The Beard Makes the Man :: Ancient Greece Greek Essays

The face fungus Makes the ManFor the ancient Athenians, the rim was a common sign of manhood. The approach shot of a beard signaled a males transition from boyhood into manhood. work force who lost their beards did not suffer damage of political rights or loss of privileges, but they were mocked and shamed. The beard, not height or body shape, interestingly, was considered the initial gull of manhood in the bleeds of Aristophanes. A beard is an good recognizable and observable, and the escape or posture of a beard is easily changed for the stage by covering the actors beard with a mask or giving him a fake beard. The beard was understandably a oddly meaningful secondary characteristic for the Greeks.For the ancient Greeks, the beard was incredibly well-nigh tied to the idea of manhood. In some cases, the word for beard could plane be interchanged with the word for man. Men grow hair on their faces, women do not, but a mans facial hair is easily removed by shaving. For thi s culture, the removal of the beard was a removal of a crucial element of manhood. Without a beard, a man was woman- bid, despite all other characteristics that might distinguish him as a man. To fail like a woman, a man merely had to remove his beard, but to become like a man, a woman had to disguise herself in numerous more ways.The beard, as a cultural way to distinguish men, is establish on the biological phenomenon that males begin to grow hair on their faces during puberty. despite seemingly being an easy way to separate men from women and children, the presence of a beard is not an all or none situation. A pubescent male will not go to bed bare-cheeked and slipstream up the next morning with a full beard. Puberty is a gradual process occurring over many years, and some men may never grow a completely full beard, even in maturity. As today, some women of ancient Athens must have themselves been quite hairy around the hair line, jaw, and upper lip. The beard is not as c lear a man/boy or man/woman differentiation as it may initially seem. The beard is not a completely clear physical or biological trait, but it was clearly a significant characteristic for the ancient Athenians.In Aristophaness play Women at the Thesmophoria, the kinsman of Euripides tries to pass for a woman by shaving his beard and singeing his pubic hair.