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| Chapter III.—Against Men Who Embellish Themselves.
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Chapter III.—Against Men Who Embellish Themselves.
To such an extent, then, has luxury advanced,
that not only are the female sex deranged about this frivolous pursuit,
but men also are infected with the disease.1595
For not being free of the
love of finery, they are not in health; but inclining to voluptuousness,
they become effeminate, cutting their hair in an ungentlemanlike and
meretricious way, clothed in fine and transparent garments, chewing
mastich,1596
| 1596 [Query, De re
Nicotiana?] | smelling of perfume.1597
| 1597 [Smelling of Nicotine?] | What can one say on
seeing them? Like one who judges people by their foreheads, he will divine
them to be adulterers and effeminate, addicted to both kinds of venery,
haters of hair, destitute of hair, detesting the bloom of manliness,
and adorning their locks like women. “Living for unholy acts of
audacity, these fickle wretches do reckless and nefarious deeds,”
says the Sibyl. For their service the towns are full of those who
take out hair by pitch-plasters, shave, and pluck out hairs from these
womanish creatures. And shops are erected and opened everywhere; and
adepts at this meretricious fornication make a deal of money openly by
those who plaster themselves, and give their hair to be pulled out in
all ways by those who make it their trade, feeling no shame before the
onlookers or those who approach, nor before themselves, being men. Such
are those addicted to base passions, whose whole body is made smooth by
the violent tuggings of pitch-plasters. It is utterly impossible to get
beyond such effrontery. If nothing is left undone by them, neither shall
anything be left unspoken by me. Diogenes, when he was being sold, chiding
like a teacher one of these degenerate creatures, said very manfully,
“Come, youngster, buy for yourself a man,” chastising his
meretriciousness by an ambiguous speech. But for those who are men to
shave and smooth themselves, how ignoble! As for dyeing of hair, and
anointing of grey locks, and dyeing them yellow, these are practices of
abandoned effeminates; and their feminine combing of themselves is a thing
to be let alone. For they think, that like serpents they divest themselves
of the old age of their head by painting and renovating themselves. But
though they do doctor the hair cleverly, they will not escape wrinkles,
nor will they elude death by tricking time. For it is not dreadful,
it is not dreadful to appear old, when you are not able to shut your
eyes to the fact that you are so.
The more, then, a man hastes to the end, the more
truly venerable is he, having God alone as his senior, since He is
the eternal aged One, He who is older than all things. Prophecy has
called him the “Ancient of days; and the hair of His head was
as pure wool,” says the prophet.1598
“And none other,” says the Lord, “can make the hair
white or black.”1599
How, then, do these godless ones work
in rivalry with God, or rather violently oppose Him, when they
transmute the hair made white by Him? “The crown of old men is
great experience,”1600
says Scripture; and the hoary hair of their
countenance is the blossom of large experience. But these dishonour
the reverence of age, the head covered with grey hairs. It is not, it
is not possible for him to show the head true who has a fraudulent head.
“But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard Him,
and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off,
concerning the former conversation, the old man (not the hoary man,
but him that is) corrupt according to deceitful lusts; and be renewed
(not by dyeings and ornaments), but in the spirit of your mind; and
put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness.”1601
But for one who is a man to comb himself and shave
himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, to arrange his hair
at the looking-glass, to shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and
smooth them, how womanly! And, in truth, unless you saw them naked, you
would suppose them to be women. For although not allowed to wear gold,
yet out of effeminate desire they enwreath their latches and fringes
with leaves of gold; or, getting certain spherical figures of the
same metal made, they fasten them to their ankles, and hang them from
their necks. This is a device of enervated men, who are dragged to the
women’s apartments, amphibious and lecherous beasts. For this is a
meretricious and impious form of snare. For God wished women to be smooth,
and rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his
mane; but has adorned man, like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him,
as an attribute of manhood, with shaggy breasts,—a sign this of
strength and rule. So also cocks, which fight in defence of the hens,
he has decked with combs, as it were helmets; and so high a value does
God set on these locks, that He orders them to make their appearance
on men simultaneously with discretion, and delighted with a venerable
look, has honoured gravity of countenance with grey hairs. But wisdom,
and discriminating judgments that are hoary with
wisdom, attain maturity with time,
and by the vigour of long experience give strength to old age, producing
grey hairs, the admirable flower of venerable wisdom, conciliating
confidence. This, then, the mark of the man, the beard, by which he is
seen to be a man, is older than Eve, and is the token of the superior
nature. In this God deemed it right that he should excel, and dispersed
hair over man’s whole body. Whatever smoothness and softness
was in him He abstracted from his side when He formed the woman Eve,
physically receptive, his partner in parentage, his help in household
management, while he (for he had parted with all smoothness) remained
a man, and shows himself man. And to him has been assigned action, as
to her suffering; for what is shaggy is drier and warmer than what is
smooth. Wherefore males have both more hair and more heat than females,
animals that are entire than the emasculated, perfect than imperfect. It
is therefore impious to desecrate the symbol of manhood, hairiness.1602
But the embellishment of smoothing (for I am warned by the Word), if
it is to attract men, is the act of an effeminate person,—if to
attract women, is the act of an adulterer; and both must be driven as
far as possible from our society. “But the very hairs of your
head are all numbered,” says the Lord;1603
those on the chin, too,
are numbered, and those on the whole body. There must be therefore no
plucking out, contrary to God’s appointment, which has counted1604
| 1604 έγκαταριθμένην
seems to be here used in a middle,
not a passive sense, as καταριθμημένος
is sometimes. | them in according to His will. “Know
ye not yourselves,” says the apostle, “that Christ
Jesus is in you?”1605
Whom, had we known as dwelling in us, I know
not how we could have dared to dishonour. But the using of pitch to pluck
out hair (I shrink from even mentioning the shamelessness connected
with this process), and in the act of bending back and bending down,
the violence done to nature’s modesty by stepping out and bending
backwards in shameful postures, yet the doers not ashamed of themselves,
but conducting themselves without shame in the midst of the youth, and in
the gymnasium, where the prowess of man is tried; the following of this
unnatural practice, is it not the extreme of licentiousness? For those
who engage in such practices in public will scarcely behave with modesty
to any at home. Their want of shame in public attests their unbridled
licentiousness in private.1606
| 1606
[Such were the manners with which the Gospel was forced everywhere to
contend. That they were against nature is sufficiently clear from the
remains of decency in some heathen. Herodotus (book i. cap. 8) tells
us that the Lydians counted it disgraceful even for a man to be seen
naked.] | For he who in the light of day denies his manhood,
will prove himself manifestly a woman by night. “There shall not
be,” said the Word by Moses, “a harlot of the daughters of
Israel; there shall not be a fornicator of the sons of Israel.”1607
But the pitch does good, it is said. Nay, it defames,
say I. No one who entertains right sentiments would wish to appear a
fornicator, were he not the victim of that vice, and study to defame
the beauty of his form. No one would, I say, voluntarily choose to do
this. “For if God foreknew those who are called, according to His
purpose, to be conformed to the image of His Son,” for whose sake,
according to the blessed apostle, He has appointed “Him to be
the first-born among many brethren,”1608
are they not godless
who treat with indignity the body which is of like form with the Lord?
The man, who would be beautiful, must adorn that
which is the most beautiful thing in man, his mind, which every day he
ought to exhibit in greater comeliness; and should pluck out not hairs,
but lusts. I pity the boys possessed by the slave-dealers, that are decked
for dishonour. But they are not treated with ignominy by themselves, but
by command the wretches are adorned for base gain. But how disgusting
are those who willingly practice the things to which, if compelled,
they would, if they were men, die rather than do?
But life has reached this pitch of licentiousness
through the wantonness of wickedness, and lasciviousness is diffused over
the cities, having become law. Beside them women stand in the stews,
offering their own flesh for hire for lewd pleasure, and boys, taught
to deny their sex, act the part of women.
Luxury has deranged all things; it has disgraced
man. A luxurious niceness seeks everything, attempts everything, forces
everything, coerces nature. Men play the part of women, and women that
of men, contrary to nature; women are at once wives and husbands: no
passage is closed against libidinousness; and their promiscuous lechery
is a public institution, and luxury is domesticated. O miserable
spectacle! horrible conduct! Such are the trophies of your social
licentiousness which are exhibited: the evidence of these deeds are the
prostitutes. Alas for such wickedness! Besides, the wretches know not
how many tragedies the uncertainty of intercourse produces. For fathers,
unmindful of children of theirs that have been exposed, often without
their knowledge, have intercourse with a son that has debauched himself,
and daughters that are prostitutes; and licence in lust shows them to
be the men that have begotten them.
These things your wise laws allow:
people may sin legally; and the execrable indulgence in pleasure they
call a thing indifferent. They who commit adultery against nature think
themselves free from adultery. Avenging justice follows their audacious
deeds, and, dragging on themselves inevitable calamity, they purchase
death for a small sum of money. The miserable dealers in these wares
sail, bringing a cargo of fornication, like wine or oil; and others,
far more wretched, traffic in pleasures as they do in bread and sauce,
not heeding the words of Moses, “Do not prostitute thy daughter,
to cause her to be a whore, lest the land fall to whoredom, and the
land become full of wickedness.”1609
Such was predicted of old, and the result is
notorious: the whole earth has now become full of fornication and
wickedness. I admire the ancient legislators of the Romans: these detested
effeminacy of conduct; and the giving of the body to feminine purposes,
contrary to the law of nature, they judged worthy of the extremest
penalty, according to the righteousness of the law.
For it is not lawful to pluck out the beard,1610
| 1610 [When the loss of the beard
was a token of foppery and often of something worse, shaving would be
frivolity; but here he treats of extirpation.] | man’s
natural and noble ornament.
“A youth with his first beard: for with this, youth is most
graceful.”
By and by he is anointed, delighting
in the beard “on which descended” the prophetic
“ointment”1611
with which Aaron was honoured.
And it becomes him who is rightly trained, on whom
peace has pitched its tent, to preserve peace also with his hair.
What, then, will not women with
strong propensities to lust practice, when they look on men
perpetrating such enormities? Rather we ought not to call such
as these men, but lewd wretches (βατάλοι),
and effeminate (γύνιδες),
whose voices are feeble, and whose clothes are womanish both in feel
and dye. And such creatures are manifestly shown to be what they are
from their external appearance, their clothes, shoes, form, walk, cut of
their hair, look. “For from his look shall a man be known,”
says the Scripture, “from meeting a man the man is known: the dress
of a man, the step of his foot, the laugh of his teeth, tell tales of
him.”1612
For these, for the most part, plucking out the rest
of their hair, only dress that on the head, all but binding their locks
with fillets like women. Lions glory in their shaggy hair, but are
armed by their hair in the fight; and boars even are made imposing by
their mane; the hunters are afraid of them when they see them bristling
their hair.
“The fleecy sheep are loaded with their wool.”1613
| 1613 Hesiod, Works and Days, i. 232. |
And their wool the loving Father
has made abundant for thy use, O man, having taught thee to sheer
their fleeces. Of the nations, the Celts and Scythians wear their hair
long, but do not deck themselves. The bushy hair of the barbarian has
something fearful in it; and its auburn (ξανθόν) colour
threatens war, the hue being somewhat akin to blood. Both these barbarian
races hate luxury. As clear witnesses will be produced by the German,
the Rhine;1614
| 1614 Of which they
drink. | and by the Scythian, the waggon. Sometimes the Scythian
despises even the waggon: its size seems sumptuousness to the barbarian;
and leaving its luxurious ease, the Scythian man leads a frugal life. For
a house sufficient, and less encumbered than the waggon, he takes his
horse, and mounting it, is borne where he wishes. And when faint with
hunger, he asks his horse for sustenance; and he offers his veins, and
supplies his master with all he possesses—his blood. To the nomad
the horse is at once conveyance and sustenance; and the warlike youth of
the Arabians (these are other nomads) are mounted on camels. They sit on
breeding camels; and these feed and run at the same time, carrying their
masters the whilst, and bear the house with them. And if drink fail the
barbarians, they milk them; and after that their food is spent, they do
not spare even their blood, as is reported of furious wolves. And these,
gentler than the barbarians, when injured, bear no remembrance of the
wrong, but sweep bravely over the desert, carrying and nourishing their
masters at the same time.
Perish, then, the savage beasts whose food is
blood! For it is unlawful for men, whose body is nothing but flesh
elaborated of blood, to touch blood. For human blood has become a partaker
of the Word:1615
it is a participant of grace by the Spirit; and if any one injure him,
he will not escape unnoticed. Man may, though naked in body, address
the Lord. But I approve the simplicity of the barbarians: loving an
unencumbered life, the barbarians have abandoned luxury. Such the Lord
calls us to be—naked of finery, naked of vanity, wrenched from
our sins, bearing only the wood of life, aiming only at salvation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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