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Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Clement of Alexandria in Print
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This Part: 134 Pages
Page 96
The Hair.
About the hair, the following seems right. Let the head of men be shaven, unless it has curly hair. But let the chin have the hair. But let not twisted locks hang far down from the head, gliding into womanish ringlets. For an ample beard suffices for men. And if one, too, shave a part of his beard, it must not be made entirely bare, for this is a disgraceful sight. The shaving of the chin to the skin is reprehensible, approaching to plucking out the hair and smoothing. For instance, thus the Psalmist, delighted with the hair of the beard, says, "As the ointment that descends on the beard, the beard of Aaron." [1682]
Having celebrated the beauty of the beard by a repetition, he made the face to shine with the ointment of the Lord.
Since cropping is to be adopted not for the sake of elegance, but on account of the necessity of the case; the hair of the head, that it may not grow so long as to come down and interfere with the eyes, and that of the moustache similarly, which is dirtied in eating, is to be cut round, not by the razor, for that were not well-bred, but by a pair of cropping scissors. But the hair on the chin is not to be disturbed, as it gives no trouble, and lends to the face dignity and paternal terror. [1683]
[1682] Ps. cxxxiii. 2.
[1683] [Here Clement's rules are arbitrary, and based on their existing ideas of propriety. If it be not improper to shave the head, much less to shave the face, which he allows in part.]
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