WIESER, FRIEDRICH VON German political economist, professor of political economy at the Vienna University, was the author of Das Hauptgesetz des Wirtschaft lichen Staates (1884) , Die Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirt schaft (1914), and Das Gesetz der Macht, published posthum ously. He died at St. Gilgen in the Salzkammergut, on July 24, 1926.
WIG, short form for "periwig." An artificial head of hair, worn as a personal adornment, disguise or symbol of office. The wearing of wigs is of great antiquity, and Egyptian mummies have been found so adorned. In Greece wigs were used by men and women. A reference in Xenophon to the false hair worn by Cyrus's grandfather "as is customary among the Medes," and also a story in Aristotle, would suggest that wigs were introduced from Persia, and were in use in Asia Minor. The elaborately frizzled hair worn by some of the figures in the frescoes found at Knossos makes it probable that the wearing of artificial hair was known to the Cretans. Lucian, in the 2nd century, mentions wigs of both men and women as a matter of course. The theatrical wig was also in use in Greece, the various comic and tragic masks having hair suited to the character represented. A. E. Haigh (Attic Theatre, pp. 221, 239) refers to the black hair and beard of the tyrant, the fair curls of the youthful hero, and the red hair characteristic of the dishonest slave of comedy. These conventions appear to have been handed on to the Roman theatre.
At Rome wigs came into use certainly in the early days of the empire. They were also known to the Carthaginians; Polybius says that Hannibal used wigs as a means of disguise. The fash ionable ladies of Rome were much addicted to false hair, and we learn from Ovid and Martial that the golden hair imported from Germany was most favoured. Juvenal shows us Messalina assum ing a yellow wig for her visits to places of ill-fame. The chief names for wigs were galerus, galericulum, corymbium, capillamen tum, caliendrum, etc. Galerus meant in the first place a skull-cap, or coif, fastening under the chin, and made of hide or fur, worn by peasants, athletes and flamines. The first men's wigs then would have been tight fur caps simulating hair, which would naturally suggest wigs of false hair. Women continued to have wigs of dif ferent colours as part of their ordinary wardrobe, and Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, is said to have had several hundred. An
amusing development of this is occasionally found in portrait busts, e.g. that of Plautilla in the Louvre, Paris, in which the hair is made removable, so that by changing the wig of the statue from time to time it should never be out of fashion.
The periwig of the 16th century merely simulated real hair, either as an adornment or to supply the defects of nature. It was not till the 17th century that the peruke was worn as a distinctive feature of costume. The fashion started in France. In 1620 the abbe La Riviere appeared at the court of Louis XIII. in a periwig made to simulate long fair hair, and four years later the king him self, prematurely bald, also adopted one and thus set the fashion. Louis XIV., who was proud of his abundant hair, did not wear a wig till after 1670. From Versailles the fashion spread through Europe. In England, under Charles II., the wearing of the peruke became general. Pepys records that he parted with his own hair and "paid £3 for a periwigg," and on going to church in one he says "it did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would." It was under Queen Anne, however, that the wig attained its maxi mum development, covering the back and shoulders and floating down over the chest.
This differentiation of wigs according to class and profession explains why, when early in the reign of George III. the general fashion of wearing wigs began to wane and die out, the practice held its own among professional men. It was by slow degrees that doctors, soldiers and clergymen gave up the custom. In the Church it survived longest among the bishops. At the corona tion of Queen Victoria the archbishop of Canterbury, alone of the prelates, still wore a wig. Wigs are now worn as part of official costume only in Great Britain, their use being confined, except in the case of the speaker of the house of commons and the clerks of parliament, to the lord chancellor, the judges and barristers.
See F. W. Fairholt, Costume in England, 2 vols., ed. Dillon (1885) ; C. F. Nicolai, Ober den Gebrauch der falschen Haare and Perriicken (i8oi) ; the articles "Coma" and "Galerus" in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquites. See also Diderot's Encyclopedie (1765), vol. xii., s.v. "Perruque," and James Stewart, Plocacosmos, or the Whole Art of Hairdressing (1782).