The Rev. John More, of Norwich, a worthy clergyman in Elizabeth’s reign, who is said to have had the longest and largest Beard of any Englishman of his time, seems to have chosen this Spartan for his model; since when asked to give a reason for it he replied, “that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance.” And Baudinus, quoted by Pagenstecher, says, Frederick Taubman, the celebrated German wit, humourist, and theologian, being asked the same question answered, “in order that whenever I behold these hairs, I may remember that I am no vile coward or old woman, but a man, called Frederick Taubman.”
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, lest 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.[10] Be that as it may, Greek freedom and Greek Beards expired together.
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.
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 Philosophers, or lovers of wisdom—they with whom all that distinguished Greek intellect was a special study and profession; who were in fact the most civilized portion of the community.