Oration appendix1

Having risen at dawn and addressed the gods, as is my custom, I set about tending my hair; for it happened that my body was rather weak, and my hair had been neglected for some while. Much of it, at any rate, was twisted and matted together, like the wool that dangles about the legs of sheep—and far harder than that, inasmuch as it was matted out of finer hairs. So the hair was wild to look upon and heavy, and only with difficulty did it come apart; much of it was torn out and stretched. And so it occurred to me to praise the lovers of fine hair, who, being lovers of beauty and valuing their locks above all things, tend them not carelessly, but always keep a sort of reed in the hair itself, with which they comb it whenever they are at leisure; and—this is the hardest part—sleeping on the ground they take care never to let it touch the earth, propping a small piece of wood beneath the head, that it may be kept as far from the ground as possible; and they take more thought for carrying their hair clean than for sleeping pleasantly. For the hair, it seems, makes men both handsome and formidable, whereas sleep, however pleasant it be, makes them sluggish and off their guard. And the Lacedaemonians too, it seems to me, did not neglect such a matter, who, having come at that time before the great and terrible battle—when alone of the Greeks they were about to receive the King—being three hundred in number, sat dressing their hair.

And Homer too, it seems to me, deemed such a thing worthy of the utmost attention. From the eyes, at least, he does not often praise the handsome, nor does he think to display beauty chiefly from this. Of none of the heroes, then, does he extol the eyes save Agamemnon's, just as he praises also the rest of his body; and not only does he call the Greeks "quick-eyed," but no less Agamemnon too, by the epithet common to the Greeks. But from the hair he praises them all: first Achilles—"and he seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair"; then Menelaus, surnaming him "fair-haired" from his hair; and of Hector's tresses he makes mention—"and about him his dark locks were tossed." And when Euphorbus, the fairest of the Trojans, had died, he lamented nothing else, saying: "his locks, like the Graces', were drenched with blood, and his braids that were clasped with gold and silver." And of Odysseus too, whenever he wishes to display him made beautiful by Athena, he says, at any rate: "dark grew his hair." And again, of the same man: "down from his head she sent the clustering locks, like the hyacinth flower." And the adornment of the hair, in Homer's view, befits men even more than women. At least, when he is recounting the beauty of women, he does not appear to mention the hair so often; since indeed even of the goddesses he praises the female ones in other terms—"golden Aphrodite," "ox-eyed Hera," and "silver-footed Thetis." But of Zeus he praises most of all the locks: "and the ambrosial locks of the lord streamed down."