David D. Leitao
When we refer to a Greek ritual performed by boys or adolescent males as an “initiation rite,” we are implicitly invoking the concept, now more than a century old, of “tribal initiation.” A rite of tribal initiation, in the narrowest sense of the term, is a singular public rite performed by members of an age cohort that is necessary and sufficient for their admission to adult privileges and responsibilities within the community. Few classical scholars have thought that the evidence from ancient Greece indicates the existence, during the historical period, of tribal initiation rites so narrowly defined. But many have felt that the concept of tribal initiation is useful as a heuristic model, provided that one introduces certain qualifications to the definition of tribal initiation. For example, the “adult privileges and responsibilities” classicists tend to focus on are those that come specifically with citizenship: so young Greek men are “initiated” into the citizen class or even the hoplite citizen class. The “age cohort” in question is therefore restricted to the sons of citizen men, and many maturation rites are in fact performed by representatives of this class only. Finally, some scholars acknowledge that in many cities there is no single rite that is “necessary and sufficient” for admission to citizenship. In Athens, for example, induction into a phratry, induction into a deme, and swearing the oath of citizenship took place on three separate occasions over a period of two years. But these qualifications have not altered the basic assumption of the tribal initiation model, namely that initiation is a discrete ritual event or series of events that transforms a “before” into an “after.” Nor is the tribal initiation model fundamentally changed by Van Gennep’s tripartite division of maturation rites (and other rites of passage) into separation, liminal, and reintegration phases.1 Indeed, the structuralist approach to Greek maturation rites, which takes Van Gennep as its point of departure, far from abandoning the tribal initiation model, actually presents the discrete binary logic of the older tribal initiation model in its purest, most abstract form.2
But when one considers how different this model is from contemporary anthropology’s approach to such rites, one gets the feeling that the field of classics has been left behind in the hundred years since classics first borrowed its model from anthropology. Contemporary anthropologists, or at least contemporary Anglo-American anthropologists, do not talk much at all about Van Gennep’s tripartite division or even much about tribal initiation itself. The focus of ritual studies in general these days is on ritual as a “contested space for social action and identity politics.”3 And social identity is now typically thought of as being created and maintained through performance, not only in highly marked ritual settings but also in everyday practice.4 This contemporary approach to ritual in general has two implications for the study of rites involving children and adolescents, including those practiced in ancient Greece. First, it suggests that one consider not only the rites themselves, but also the social practices out of which such rites originate: the rites, in other words, must be understood within the context of a larger anthropology of adolescence. This presents a particular challenge to classicists, because our evidence is much less diverse and textured and it reflects many fewer voices than that available to the modern anthropologist. Nevertheless, I will suggest some ways in which the classicist can begin to approximate the thick description of the anthropologist.
Second, the contemporary approach to ritual leads one to focus on the sorts of social identities that are performed by adolescents and on how the social meaning given to these performances is negotiated by the performers themselves and various groups within the larger audience. Classicists have tended to pay more attention to the structure of maturation rites than to the content, and as a result have proceeded with a rather limited conception of the identities that are created in these rites, most scholars seeing them as creating only “adults” or only “adult citizens.” Such a narrow conception of identity might be adequate for the traditional societies upon which the tribal initiation model was originally based, but the identity of a young man in ancient Greece was more complex than that of a young man in the simplest traditional societies. Small-scale, traditional societies are for the most part organized according to kinship and gender, and male transition rites in such societies are conceived largely in terms of a change in the latter: the (feminine) boy becomes a fully masculine man.5 The social fabric of a typical Greek polis, on the other hand, was differentiated not only by kinship and gender, but also by social class (liturgical class, free citizens, resident aliens, slaves, etc.) and membership in voluntary associations (religious cults, political clubs, etc.). So the process of growing up in ancient Greek society involved not just a simple transition from non-adult to adult, or even non-citizen to citizen, but involved the assumption of many different social identities, which together made up the complex social personality of a member of a complex society. So the performative iterations we expect to see of a Greek adolescent are quite diverse: he needs to make a claim to generic identities such as “man” and “citizen,” but also to more individual ones such as “member of the elite (kaloi kai agathoi)” or “member of the Alcmeonid genos” or “initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries” or “practitioner of the metallurgy trade.” No one “tribal initiation” ritual or series of rituals could dramatize all the identities of so many different individuals.
We need to remember, too, that ritual performance of this sort is not oneway communication. Although the adolescent performer may attempt to control the meaning of the performance that he embodies, his audience — parents, political officials, women and girls, peers — is at the same time attempting to inscribe its own meanings onto the adolescent performer’s body. A sociological approach to adolescent transition rituals will attempt to describe this polyphonic texture: it will be sensitive to the many different aspects of the Greek adolescent’s identity and to the way this identity is created, in ritual and in everyday practice, through a sort of negotiation between adolescents and other constituencies within society.
I propose to demonstrate the explanatory power of what I have termed the “sociological approach” by considering a rather minor class of ritual performed by Greek girls and boys when they came of age, and that is the ritual growing and cutting of their hair. We should define at the outset what is to be included, for the purposes of our analysis, in the category of “ritual growing and cutting of hair,” because my conception of the subject of analysis differs quite a bit from that of most classical scholars. Most scholars focus on the ritual act of cutting the hair and offering it to a god or hero in cult, and indeed this focus accords with traditional definitions of ritual as a marked and discrete act (the cutting) that takes place in sacred space (offered to a god or hero in cult). My conception includes these ritual cuttings in cult, but goes beyond them in two important ways. First, I include not only the act of cutting, but also the process of growing this hair to be cut and offered to the god or hero. The Greeks refer to this as “growing hair for the god,”6 language that suggests that it is no less sacred an undertaking than the act of cutting it and offering it within the precinct. The only difference is that the ritual growing is an ongoing activity (a process) and one that crosses the boundaries between sacred and profane space, since most of the time that the adolescent is engaged in “growing his hair for the god,” he is in profane space, living at home and participating in his normal daily activities.
Which brings us to a second way in which my conception of the scope of “ritual growing and cutting of hair” differs from the standard view: I do not see a clear boundary between sacred and profane, public and private, ritual and practice, but instead a boundary that is fluid, if not actually blurred. Fluidity is indicated both by the variety of recipients of the offerings, who range from Olympian deities worshipped in major state cults with well-defined precincts (e.g., Apollo at Delphi) to nature spirits on the margins of city life (e.g., the river Kephisos in Attica, the nymphs in Euboean Amarynthos), and by the fact that these rites tend to be private ceremonies whose occasion is chosen by the dedicant and his family (more below). If these rites are largely private and involve a long process of ritual growth before an act of ritual cutting, can we really distinguish them from other private hair growing and cutting performed by adolescents that is not explicitly linked to the cult of a god or hero? From the performative perspective of the adolescent himself, ritual hair-growing and hair-cutting and non-ritual hair-growing and hair-cutting are not all that different. The erosion of the boundary between grooming ritual and grooming practice seems to support the view of many anthropologists that ritual grows out of practice and that practice, in turn, is informed by ritual.7 We shall consider some examples on the profane, or practice, side of the border in the final section of this paper and will there explore in more depth the relevance of these examples to the subject of ritual hair-growing and -cutting.
Hair-growing and hair-cutting rites, then, seem ideally suited to our sociological approach: (1) they occupy a cultural space (i.e., grooming) where ritual and everyday practice overlap; (2) they focus our attention on the adolescent body and on the embodiment of identity in performance; and (3) this performance is invested, as we shall see, with many different, often contradictory, meanings.
The evidence for rites of hair-growing and hair-cutting comes from all over the Greek world. And it comes from all periods: while most of the rites I discuss are attested first in the Hellenistic and imperial periods, there is considerable evidence of such rites already in the classical and archaic periods. The performers are young people of both sexes. Girls typically cut their hair prior to marriage.8 The age of the boys is more variable: they are referred to as paides, a broad term that can describe males from childhood to the threshhold of adulthood, and as meirakia and ephêboi, terms that refer more specifically to adolescents; our only reference to an exact age is a dedicatory epigram from the third century BCEthat describes the hair-cutting of a four-year-old boy.9 This variation in age may reflect not only the different customs of different times and places, but also, as we shall see, the freedom that individuals had in deciding when to perform the rite.
The rite seems, in most cases, to have been a private family affair. It is perhaps surprising that few, if any, of the rites can be said, with certainty, to have been performed by an age cohort en masse.10 The best candidate for such a cohort rite is the hair-cutting that Hesychius and the Suda claim took place in honor of Artemis on the third day of the Apatouria at Athens, when young men offered an animal sacrifice called the koureion and were inducted into their phratries.11 But the presence of hair-cutting at this festival is in fact rather weakly attested (only in the late lexicographical compilations of Hesychius and the Suda), and there is good evidence that Athenian adolescents actually cut their hair on other occasions instead.12
Those rites about which we know both the recipient of the offering and the geographical location may be divided into two groups. One group consists of offerings to heroes or heroines, and these show a strong kinship with funereal hair-cutting: the custom of cutting hair in Corinth at the tomb of Medea’s children is associated also with the wearing of black cloaks; the hair offerings maidens make at the tomb of Iphinoe in Megara are accompanied by choai, “funeral libations”; and Euripides says that Troezenian maidens will cry tears of grief when they cut their hair for Hippolytus.13 As a result, these offerings function, at least in part, to maintain good relations between the living and the dead, who could otherwise threaten the maturation of the child.14 The second group are offerings made to gods, including river gods. They are frequently made pursuant to a vow (euchê), often made by a parent while the adolescent is still a child or even just born;15 they too are designed to help assure successful maturation, but they seem to work by establishing a positive relationship with the kourotrophic deity rather than by averting the negative influences of the dead. These rites thus unfold over a period of time: there is a vow, a period of hair growth that might last for many years, and then a ceremonial cutting. Thus our sources for this type of ritual frequently mention a form of the verb trephô, which focuses our attention on the “growth” or “cultivation” of this hair.16 The hair-cutting in this second group is thus very different from the hair-cutting that takes place in a funeral context: in the former situation, there is a removal of hair specially grown for the purpose of ritual cutting and the result is the normal coiffure of an adult; in the funeral situation, there is a spontaneous subtraction from the normal amount of hair, so that the mourner in effect “wears” his loss on his head. In other words, the second group of adolescent hair-cutting rites combines ritual growing with ritual cutting, whereas funereal rites involve only ritual cutting. The type of hair that is cut in the first group of adolescent hair-cutting rites is not specified in our sources: although these rites reveal a strong kinship with funereal hair-cutting, we do not know whether they involve a spontaneous renunciation of hair or the cutting of hair specially grown for the purpose.
I wish to focus on the rites in the second group, as the performative possibilities of these are more obvious: (1) they are for the most part private occasions in which there is no fixed ritual script — one can choose the age at which the offering is made, often the deity, the attendant offerings, and other aspects of the celebration; and (2) they involve a period of deliberate, marked growth of hair on the head, and thus afford additional opportunities for symbolic expression. Most of the rites in this second group are boys rituals, and so I will concentrate on them.
We may begin with a consideration of the hair-cutting ceremony itself, since most scholars who have discussed adolescent hair rituals in Greece and elsewhere have focused on the act of cutting and its symbolic meaning. Some have seen it as a magical means of avoiding the pollution or evil spirits that threaten the adolescent in transition by symbolically transferring the pollution or the attention of the spirits to a lock of hair that is cut and disposed of.17 Others see the cutting and offering as a pars pro toto restitution to the kourotrophic deity who presided over the stage of life the adolescent leaves behind.18 Those of a more psychoanalytic bent see the cutting of hair as a symbolic castration: in the context of an adolescent transition rite, hair-cutting thus functions as a means of incorporating the young person into the disciplinary apparatus of society.19 Finally, some scholars view the cutting of hair as a structural marker that distinguishes an abstract “before” from an abstract “after,” without there necessarily being any specific semantic content in the hair itself or in its cutting.20 There is something of value in each of these interpretations, but my focus in this essay is not on the ritual act of cutting and on the inherent meaning thereof, a subject that has been adequately explored by other scholars. Instead, I wish to focus on some of the meta-ritual aspects of the occasion, on the choices that participants have available to them in deciding how they will perform the ritual. For it is here, where participants go beyond the ritual script, that individual performance becomes interesting.
Most of the choices made regarding the execution of the rite were made by the family, and indeed the family was involved in the ceremony on so many levels that one is tempted to look at hair-cutting rituals as, in part, a demonstration of family identity. The whole process begins with a vow to the god to keep the boy’s hair uncut in exchange for the god’s protection, and since this vow was typically made during childhood or even infancy, it was naturally made by the boy’s parents. We have evidence of this already in the case of Achilles: it was Peleus who made the vow that Achilles would offer his hair to the river Spercheios when he returned from Troy (Iliad 23.144–9). Of course, Achilles is somewhat of a special case, for the vow, which seems to have been made originally during childhood and sought to gain the god’s assistance in bringing Achilles to manhood, was later extended to gain the god’s protection while the young Achilles was at war;21 and then, when Achilles finally does cut his hair at Troy, kourotrophic hair-cutting and funereal hair-cutting are tragically merged.
It is probably in great part because the hair-cutting ceremony originates in a vow made by one or both parents that parents, especially fathers, play a large role in the ceremony itself. We have evidence of fathers choosing the sanctuary at which the boy’s hair would be cut,22 and of deciding whom to invite to the ceremony.23 And sometimes even the offering itself is made by the father or mother on behalf of the son. Consider three inscriptions from the island of Paros from the third century ce that record hair offerings made to Asclepius and Hygieia. Two of them record the offering of a boys “childhood hair” (paidikên tricha) (IG 12.5.173.3, 5), and in both cases the offering is made by the mother, in the second case with the secondary participation24 of the father. One might suppose that these offerings are made by the parents because the boys are too young to make them in their own name. But a third inscription (IG 12.5.173.4) commemorates the offering of what is called “ephebic hair” (ephêbiên tricha) — most likely the hair of an adolescent — and here too it is a parent who makes the offering, although in this case it is the father rather than the mother. One can imagine reasons why the first two offerings are made by mothers, the third by a father: perhaps the father of the boy in inscription 173.3 and the mother of the boy in 173.4 were no longer alive. But it is also tempting to suppose that fathers played a more prominent role in these offerings as their sons grew older, a reflection of the boys gradual movement from the sphere of women to the sphere of men. And it was not only fathers and mothers who might offer a boys or adolescents hair in their own name: in a “first beard” offering from the first century BCE, we hear of an older brother joining (rhezomen, “we offer”) in the offering of his younger brothers facial hair (A.P. 6.242).
This leads us to another interesting family pattern: offerings made by brothers. In an inscription from Thessalian Thebes from the late Hellenistic or early imperial period (IG 9.2.146), two brothers, Philombrotos and Aphthonetos, make a hair offering to Poseidon.25Although Posiedon does sometimes receive locks of hair from sailors who have survived a shipwreck or a storm at sea,26 this offering is most likely made as part of a rite of passage.27 First, the locks that are sculpted in relief on the stele that records the offering are long and carefully braided,28 and therefore more likely a representation of the special locks grown by children and adolescents (more below) than a highly stylized representation of adult hair spontaneously cut after a shipwreck. Indeed, these long braids resemble the braids we see frequently elsewhere on the heads of boys and adolescents in Greek sculpture.29 Second, Poseidon, in Thessaly, seems to play an important role in the growth of children: from this region there survive three inscriptions that record offerings made to Poseidon by parents on behalf of their sons,30 one of them explicitly in fulfilment of a vow.31
One finds even more examples of the involvement of brothers among the numerous hair offerings recorded in the Carian town of Panamara during the second and third centuries CE. One even records the offering of five Aurelius brothers (I. Str. 434). Another mentions an offering made by two pairs of brothers who are probably cousins (I. Str. 428). Yet another (I. Str. 449) records the offering of four males from the nearby town of Koliorga, three of whom are brothers; presumably the fourth is an agemate of one of the brothers or even a family slave (more in a moment). There has been some debate about whether the offerings from Panamara are in fact coming-of-age hair offerings. The doubts arise from three factors: (1) in most cases, there is no proof that the dedicant is young; (2) some of the offerings are made by slaves or by fathers together with their sons; and (3) in a few cases, the offering is made more than once.32 But most scholars, including the most recent editor of the inscriptions, believe, as I do, that these are coming-of-age dedications,33 and the reasons are worth considering here. First, most of our evidence for the practice of ritual hair-growing and hair-cutting in the greater Greek world is associated with young people of both sexes. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the widespread practice of ritual growing and cutting that we see at Panamara is also associated with coming of age. Second, some of the dedicants mentioned in the Panamara inscriptions are in fact young.34 And we can now point to a contemporary grave stele found in the nearby municipal center of Stratonikeia, Panamara’s “county seat,” if you will, that depicts the head of a boy named Threptos with a prominent sidelock on the left side of the head, most likely a representation of the type of lock cut off in honor of Zeus in neighboring Panamara (I. Str. 1263). Indeed, this lock is iconographically very similar to scores of others found all over the Roman empire, all on the heads of boys who would have, had they lived, eventually cut their hair for the god who protected them during childhood.35 There is no reason to suppose that this lock grown by the young Threptos at Stratonikeia was grown in honor of Isis, as Goette supposes,36 especially since only a few kilometers away Zeus Panamaros was accustomed to receive such offerings from males from all over the district. The evidence, then, favors seeing the Panamaran offerings as coming-of age-offerings.
These hair offerings made by brothers in Thessalian Thebes and Panamara suggest that, in these places at least, there was no specific age at which one cut one’s hair, since most of these brothers would have been of different ages. This evidence also suggests that the ritual cutting of hair was a family ritual rather than a cohort ritual, and it seems likely that one of the primary functions of these rites was to demonstrate family solidarity. In the light of this evidence from the post-classical period, we might thus wish to reconsider the hair-cutting believed by many to have taken place at the Athenian Apatouria, a rite that most scholars have viewed as one of the clearest examples of a cohort ritual in ancient Greece. While Jules LaBarbe has called our attention to one case in which a boy cut his hair and was admitted to a phratry at the age of sixteen,37 we should perhaps not be so sure that all boys did it at this age. Indeed, it may make more sense to view the hair-cutting of the Apaturia, if Hesychius and the Suda are right to put it there, as an element of the largely informal family celebrations (of kinsmen known as phrateres) that took place at that festival.
The Panamara inscriptions raise two other interesting issues. First, the hair of slaves was also sometimes offered to the god.38 These offerings were usually made by groups of slaves from the same family, usually the family of a priest; some of the slaves are explicitly described as young (e.g., I. Str. 412). These slave offerings might be surprising, but we should recall, first of all, that the cult of Zeus Panamaros prided itself on being open to all males, slave or free, of whatever age, and from whatever city of origin.39 And I am aware of at least one other example — albeit Roman — in which a slave boy grew a special lock of hair in order to gain the protection of a god,40 and I suspect that this practice was much more common than is suggested by surviving dedicatory inscriptions and grave stelai, monuments that disproportionately reflect the life of free persons, and indeed wealthy free persons. What is perhaps most important about these hair offerings on behalf of slaves is that they remind us that child and adolescent hair offerings sometimes, particularly during the imperial period, had nothing to do with the acquisition of citizenship.
The second notable thing about the Panamara offerings is that in three inscriptions (out of a total of almost a hundred) fathers cut their hair along with their sons (I. Str. 402, 428, 463). This has, as I have mentioned, led some scholars to conclude that these hair offerings do not commemorate entry into adulthood, but rather initiation into some aspect of the cult at Panamara, possibly the mystery cult we begin to hear of in the second century CE.41 But it is also possible to understand these paternal offerings in the context of the intimate role we have seen fathers and brothers play in hair-cutting rituals elsewhere. Perhaps these three Panamaran fathers saw this as an occasion for all the male members of the family, and in a burst of enthusiasm decided to offer their hair as well. Regardless of the actual motivations of these three fathers, the involvement of fathers and brothers at Panamara, Thessalian Thebes and Paros suggest that child and adolescent hair offerings functioned, in practice, as opportunities to demonstrate family solidarity and male kinship in particular; they appear not, for the most part, to have been an occasion in which a young man was initiated into citizenship status, at least not in the post-classical period.
There is one other social aspect of the hair-cutting ceremony that also merits mentioning briefly: it was an opportunity to perform not only one’s family identity, but also the socio-economic standing of one’s family. For example, we know that the hair offering was frequently accompanied by other offerings: in some cases, these amounted to nothing more than flatcakes and small animals (A.P. 6.155), but some families went so far as to sacrifice an ox (A.P. 6.156), an extravagant offering indeed. Peleu’s vow to accompany Achilles’ hair offering with a sacrifice of a hundred oxen and fifty rams may be only partly heroic hyperbole. An ambitious family might also choose to travel to a prestigious sanctuary to make an offering of hair: we hear of prominent Sicyonians traveling to Delphi in the fourth century BCE,42 and a dedicant from Berytus in Syria traveling to Panamara in the second century ce (I. Str. 405). The less fortunate could not afford to make such a statement, or even, in many cases, erect a dedicatory stele. Indeed, at Panamara, there is evidence that some inscribed their names on the stelai erected by others, either by squeezing their name between the lines of another’s inscription43 or by inscribing their name in place of another.44
The process of growing and grooming one’s hair prior to ritual cutting — a period that could last for many years — also offered opportunities for performance. There were two different childhood hair growth patterns that we know about from Greek antiquity. First, a boy could grow all his cephalic hair, keeping it uncut either from birth45 or for some shorter period. Second, he could grow one or more special locks separately from the rest of the hair, which would be kept a normal length. We hear of special names for some of these youthful locks: it was called a skollus at Athens, konnos at Sparta, mallos in Greek Alexandria, and krôbylos and skorpios elsewhere.46 Pollux (2.30) describes the Athenian skollus as hair grown “from the side and either [allowed to fall] behind or [brought] over the forehead” and other sources describe not only sidelocks, but also backlocks and topknots. There are possible representations of these special locks in classical art: Van Hoorn has detected depictions on Greek vases and Evelyn Harrison, more recently, in Greek sculpture.47 Von Gonzenbach and Goette have catalogued backlocks and sidelocks from the imperial period: most of these are from Italy and Roman Egypt, but examples have been found in Eleusis, Athens, Thasos, Smyrna, and Stratonikeia.48 Some have tried to link these imperial representations directly to the cult of Isis,49 but it now seems more likely that many different gods functioned as kourotrophoi during this period, not only the traditional ones like Apollo and river gods, but now also Demeter, Dionysus, and Zeus.50
The growing hair of the adolescent, whether a special lock or hair left uncut since childhood, was capable of bearing many different meanings: some of these meanings were obviously intended by the adolescent himself, while others were imposed by parents and adult society generally. While he was still young, it was others, notably parents, who would control the meaning and to some extent comportment of that hair. But as he grew older, the boy’s interest in the performative possibilities of his own hair naturally increased: to the extent that even hair that was grown for ritual cutting could be manipulated to make a fashion statement, we should perhaps consider ritual adolescent hairstyles and non-ritual adolescent hairstyles as part of the same phenomenon, at least from the performative perspective of the maturing young man (more below). Unfortunately, we have little access to the subjective meanings Greek children and adolescents attached to their hair, as we do for children in modern societies. Ancient Greek children and adolescents rarely speak through our sources. For this reason, I am going to concentrate on some of the meanings Greek adults attached to the hair of children and adolescents. But these will nevertheless give us an idea of the range of possible meanings that the adolescent himself could have invoked.
One of the associations of adolescent “hair” was obviously sexuality and physical vitality more generally.51 Growing hair was an index of a growing body. And to the extent that the Greeks thought that hair was nourished by seed within the body, a sudden burst of seed production at puberty can be expected to produce not only secondary hair, but also more and fuller cephalic hair as well.52 Specially grown cephalic hair might even have been thought of as a ritual substitute for the growth of secondary hair: it was certainly something that all boys were capable of in early adolescence, even those who lagged behind their contemporaries in pubertal development. The youthful hairstyles seen in the frescoes from Bronze Age Crete and Thera seem almost to have been designed to dramatize an increase in sexual vitality: the girls of Thera and the boys of Crete begin with shaved or nearly shaved heads; they are next permitted to grow a few special locks, which can become quite long; finally, they grow the hair on the rest of their head long.53 There is a clear progression from “less hair” during childhood to ever “more hair” once the girls and boys reach puberty. We find a similar pattern in male hairstyles in classical Sparta: at the age of 12, shortly before puberty, boys heads are shaved; when they graduate from the agela system at roughly the age of 20, they are permitted to grow the long hair that characterized the Spartan adult.54 Here too there is an impressive growth of hair that takes place after puberty and is linked directly to the virility of the Spartan adult male.
Another association of a boys growing hair in the eyes of adults was femininity. Aeschylus described the Kouretes, mythical warrior youths, as wearing a distinctive lock of hair, which was “as delicate as that of dainty maidens” (fr. 313.1 Radt), and in Agathon’s Thyestes, these same Kouretes, upon cutting this hair, mourn it as a mark of their former daintiness (truphê). These associations were sometimes invoked to keep boys in their place, as we see in an anecdote Plutarch reports about Aristodemos, the tyrant of Cumae. Plutarch tells us that boys in Cumae, as in many other places, customarily wore their hair long well into adolescence. But the tyrant Aristodemos gave this custom a strong feminine interpretation by requiring the boys also to wear gold jewelry and requiring the girls, by way of contrast, to cut their hair short and wear ephebic cloaks over their short tunics.55 Plutarch describes this as a deliberate insult to the boys.
We see a similar association between boyhood hair and femininity in Pausania’s story (8.20.3) of an Arcadian youth named Leukippos, who, attempting to disguise himself as a maiden in order to infiltrate Daphne’s virgin hunting band, put on a feminine cloak and “wove the hair he was growing for the river Alpheios in the same way that maidens do.” When Leukippos refused one day to undress and join the maidens in a bath, Daphne and her fellow maidens ripped off his transvestic disguise and, discovering him to be a male, killed him with their hunting spears. Here the assimilation of the boy’s hair to feminine hair has an explicit ritual context, since Leukippos was growing his hair for later ritual cutting. This story is also important in that it presents, in somewhat abstract form, the boy’s full transition to manhood: the threshhold is not crossed, in this case, when the boy cuts his “feminine” hair, but when he suffers to have his feminine clothing removed and his masculine body displayed. There is a good deal of overlap here with the ideology of adolescent transvestism rituals, a topic to which we shall return shortly.
A story about the Athenian hero Theseus also illustrates the gendering of an adolescent boys hair as feminine. When the hero first arrived in Athens from Troezen, he was wearing a tunic that reached to the ground and had his hair neatly braided (peplegmenês). When he was mocked by some workmen as being a “maiden on the verge of marriage” (parthenos en hôrai gamou), Theseus responded by unhitching some nearby oxen and hurling them into the air (Paus. 1.19.1). Once again, the feminine portrait of the adolescent combines feminine hair and feminine clothing. And the fact that his hair marks him not just as a maiden, but as one on the verge of marriage might hint at the practice of maidens of cutting their hair prior to marriage. In this story, however, Theseus makes a transition from feminine boy to masculine man neither by cutting his feminine hair (as Agathon’s Kouretes) nor by casting off his feminine garb (as Leukippos), but by hurling the oxen in the air, a potent demonstration of masculine strength. But there is another story about Theseus that links his transition to manhood with the cutting of his hair. Plutarch (Theseus 5.1–2) tells us that he cut his adolescent hair for Apollo at Delphi and thereby gave his name both to the place where the offering was made and to the hairstyle that resulted. Plutarch also reports that this resulting hairstyle was a particularly virile one, associated with the warriors of the heroic age (more below).
An adolescent’s hair could also invoke specific historical styles. Take the adolescent hairstyle known as the krôbylos, which Pollux equates with the Athenian skollus.56 What is interesting about the krôbylos is that it is also the name of a famous old Ionian hairstyle worn by adult men and accompanied by a golden cicada pin.57 Thucydides (1.6.3) suggests the style was a sign of Ionian luxury, but Aristophanes associates it with the heroes at Marathon (Knights 1321–34), so the associations are not necessarily negative. What is important is that it was felt to be an old-fashioned hairstyle already in Thucydides’ and Aristophanes’ day. There are hints that the adolescent krôbylos and similar styles were sometimes seen as invoking this older style. Lucian makes the connection quite clear in his dialogue The Ship, where an Athenian character compares the topknot worn by an Egyptian youth to the style that used to be worn by adult men at Athens (Ship 3). But the historical associations of the adolescent krôbylos are probably much older than Lucian. In a dedicatory epigram by Theodoridas from the third century BCE (A.P. 6.), a Euboean youth dedicates to the nymphs of Amarynthos his hair together with a cicada pin, which presumably held the hair up: this is, in fact, the only literary reference I am aware of to a cicada hairpin apart from descriptions of the old Ionian practice, and this fact makes it all the more likely that that mention of the cicada pin in this dedicatory epigram would remind the reader of the Ionian practice. And considering Euboeas Ionian linguistic and cultural heritage, such a hairstyle and ornamentation would probably invoke Euboeas own historical past. Another epigram by Theodoridas commemorates the hair-offering to Apollo of a four-year old named Krobylos (A.P. 6.156.1–2). If this Krobylos is the real name of the dedicant (and it was a real Greek name58), then the homonymy with the boyhood hairstyle described by Pollux is purely fortuitous. But Gow and Page suggest that the dedication might be imaginary (as these literary dedications frequently are) and that the poet might have used the name Krobylos in order to make a pun on the boyhood lock of the same name that is imagined as being offered.59
Another reference to the youthful krôbylos occurs in an anecdote preserved by Nicolaus of Damascus60 concerning a beautiful youth named Magnes from the Ionian city of Smyrna.61 This Magnes wore long luxurious purple cloaks and had grown his hair into a korymbos (a synonym for krôbylos62), which he bound up with a golden headband (cf. the golden cicada pins at Athens), and dressed in this way, he caught the attention of the Lydian tyrant Gyges and became his paidika. One day Magnes was singing poetry to an audience of women, including Magnesian women, and this so offended the decency of their male relatives that the men rushed in, stripped Magnes of his clothes, and cut off his hair (FGrH 90 F 62).
This tale reflects two common ritual patterns that turn up in a number of Greek maturation rites. The first pattern features ritual transvestism followed by ritual disrobing. The clearest example of such a ritual took place at the Ekdusia in the Cretan city of Phaistos: there the youths, prior to swearing an oath of citizenship, triumphantly cast off their feminine clothes (hence the name of the festival, Ekdusia, “festival of disrobing”) and showed, through a display of their nude male bodies, that they were ready to be admitted to the society of men.63 I believe that Magne’s purple cloak can be understood in the context of ritual transvestism: it is a symbol not only of Ionian luxury,64 but also, from the perspective of adolescent maturation, of femininity. This is a situation that the adolescent may end himself, as at Phaistos, or one that may require the intervention of adult men to sunder him from the feminine realm. From a ritual perspective, the problem with Magnes is his strong ties to the womens quarters and to the mother, sisters, and female slaves who live there; the myth, on the other hand, represents the boys unhealthy closeness to this feminine world both through the purple cloak that Magnes wears and through the suspicion that the Magnesian men harbor about the time he spends with their female kin. There is a possibility that the Magnes myth actually originated in a local maturation ritual involving transvestism; at the very least, myth and ritual run parallel, both drawing on the same social patterns.65
If we accept the “initiatory” nature of the Magnes story, it becomes easy to detect a second ritual pattern reflected in the tale: ritual hair growth followed by ritual cutting. Nicolaus tells us that Magnes is growing (his word is trephôn) the youthful Ionian lock called the korymbos, and I think we are justified in presuming that this lock would in due time be cut and probably offered to a god. In this story, however, the lock is cut not by Magnes himself, but by the Magnesian men: the boyhood lock is one more symbol of his feminine boyhood and, once again, the men must intervene. And it is not only the removal of Magnes purple cloak and cutting of his hair that mark the forced farewell to boyhood, but also the abrupt ending of his pederastic relationship with Gyges. Indeed, this is probably also why the poet Anacreon mourns when his beloved Smerdies hair is cut off by either Smerdies himself (frag. 414 PMG) or by the “coarse hands” of another, either a barber or the Samian tyrant Polycrates (frag. 347 PMG). What troubles Anacreon is not that the boys beauty is diminished, but that the cutting of the boys hair marks his entry into adulthood and thus the end of the pederastic relationship. Neither Magnes hair nor Smerdies hair is described as having been grown long for ritual reasons, and in neither case is it said to be cut as part of a maturation ritual. But the case of Magnes, at least, is relevant to our discussion all the same: whether or not the Magnes story conceals an underlying Ionian ritual, it does reflect patterns of social thought and practice regarding the hair of a young man on the verge of manhood. And it is precisely such patterns of practice that contextualize ritual, if not actually give rise to it. We shall return again to the relevance of non-ritual practice to our discussion of hair ritual at the end of this chapter.
What is perhaps most important about the Magnes episode is that it suggests that Ionian youths who grew the krôbylos or korymbos might invoke not only a historical style associated with Ionian men of old, but also a feminine style. Here we have a clear example of how the same hairstyle could be interpreted differently: some, perhaps the adolescent himself, could see the krôbylos or korymbos as harking back to the Ionian men of old; others, such as the adult men who watch the adolescent grow and cut this hair, might see it as a mark of femininity and a symbol of the need for their intervention. We cannot say that the krôbylos or korymbos bears one meaning or the other: rather the hair becomes a symbolic focus of contestation, which reflects some very real underlying social conflicts that emerge when adult society attempts to absorb heady new members into its ranks.
Heroic hairstyles were also seen as possible models for the hair ritually grown by boys and adolescents for eventual ritual cutting. A very elegant example is found in a grave epigram from the second century ce found in Euboean Chalkis. There the voice of the deceased boy refers to his boyhood hairstyle and to the ritual cutting that would have taken place, had he lived, when he came of age (IG 12 Supp. 196.1179, lines 9–12):
And long locks of hair hang down the back of my head (opithen komoôsai). For coming of age (hebe) did not cut them, but death struck first.
The hairstyle being alluded to here is a common hairstyle worn by heroes: long in the back, but cut short in the front.66 While the hairstyle was associated with many heroes, including Theseus and Hector, it was a style associated by Homer specifically with the Euboean Abantes (Iliad 2.542), and the pretentious epic language of the inscription explicitly quotes Homers description of them in the phrase opithen komoôsai.67 The Achaeans as a whole could be described as “long-haired,” but only Homers Abantes were “longhaired in the back.” The Euboean historian Archemachos attributes the same style to the Euboean version of the Kouretes, and he uses the same phrase: opithen komoôntas.68 The uncut hair of the deceased Euboean boy explicitly invokes, then, a style associated with heroes in general and with Euboean heroes — the Abantes and Euboean Kouretes — in particular. But this does not mean that the hair of the Euboean boy actually imitated this style in every respect. First of all, there is no literary or material evidence, as far as I am aware, that suggests that boys and adolescents living during the Hellenistic and imperial periods cut their hair short in the front, but kept it long in the back.69 Secondly, the style of the Abantes and Euboean Kouretes and other heroes was an adult hairstyle.70 For instance, it was only after Theseus cut his childhood frontlock and ritually offered it to Apollo at Delphi that he came to wear this style (Plutarch, Theseus 5). But this does not mean that the uncut backlock of boys and adolescents could not still be assimilated in a more general way to that of the heroes, and at least one Euboean boy assimilated his to the renowned heroic style of Euboea’s own Abantes and Kouretes, just as another Euboean boy (see above), wearing the krôbylos, assimilated his to his Ionian
We find another example of how adolescent ritual hairstyles can invoke heroic styles in the Cypriot city of Kition, on the margins of the Greek world. An inscription found there, written in Phoenician and dating from about 800 BCE, records the offering to Astarte of seven locks of hair by a male dedicant named Mal.71 The age of the dedicant is not specified, but the editor of the inscription and others are probably right to see this hair offering as a rite of passage. 72 What requires explanation is the number of locks offered, and here comparative mythology provides a valuable clue. Wenning and Zenger have shown that seven locks was an attribute of many early Mesopotamian heroes, the most famous of whom is Samson.73 It could well be that the seven locks of myth originated in a ritual such as the one from Kition. But from the perspective of the young man himself, ritual follows myth: this young man, in offering seven locks of his hair, walks in the footsteps of the near eastern hero.
While we have plenty of examples of the way in which adults gave meaning to the consecrated hair of boys and adolescents, we have little information, as I mentioned already, about how boys or adolescents thought of their own hair. Still, I would like to offer one admittedly tentative example that comes from outside the realm of votive offerings, and that is the long hair worn by Athenian laconizers in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. There were many among the elite at Athens who were sympathetic to the Spartan way of life, but those who went so far as to ape Spartan styles of dress and hairstyles came mostly from the ranks of the young (the meirakia and the neoi).74 The affectation seems to have been particularly entrenched among the cavalry class (e.g., Aristophanes Knights 580), a group composed largely of wealthy young men in their twenties.75 But the examples are not restricted to that group. In Aristophanes Wasps, for example, Philocleons son Bdelykleon (called a manias, “young man,” at line 532) is associated with two different Spartan hairstyles. The Chorus describes him as “growing his beard uncut” (476), this in the context of criticizing him for consorting with the Spartan Brasidas and aiming to replace Athenian democracy with a form of tyranny. Indeed, the Spartans are characterized elsewhere in old and middle comedy as wearing long unkempt beards.76 A few lines earlier the Chorus addresses him as komêtamunias (“wearing his hair like Amynias” at line 466): this is a reference not only to the figure of Amynias, the son of Pronapos, known for his antidemocratic political leanings (see the scholia ad loc.), but also to the Spartan hairstyle he was known to wear (id.). It is interesting that later in this play (1267), this same Amynias is described as one of those who wore the krôbylos hairstyle (a style characterized by a prominent forelock): it seems that in late fifth century Athens the krôbylos sometimes had laconizing associations (scholia ad 1267), even though these associations were probably absent a century earlier, when the style was worn by the Ionian heroes of Marathon, and in the epigrams from Euboea more than a century later (see above). What is important for our purposes here is that the neanias Bdelykleon is associated with two different styles of Spartan hair — long cephalic hair (possibly a version of the krôbylos style) and long, unkempt facial hair — and with pro-Spartan oligarchic political views. Indeed the case of Bdelykleon suggests that such affectations were not necessarily limited to the extremely wealthy or to members of the Athenian cavalry, but may have been a style adopted by many young men of the day.
The case of Pheidippides in Aristophanes Clouds points in the same direction. The youths father, Strepsiades, complains that Pheidippides “has grown his hair long, rides horses and chariots, and even dreams of horses” (lines14–16). The association between long hair and horses suggests once again the laconizing affectations of the aristocratic youths who were members of the Athenian cavalry. Still it is interesting that in the Clouds the associations with Sparta and oligarchy are not explicit, as they were in the previous year in the Knights (424 BCE) and in the following year in the Wasps (422 BCE) (see above). There are two possible explanations for this. First, it is possible that long hair in the 420s was not exclusively a Spartan style, but was a more generic youthful style, which was sometimes explicitly assimilated to the long hair worn by Spartan adults either by the wearers themselves or (perhaps with disapproval) by their elders. Or, if the long hair worn by many wealthy Athenian youths was primarily associated with Sparta, it may be that Aristophanes in the Clouds has chosen to downplay these aristocratic, oligarchic associations because he is more interested in the theme of generational conflict. Although Strepsiades is clearly wealthy and has an aristocratic wife (Clouds 61), Aristophanes presents Pheidippides’ interest in horses and long hair not so much as a logical extension of his aristocratic birth, but as a source of conflict between father and son. And while much of this conflict is financially-driven, clearly the play as a whole, especially the debate between Just and Unjust Argument that serves as the climax of the play, is about a more general conflict between the older and the younger generation. Pheidippides, like Bdelykleon, is clearly part of this younger rebellious generation whose politics, interest in the sophists, and aesthetic tastes are different from those of their fathers.
It may be objected that the long laconizing hair of Pheidippides and Bdelykleon has nothing to do with ritual. But I think the examples can be justified on two grounds. First, my goal in this section has been to identify a number of different associations that adolescent hair — special locks or hair uncut from childhood — had in the eyes of adult writers, who are our only source for the life of boys and adolescents, and to suggest that this same range of meanings was available to the adolescent himself. Most of the associations I identified (sexual vitality, femininity, historical and heroic styles) were linked directly with ritual; while laconizing was not linked with ritual in any source that I know of, it too is an association that a youth could invoke in ritual. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the hair of younger Athenian boys and adolescents during the late fifth or early fourth centuries, hair that was being grown for the river Cephisus, for Heracles, or for Artemis, was not sometimes assimilated to oligarchic Spartan hair, especially the hair of boys and adolescents with older brothers in the cavalry or a father hostile to the radical democracy.
Second, the laconizing hair worn by some Athenian youths appears to have been a temporary hairstyle, judging from the fact that it is associated almost exclusively with the young, and therefore it is probable that the long hair would eventually be cut when the youth was ready to settle down and be a productive adult member of society. And when it was finally cut, it would mark a sort of final transition to adulthood, even if the cut hair was not offered to a kourotrophic deity. We might even describe this as a “private ritual.” I don’t think that the presence or absence of cult is ultimately all that important: if we consider it purely from the perspective of the adolescent performer, non-ritual hair-growing and hair-cutting is not very different from ritual hair-growing and hair-cutting, which itself affords the adolescent a good deal of room for improvization.
The performance embodied in these adolescent hairstyles, ritual and non-ritual alike, meant different things to different people. The hair ritually grown by a Euboean boy might be seen by some as invoking Ionian tradition and by others as assimilating the boy to the Abantes and Kouretes of the heroic age. Likewise, an Athenian boy may have seen his krôbylos or skollus as an extension of his newfound virility or as a rebellious statement against the democracy, while his grandfather saw it as a reproduction of the historical style of his Ionian ancestors, and the boy’s battalion leader as evidence of the boy’s sissiness. It is precisely the inability of any one person or group to control the meaning of ritual and non-ritual grooming that makes it so useful for social communication.
1 The book, The Rites of Passage, was first published in 1909, but did not come to exert much influence on classical studies in England and the United States until the appearance of an English translation in 1960. On Van Gennep and the concept of tribal initiation in general, see the contributions of Graf and Polinskaya in this volume.
2 The most brilliant statement of the structural approach in the field of classics remains Vidal-Naquet (1986) 106–28, originally published in 1968 and inspired to a great extent by the work of Lévi-Strauss. Surprisingly few classicists have been influenced by the approach of another important structuralist, the anthropologist Victor Turner. For a critique of Vidal-Naquet’s structural approach, see Leitao (1995) 136–42 and the contributions of Polinskaya and Dodd in this volume.
3 The felicitous phrase is that of Hughes-Freeland and Crain (1998) 2.
4 See Morris (1995) 571–2.
5 See Schlegel and Barry (1980). On the traces of such a conception in Greek male transition rites, see Leitao (1995).
6 See e.g., Euripides Bacchae 494 (for Dionysus); Diphilus frag. 66 Kock (for unnamed god); Pausanius 8.20.3 (for the river Alpheios); Himerius 23.7 (for Dionysus).
7 Morris (1995) 571–2; Mitchell (1998).
8 So generally Pollux 3.38. The hair-offering in A.P. 6.201 was made on the occasion of a first childbirth, which itself might be thought of as a rite of passage.
9 We also have a number of grave stelai from the greater Roman empire that mention the ages of children who died before cutting their lock of hair: these range from age 2 to 10. Goette (1989) 209 and Appendix A nos. 10, 11, 11a, 12, 14, 20, 36, 43 and Appendix B no. 3. See also Legras (1993) on Egyptian mummy portraits. It should be observed, however, that these examples are mostly non-Greek and are mostly from the first few
10 For the private nature of rites involving children and adolescents, see now Faraone (in this volume) on the Athenian arkteia.
11 The best discussion of the koureion sacrifice remains Cole (1984).
12 E.g., boys to the river Cephisus (Pausanias 1.37.3); ephebes in conjunction with a libation to Heracles (Athenaeus 494–95; Hesychius s.v. oinistêria; Photius s.v. oinistêria).
13 Corinth: Pausanias 2.3.6–7. Megara: id. 1.43.4. Troezen: Euripides Hippolytus 1423–30.
14 See especially Johnston (1999) 203–49.
15 See e.g., Homer Iliad 23.135–51 (vow made by Peleus, though in a somewhat different context); I. Str. 405, 417, 444, 445, 483 (Panamara); IG 12.5.173.5 (Paros); cf. A.P. 6.198 and 10.19.
16 Homer Iliad 23. 135–51; Aeschylus Libation Bearers 6–7; Diodorus Siculus 4.24.4–6; Pausanias 8.20.3; Himerius 23.7; Philostratus the Elder Imagines 1.7.2; Eustathius ad Iliad 1.254. Cf. Diphilus frag. 66.6 Kock. The Latin sources have pasco: Vetgil Aeneid 7.391; Censorinus 1.10.
17 Frazer (1911–15) 264–87, esp. 283–4; Eitrem (1914) 350–1.
18 Burkert (1985) 70.
19 See e.g., Olivelle (1998) 32–6, who discusses non-Greek evidence.
20 See Leach (1958) for a general statement of the structuralist view, Bremmer (1978) 25, 27–8 for its application to the Greek evidence.
21 Cf. the offering Queen Berenice vowed to make when her husband Ptolemy III returned from the Assyrian war. Callimachus frag. 110; Catullus 66.7–14.
22 Theophrastus Characters 21.3 (Delphi); cf. Theopompus FGrH 115 F 248 = Athenaeus 605a–d.
23 P. Oxy XLIX p. 115 (Egypt).
24 The inscription reads meta tou patros; cf. the phrase meta tôn goneôn of I. Str. 1263, in a very similar context, discussed in n. 35 below.
25 A papyrus from the Greek community in Oxyrhynchos mentions a hair-cutting ceremony for two brothers to be celebrated in the temple of Thoeris. P. Oxy. XII.1484, revised in P. Oxy. XLIX p. 115; Legras (1993) 117–18. The evidence that these are brothers is based upon the plural article tôn, and the involvement elsewhere of fathers. Whether one accepts the restoration tôn [huiôn mou], more likely in my opinion, or ton [adelphôn], the boys are still brothers.
26 See e.g., A.P. 6.164, offered to Poseidon, along with Glaucus, Nereus, Melicertes, and the Samothracian Gods in thanks for being saved at sea. Another hair offering after a shipwreck: Lucian Pro Men. Cond. 1 (no specific god mentioned). Hair cut on board during a storm (again, no specific god mentioned as recipient): Juvenal 12.81; Petronius 104.5.
27 E.g., Sommer (1912) 2106; Rouse (1902) 243.
28 A photograph of the stele may be found in IG 9.2.146; there is a sketch in Daremburg-Saglio s.v. donarium, fig. 2543, and s.v. coma, fig. 1833.
29 See e.g., Bremer (1912) 2124–5; Kourouniotou (1923) passim and figs. 1 and 5; and Harrison (1988) 250–3, with the most up-to-date bibliography.
30 IG 9.2.585; Arch. Eph. 1923 p. 137.367; Arch. Eph. 1930 p. 102.3.
31 Arch. Eph. 1923 p. 137.367.
32 See e.g., Oppermann (1924) 71; Laumonier (1958) 331.
33 See Deschamps and Cousin (1888); Rouse (1902) 243; Sahin (1982–90) vol. I.193.
34 See Laumonier (1958) 331 and I.Str. 412 = SEG 4.347, where the SEG editor has supplemented a lone nu to read n[eaniskôn], “young men”.
35 See Goette (1989). I think Goette, id., 208–9 is wrong to understand meta tôn goneôn as meaning that the parents too are dead and this stele aims to preserve their memory. Rather, I think that Epagathos is joining with the parents (who might not have been able to afford such an extravagant memorial) in commemorating the death of their son Threptos. Cf. also IG 12.5.173.5 (the mother makes the hair offering on behalf of her son meta tou patros, i.e., with the participation of the boys father).
36 Goette (1989) 206–8.
37 LaBarbe (1953).
38 I. Str. 450, 489, 490, 491, 545; cf. 486–8.
39 See e.g., Laumonier (1958) 311, 330.
40 See Goette (1989) 212, Appendix A no. 20.
41 Laumonier (1958) 256.
42 Theopompus FGrH 115 F 248 = Athenaeus 605a–d; Theophrastus Characters 21.3.
43 See Deschamps and Cousin (1888) 481 (but they give no examples of an inscription).
44 Deschamps and Cousin (1888) 488 n. 78. Some of the hair inscriptions at Paros and Panamara seem to have been scribbled on the wall of the temple. Paros: Rubensohn (1902) 226–7. Panamara: Laumonier (1958) 329. The inclusion of some unrelated youths in lists of offerings made by brothers (e.g., I. Str. 449) might be explained as generosity on the part of a wealthy family on behalf of one of their son’s friends who was unable to pay for the dedicatory stele himself.
45 Diodorus 4.24.4–6 (Agyrion, in Sicily); A.P. 6.155, 7.482; Lucian Dea Syria 60 (Hierapolis); Himerius 23.7 (Prusa, in Bithynia)
46 skollus: Pamphilus ap. Athen. 494f; Pollux 2.30; Hesych. s.v. hierôma, koruphos; cf. Dioscorid. De simp. med. 2.97.1, Hesychius s.v. skollus, konnophorôn, mallos; Eustathius ad Odyssey 1.205–6.; konnos: Hesychius s.v. hierôma; cf. Lucian Eexiphanes 5, Hesychius s.v. konnos, konnophorôn.; krôbylos: Pollux 2.30; cf. Thucydides 1.6.3 with Gomme’s comments ad loc.; mallos: Hesychius s.v. hierôma; Montserrat (1991); Legras (1993); cf. Hesych. s.v. mallos.
47 Van Hoorn (1909) 38–51; Harrison (1988).
48 Von Gonzenbach (1957); Goette (1989).
49 So Goette (1989) 206–8.
50 Cf. Goette, id., 207–8.
51 See generally Olivelle (1998) 36–7.
52 See Hippocrates, Nat. Puer. 20.1–3; [Aristotle] De coloribus 797b30–798b5; and Onians (1954) 229–33, 530–1.
53 Davis (1986) 399–402; Koehl (1986) 100–3.
54 See David (1992) 12–16, with further bibliography.
55 Plutarch Moralia 261e–f. This perfectly matches the gendered hairstyles of Spartan adults: men were permitted to grow their hair long, and they lavished great attention on it (Xenophon, Lac. Pol. 11.3; Herodotus 7.208–9; Plutarch, Lycurgus 22.1–2); Spartan women, meanwhile, were expected to wear their hair short (Aristotle frag. 611 = Heraclides Lembus 373.13 Dilts; Lucian Fug. 27; cf. Plutarch Lycurgus 15.5, Xenophon of Ephesus 5.1.7) and not wear gold jewelry or other ornamentation of any kind (Heraclides Lembus 373.13 Dilts).
56 Pollux 2.30. Boyhood style: Hesychius, Suda, Lex Seg. s.v. krôbylos.
57 See e.g., Asios of Samos frag. 13; Thucydides 1.6.3; Aristophanes Wasps 1266 and scholia ad loc.; Heraclides Ponticus frag. 55 Wehrli = Athenaeus 512c; Nicolaus Damasc. FGrH 90 F 62; and Studniczka (1896) generally.
58 Bechtel (1917) 601.
59 Gow and Page (1965) 538.
60 Nicolaus’ source is probably the fifth century historian, Xanthus of Lydia.
61 His youth is guaranteed by the fact that he becomes the paidika, that is, the subordinate partner in a pederastic relationship, of the Lydian tyrant Gyges. The phrase anêr Smyrnaios, which Nicolaus uses to describe Magnes, means “a Smyrnaean,” not necessarily “an adult man from Smyrna.” Cf. LSJ s.v. anér VI.1.
62 Photius and Suda, s.v. krôbylos make the equation. Asius of Samos frag. 13 and Athenaeus 512c = Heraclides Ponticus frag. 55 Wehrli attach the name korymbos to the same Ionian hairstyle which Thucydides calls a krôbylos.
63 On the Ekdusia, see generally Leitao (1995).
64 Athenaeus 512c, for example, refers to the Ionian purple cloaks worn by the Athenians as a mark of to truphân, “soft luxury.” The language Athenaeus uses to describe them (halourgê êmpischonto himatia) is very similar to the way Nicolaus describes Magnes’ cloak (halourgê ampechomenos). Cf. Thucydides 1.6.3.
65 On the problems associated with assuming that rituals lie behind adolescent narratives, see Graf in this volume.
66 See Austin (1972); Boardman (1973); Bremmer (1978) 25–8.
67 Hom. Il. 2.542; cf. also Plutarch Theseus 5.
68 Archemachus FGrH 424 F 9 = Strabo 10.3.6. See also Pollux 2.28, who calls the Euboean Kouretes opisthokomoi.
69 For a description of some common Hellenistic and imperial styles, see Goette (1989). It is suggestive, but by no means decisive, that in his extensive discussion of the heroic hairstyles of Theseus and Abantes in Theseus 5, Plutarch at no time suggests that these styles served as a model for the practice of later times, including his own.
70 Pace Bremmer (1978) 25–8, who sees this as a temporary, liminal style.
71 Puech (1976) 13–14.
72 See the scholarship cited in Puech (1976) 19–20.
73 Wenning and Zenger (1982); see also Kötting (1986).
74 One probable exception: at Aristophanes Lysistrata 561, the long-haired man is a phylarch, and presumably no longer a youth (he is called an anêr). There are also three references to laconizing long hair in which no age is discernible: Aristophanes Clouds 1100 and Birds 1281–2, and Plato Comicus frag. 124 Kock.
75 Cf. Aristophanes Lysistrata 561 and Clouds 14–16, which associate this hairstyle with horses, although they do not mention the knights explicitly. Cf. also Lysias 16.18, where the young Mantitheos, who is defending his service in the cavalry under the Thirty, urges that one should not “hate a man just because he grows his hair long” (16.18). But see now Craik (1999), who makes a good case against emending tolmai to komai.
76 Aristoph. Lysistrata. 1072; Plato Comicus frag. 124 Kock.