think we know (nuk, nuk, nuk), those barbarians were so backward they had not the where-with-all to shave.

Yep, and those backward barbarians only had animal skins to clothe themselves.

~Theo