Article April 1, 1972 Issue

Hair

HOWARD PALFREY JONES

A friend recently telephoned to ask me to see his son, a student at Harvard. "You'll recognize him," he said. "He looks exactly like a prophet out of the Bible."

The young man turned out to be a sweet boy, not at all interested in organized religion, caught up in the secular sweep of the times, but expressing in his own terms a depth of compassion and concern for his fellowman that had a Christlike quality. In some ways he resembled the paintings portraying Jesus, with long silky hair on his shoulders, and a flowing beard. All of which reminded me that there was little new under the sun.

Hair—or the lack of it—has been a symbol of revolt and challenge since the dawn of history. More than four hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Herodotus wrote that after a battle between the Argives and the Spartans, the former, who had always worn their hair long "began to cut it short, and made it an offence against religion for any man to grow his hair]...until Thyreae was recovered."^{The Histories, Bk. I, Chap. 82 (The Penguin Classics);} The Spartans, who had always worn their hair short, reacted to this challenge and began to wear their hair long.

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