Beard
A beard is the hair that grows on the jaw, chin, upper lip, lower lip, cheeks, and neck of humans and some non-human animals. In humans, beards are most common among pubescent and adult males, though some women also develop them.
Attitudes toward beards have varied across history, shaped by cultural traditions and fashion trends. Several religions require or encourage the wearing of beards, and some societies have associated them with masculinity, virility, virtue, beauty, wisdom, strength, fertility, sexual prowess, and high social status. In contrast, in cultures where beards are uncommon or unfashionable, they may be linked with poor hygiene or eccentricity. Beards can also provide environmental benefits, including protection from cold weather and sun exposure.
Biology
The beard develops in human males during puberty. Beard growth is linked to stimulation of hair follicles in the area by dihydrotestosterone, which continues to affect beard growth after puberty. Dihydrotestosterone also promotes balding. Dihydrotestosterone is produced from testosterone, the levels of which vary with season. Beard growth rate is also genetic.Evolution
characterize beards as a secondary sexual characteristic because they are unique to one sex,yet do not play a direct role in reproduction. Charles Darwin first suggested a possible evolutionary explanation of beards in his work The Descent of Man, which hypothesized that the process of sexual selection may have led to beards. Modern biologists have reaffirmed the role of sexual selection in the evolution of beards, concluding that there is evidence that a majority of women find men with beards more attractive than men without beards.
Evolutionary psychology explanations for the existence of beards include signalling sexual maturity and signalling dominance by the increasing perceived size of jaws; clean-shaved faces are rated less dominant than bearded. Some scholars assert that it is not yet established whether the sexual selection leading to beards is rooted in attractiveness or dominance. A beard can be explained as an indicator of a male's overall condition. The rate of facial hairiness appears to influence male attractiveness. The presence of a beard makes the male vulnerable in hand-to-hand fights, which is costly, so biologists have speculated that there must be other evolutionary benefits that outweigh that drawback. Excess testosterone evidenced by the beard may indicate mild immunosuppression, which may support spermatogenesis.
History
Ancient and classical world
Phoenicia
, the ancient Semitic civilization centered on the coastline of the Eastern Mediterranean, gave great attention to the hair and beard. It was arranged in three, four, or five rows of small tight curls, and extended from ear to ear around the cheeks and chin. Sometimes, however, in lieu of the many rows, we find one row only, the beard falling in tresses curled at the extremity. There is no indication of the Phoenicians having cultivated mustachios.Israelites
society placed a special importance on the beard. Many male religious figures mentioned in the Tanakh are recorded to have had facial hair. According to biblical scholars, the shaving of hair, particularly of the corners of the beard, was a mourning custom. The religious cultivation of beards by Israelites may have been done as a deliberate attempt to distinguish their behaviour in comparison to their neighbours, reducing the impact of foreign customs as a result. The Hittites and Elamites were clean-shaven, and the Sumerians were also frequently without a beard; conversely, the Egyptians and Libyans shaved the beard into very stylised elongated goatees. File:Black Obelisk, Jewish delegation to Shalmaneser III.jpg|thumb|center|upright=4|The Israelite king Jehu kneels before Shalmaneser III as carved on the Black Obelisk. He and the Israelite delegation are distinguished from the Assyrians by distinctive beards.Mesopotamia
n civilizations devoted great care to oiling and dressing their beards, using tongs and curling irons to create elaborate ringlets and tiered patterns.Egypt
While generally ancient Egyptian fashion called for men to be clean-shaven, during at least some periods the highest ranking Ancient Egyptians grew hair on their chins which was often dyed a reddish orange with henna and sometimes plaited with an interwoven gold thread. A metal false beard, or postiche, which was a sign of sovereignty, was worn by kings and by queens regnant. This was held in place by a ribbon tied over the head and attached to a gold chin strap, a fashion existing from about.Greece
The ancient Greeks regarded the beard as a badge or sign of virility; in the Homeric epics it had almost sanctified significance, so that a common form of entreaty was to touch the beard of the person addressed. According to William Smith in these ancient times the moustache was shaven, leaving clear the space around the lips. It was only shaven as a sign of mourning, though in this case it was instead often left untrimmed. A smooth face was regarded as a sign of effeminacy. The Spartans punished cowards by shaving off a portion of their beards. Greek beards were also frequently curled with tongs. Youngsters usually did not grow a beard, moreover wearing a beard became optional for adults in the.Macedon
In Ancient Macedonia, during the time of Alexander the Great the custom of smooth shaving was introduced. Alexander strongly promoted shaving during his reign because he believed it looked tidier. Reportedly, Alexander ordered his soldiers to be clean-shaven, fearing that their beards would serve as handles for their enemies to grab and hold onto. The practice of shaving spread from the Macedonians, whose kings are represented on coins, statues, etc. with smooth faces, throughout the whole known world of the Macedonian Empire. Laws were passed against it, without effect, at Rhodes and Byzantium; even Aristotle conformed to the new custom, unlike the other philosophers, who retained the beard as a badge of their profession. Due to this, a man with a beard, after the Macedonian period, implied a philosopher; there are many allusions to this custom of the later philosophers in such proverbs as: "The beard does not make the sage." Due to this association with philosophers, who lost reputation over time, the beard acquired more and more a negative connotation, as in Theodore Prodromos, Lucian of Samosata and Julian the apostateRome
Shaving seems to have not been known to the Romans during their early history. Pliny tells us that P. Ticinius was the first who brought a barber to Rome, which was in the 454th year from the founding of the city. Scipio Aemilianus was apparently the first among the Romans who shaved his beard. However, after that point, shaving seems to have caught on very quickly, and soon almost all Roman men were clean-shaven; being clean-shaven became a sign of being Roman and not Greek. Only in the later times of the Republic did the Roman youth begin shaving their beards only partially, trimming it into an ornamental form; prepubescent boys oiled their chins in hopes of forcing premature growth of a beard.Still, beards remained rare among the Romans throughout the Late Republic and the early Principate. In a general way, in Rome at this time, a long beard was considered a mark of slovenliness and squalor. The censors L. Veturius and P. Licinius compelled M. Livius, who had been banished, on his restoration to the city, to be shaved, to lay aside his dirty appearance, and then, but not until then, to come into the Senate. The first occasion of shaving was regarded as the beginning of manhood, and the day on which this took place was celebrated as a festival. Usually, this was done when the young Roman assumed the toga virilis. Augustus did it in his twenty-fourth year, Caligula in his twentieth. The hair cut off on such occasions was consecrated to a god. Thus Nero put his into a golden box set with pearls, and dedicated it to Jupiter Capitolinus. The Romans, unlike the Greeks, let their beards grow in time of mourning; so did Augustus for the death of Julius Caesar. Other occasions of mourning on which the beard was allowed to grow were appearance as a reus, condemnation, or some public calamity. On the other hand, men of the country areas around Rome in the time of Varro seem not to have shaved except when they came to market every eighth day, so that their usual appearance was most likely a short stubble.
In the the Emperor Hadrian, according to Dio Cassius, was the first emperor to grow a full beard; Plutarch says that he did it to hide scars on his face. This was a period in Rome of widespread imitation of Greek culture, and many other men grew beards in imitation of Hadrian and the Greek fashion. After Hadrian until the reign of Constantine the Great all adult emperors appear in busts and coins with beards; but Constantine and his successors until the reign of Phocas, with the exception of Julian the Apostate, are represented as beardless. The wearing of the beard as an imperial fashion was subsequently revived by Phocas at the beginning of the 7th century and this fashion lasted until the end of the Byzantine Empire.
The "philosopher's beard"
In Greco-Roman antiquity the beard was "seen as the defining characteristic of the philosopher; philosophers had to have beards, and anyone with a beard was assumed to be a philosopher." While one may be tempted to think that Socrates and Plato sported "philosopher's beards", such is not the case.Shaving was not widespread in Athens during fifth and fourth-century BCE and so they would not be distinguished from the general populace for having a beard. The popularity of shaving did not rise in the region until the example of Alexander the Great near the end of the fourth century BCE. The popularity of shaving did not spread to Rome until the end of the third century BCE following its acceptance by Scipio Africanus. In Rome shaving's popularity grew to the point that for a respectable Roman citizen, it was seen almost as compulsory.
The idea of the philosopher's beard gained traction when in 155 BCE three philosophers arrived in Rome as Greek diplomats: Carneades, head of the Platonic Academy; Critolaus of Aristotle's Lyceum; and the head of the Stoics, Diogenes of Babylon. "In contrast to their beautifully clean-shaven Italian audience, these three intellectuals all sported magnificent beards." Thus the connection of beards and philosophy caught hold of the Roman public imagination.
The importance of the beard to Roman philosophers is best seen by the extreme value that the Stoic philosopher Epictetus placed on it. As historian John Sellars puts it, Epictetus "affirmed the philosopher's beard as something almost sacred...to express the idea that philosophy is no mere intellectual hobby but rather a way of life that, by definition, transforms every aspect of one's behavior, including one's shaving habits. If someone continues to shave in order to look the part of a respectable Roman citizen, it is clear that they have not yet embraced philosophy conceived as a way of life and have not yet escaped the social customs of the majority...the true philosopher will only act according to reason or according to nature, rejecting the arbitrary conventions that guide the behavior of everyone else."
Epictetus saw his beard as an integral part of his identity and held that he would rather be executed than submit to any force demanding he remove it. In his Discourses 1.2.29, he puts forward such a hypothetical confrontation: Come now, Epictetus, shave your beard'. If I am a philosopher, I answer, I will not shave it off. 'Then I will have you beheaded'. If it will do you any good, behead me." The act of shaving "would be to compromise his philosophical ideal of living in accordance with nature and it would be to submit to the unjustified authority of another."
This was not theoretical in the age of Epictetus, for the Emperor Domitian had the hair and beard forcibly shaven off of the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana "as punishment for anti-State activities." This disgraced Apollonius while avoiding making him a martyr like Socrates. Well before his declaration of "death before shaving" Epictetus had been forced to flee Rome when Domitian banished all philosophers from Italy under threat of execution.
Roman philosophers sported different styles of beards to distinguish which school they belonged to. Cynics used long dirty beards to indicate their "strict indifference to all external goods and social customs.” Stoics occasionally trimmed and washed their beards in accordance with their view "that it is acceptable to prefer certain external goods so long as they are never valued above virtue.” Peripatetics took great care of their beards believing in accordance with Aristotle that "external goods and social status were necessary for the good life together with virtue". To a Roman philosopher in this era, having a beard and its condition indicated their commitment to live in accordance with their philosophy.