The head has ever been considered the noblest member of man, containing the brain which controls his actions. Hence the adornment of the head is a function dating from prehistoric times and reaching still to the least civilized aborigines of every country.
Thus we find the ancient Assyrians, Persians and Egyptians curled the hair and beard and re placed baldness with wigs. They anointed the hair, dyed it and adorned it with bands, ribbons, fillets and ornaments of precious or base metal. The Jews wore a thick head of hair and bald ness engendered disgrace and suspicion of leprosy, but the consecrated, priestly Levites shaved their heads. Later the Jews looked upon long hair as a sign of effeminacy, and only those under a vow allowed their hair to grow long, though the women held long hair in es teem, curling and plaiting it. Combs are not mentioned in the Old Testament though other peoples were acquainted with them. The Greeks cut their hair rather short and curled it in small ringlets, but the children wore it long till with youth, assuming the position of ephebe (18 years old) they cut the hair short, sacrificing it to some god, usually Apollo. But the men of Sparta wore long hair while the boys' hair was short. It was universally the custom, as a sign of mourning, to allow the hair to grow long or let it hang down disheveled. Slaves were not allowed to wear long hair. Greek women parted their hair in the centre of the crown, carried it downward over both temples frequently in waves, bringing it toward the back and either fastening it together over the parting or wear ing it on the back of the head in a tuft or knot. Usually, when the hair was so arranged it was covered by a wind of cloth, hood-like, or en closed in a gold knotted net. The maiden cut off her hair before the wedding. Anacreon makes it apnear that while blonde hair was preferred, black hair stood in high esteem. The custom of wearing false hair in Greece was derived from Asia. Athens gives us the first hair-dresser we know of ; the curlers of hair were sufficiently numerous to form a special industry. According to Varro, the Romans used to let the hair grow long until 300 B.C. when P. Ticinius Mena brought the first uton sorp from Sicily to Rome; in Cicero's day both young dandies and sober-minded statesmen walked around in their perfume-anointed, built-up curls. Women's hair decoration, from the Augustan period, took on greater dimen sions and more complicated forms. The pile of plaits and curls of the wearer's head not sufficing, false hair, preferably blonde, was added. This latter was obtained from the con quered Germanic race.
The Celts, in northern Europe, bound their hair up behind the head, and this long coarse blonde hair was considered as a sign of honor and dignity, while the Celts and Germans con sidered the short cut hair represented servitude or a penalty of disgrace for breach of Ger manic laws. The same hirsute conditions pre vailed among the Franks. But Charles the Great and the Carolingians wore their hair short, while the Saxons, who had for centuries worn the hair and beard cut short, from the 9th century wore the hair hanging down over the shoulders or bound up and fastened with a pin. By the 11th century their hair still hung down over the shoulders hut was cut short on the forehead, also crimped and curled. The women continued to wear their hair falling loose or held together in a chapelk ; in England and France the hair was bound up by ribbons into one or two cues that fell over the shoulders from the back. The 14th and 15th centuries
brought forth the most divergent conditions in hair-dressing fashions; men of station wore short hair for a while, later they allowed it' to grow hanging down, sometimes curled. From the middle of the 14th century the women still wore long hair but in styles of head coverings or coifs in changing fashions. The cutting of men's hair quite short was introduced by Charles IV in France but does not appear to have be come general till end of the 15th century; women, however, persisted in binding it at the neck and covering it with a hood. The soldiery cut their hair just as short as possible. In the Renaissance period the men combed their hair over the forehead and cut it off short. Louis XIII (17th century) wore a wig to cover his baldness; it was an elaborate curled affair. But when Louis XIV, on account of his small stature, started to wear high heels and a tower ing curled wig, the style spread from king to courtiers and the tipper classes. The short cropped Puritans ("round-heads") of Crom well, in England were fighting long-curled "roy alists" the while. The tall, curled wig was introduced into England when Charles II re turned from his French exile on the Restoration (1660). By this time wig powdering became general. If the women wore no wigs, neverthe less they built tip their hair into towering heights at great expenditure of time and labor; on festive occasions some ladies had to permit the over-worked hair-dresser to do the elaborate hirsute creation the night before and the mis tresses of the sumptuous tresses were obliged to spend the night seated in chairs to avoid mussing the delicate structure. The French Revolution changed all that, sumptuous royal fashions fell into disrepute, also the wig, the men wearing, for the most part, short hair, which has remained largely the case ever since. In England a tax was laid on wigs in 1795, amounting to a guinea a year; it raised as much as f20,000 one year, but it was repealed in 1860. The bag-wig prevailed in England, made to hold up the back-hair during the 18th century, but all wigs- disappeared about 1810, except with the legal fraternity. But during the latter part of the 18th century the women retained elaborate toilets, adopting the style of the ladies of ancient Rome for a while and surrounding the forehead with little curls while the rest of the hair was fastened together on the neck or hanged down in a chignon. For a little while the ladies wore their hair short (a la Titus), a fashion that was renewed about 1890 for a little while. Next came the fashion of having the curls hang down in the neck (a !'enfant) as long hair came into its own again. It was next tied up and brought into the widest possible plaits which rested, wreath-like, on the head, while on either side a veritable forest of curls adorned the temples. Giant combs of delicate workmanship towered above and diamonds, pearls, flowers, etc., were interspersed in groups. During the transition to simplicity Greek styles of hair-dressing were attempted but the hair-dresser prevailed and wrought his most extravagant styles, without distinctive character or regular form, however. Immense chignons and beaver-tails alternated with apparently tumbled about hair and forests of curls. But, like with women's costume, the fashions in hair-dressing were subjected to rapid changes, generally running to opposite extremes, often grotesque.