Veni, vidi, baldness

Baldness is a very contemporary subject, about which we make a comedy of manners, about which we worry when looking in the mirror, or about which we trade, at a time when the global budget for hair transplants is around tens of billions of euros per year.

Robinson Baudry and Caroline Husquin suggest taking a step aside on this subject, to ask how it was defined, thought about and treated two thousand years ago, in the Roman world at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. Beneath its light, even comic appearances, the subject and its treatment are completely serious, since they touch on completely solid fields of research: the history of medicine, identities, politics, religion and, above all, the body, today in full development within ancient studies.

Describing and treating the problem

There is no shortage of documentation – a fact rare enough, in ancient history, to be noted – from literature describing, mocking or treating a person’s baldness, to archeology, including inscriptions and other representations on stone. The words to designate baldness and those who were affected by it were numerous in Antiquity, starting with the adjective calvus (and its Greek equivalent phalakros), which we see the link with our French terminology. Some Romans even wore a cognomen which derived from it: the Calvini, Caluentii and other Glabrii probably descend from an eponymous bald man.

Between history and anthropology, with particular attention paid to the cultural contexts in which these discourses were held, the two authors aim to demonstrate and dismantle old clichés about baldness. A surprising, but effective, way to learn more about ancient societies, whose differences with ours are often underestimated.

The Romans considered the body and its beauty to be a reflection of the soul. The good man first recognized himself by his measure (frugalitas), which was also expressed by the moderate maintenance of hair, which had to be present although sober. Especially since the medical explanation of baldness – drawn from Hippocratic doctors and their theories of humors – took on an eminently moral dimension. Baldness was a symptom of the body becoming cold and dry, unable to “ to feed » a head of hair.

Suspicions and remedies

Understandable and therefore morally acceptable when it was explained by old age, this cranial sterility was on the other hand suspect in individuals who were too young. The Romans saw this as proof of excessive sexual activity by the bald subject, whose bodily heat and humidity had been lost in the emission of semen. One excess leading to others, the bald man was also a drunkard, a miser, a brute, even a potential tyrant. In Roman mime, the bald man even played a role in his own right: that of the cuckold, ridiculous, ugly and necessarily stupid, whom the lover would ridicule, vaudeville style before his time.

From then on, the unfortunate man sought to remedy his condition. Greek and Roman doctors and naturalists proposed various “ remedies » to apply to the shameful skull: bear fat, Egyptian alum, ash from donkey penis, or horseradish for the ladies, who did not escape the evil. In case of failure, we appealed to the gods and their therapeutic sanctuaries, where we came to pray to the god to make the hair grow back. In the event of persistent syndromes, there remained the recourse to a wig, made of real hair or plant fibers. Although associated with theater and cheating, even lying, hairpieces were worn even in the tomb, where archaeologists found them by the dozens.

The only discordant and late voice, Synésios of Cyrene (370-413), Greek notable and future Christian bishop of Ptolemais, wrote in the middle of his life a In praise of baldness. Beyond the parodic response toPraise of hair written by Dion of Prusa (40-120), he attempted to overturn some prejudices, by capitalizing on the link between baldness, maturity (of the skull or fruit) and therefore the wisdom of the bald, and by summoning examples like Socrates, Ulysses or even Achilles – who would undoubtedly have become bald and therefore wise, if he had not died young and in full glory.

Slaves, convicts and sailors

Despite this departure under bad auspices, the bald head was regularly highlighted by aristocratic representations (busts, bas-reliefs and coins), undoubtedly indicating the advanced age, therefore the experience and legitimacy of the subjects as rulers, which there was no question of mocking. The historian and moralist Plutarch (44-125), author of treatises on the art of the banquet, also called for moderation in matters of mockery: that one only laughs at a bald guest if he himself makes fun of his infirmity.

Baldness also sometimes resulted from a choice, even if it was not always that of shaving. Slaves could be shaved by their master, to facilitate recognition of their status, as could those condemned to forced labor during the imperial era. The freeing of a slave could be the occasion for another shearing, accompanied by the wearing of a specific cap indicating the change of status. Greek King Prusias II of Bithynia (182-149 BCE) would have presented himself to Rome, declaring himself freed from the Romans.

In a religious context, the worshipers of the goddess Isis, who were recruited well beyond Egypt at the end of Antiquity, shaved their heads and eyebrows, like Egyptian priests, as a sign of purity and devotion. It seems that sailors who escaped from a shipwreck sometimes sheared their hair to offer it to the sea deities, to the point that it was not recommended to cut your hair on board a ship, for fear of causing shipwreck.

The women themselves sometimes shaved their heads as a sign of mourning or captivity. Roman history abounds in (historically dubious) examples of desperate military situations, where the women of a desperate city offered their hair to make bowstrings or war machines. Baldness (or rather female alopecia, rarer but very real) constituted an even greater social handicap, in a society where the status of each woman was also expressed by their hair. Tied hair indicated a respectable wife, while loose hair indicated a courtesan or prostitute. Its total or partial absence betrayed illness, physical or moral, or even both.

Baldness and politics

For a leader, the body and its possible baldness became eminently political. In the aristocratic context of the ending Republic, Cicero illustrated the use of baldness as a political weapon, when he made it a sign of the duplicity of the opposing party, in his defense of the actor Roscius (For Sextus Roscius). Julius Caesar, who was perhaps the most famous of ancient bald men – and who did not shy away from his pleasure when the Senate authorized him to wear a laurel wreath permanently – would have been the subject of related mockery, in the songs of his soldiers, or even on the slingshots thrown by the armies he fought. The political effectiveness of these mockeries nevertheless seems limited. The advanced ages – and therefore the bald foreheads – of the Roman leaders undoubtedly had nothing to do with it.

With the advent of imperial rule, the question took on redoubled importance. The bad emperor, as described in particular by Tacitus, Seneca and Suetonius in their imperial biographies, is saddled with all the moral and physical defects, baldness included. Caligula (37-41), who died at the age of 28, would have been bald, a perfect tyrant guilty of all possible excesses. Conversely, the good prince is either perfectly haired, or old enough, and what’s more, is capable of a certain self-deprecation when it comes to hair. The old and very moderate Vespasian (69-79), who was told of the appearance of an ominous comet, replied that the sign was not for him, but for his enemy the king of the Parthians who, for his part, still sported hair similar to that of the celestial phenomenon.

Travel to bald country

By going back two millennia, Robinson Baudry and Caroline Husquin reflect at once light and serious on the very historical object that they set themselves. The work is clear, rigorous and well supported with sources and citations. We can hardly blame him other than lacking illustrations and being content to describe figurative representations, of which we would sometimes like an overview and a more detailed comment.

We finally retain the apparent resemblance between the rejection of the Romans and ours for a physical trait, which is nevertheless inevitable for a majority of men. But we must also remember that similar effects are produced here by different causes. Ancient hairpieces and modern wigs concealed the same physical defect, but not the same “ defects » of which it was the sign. This is demonstrated in particular by the Roman association of the bald with the effeminate, too soft and cold to nourish virile hair, in contrast to our modern figures in whom baldness rather constitutes a break with femininity.

Proof that, if certain negative prejudices die hard, they are not based forever on the same specious reasoning and know how to reinvent themselves according to cultural, social or scientific changes. You don’t have to be bald to see examples of this, then and now.