1828.] A Dissertation on Beards. 249 



lordship was informed; that the beard of such offenders were publicly 

 cut off. As soon as he heard of this ridiculous punishment, he swore 

 that his gentleman should not escape with less. He therefore caused a 

 scaffold to be erected forthwith in the square of Saint Sophia, and then, 

 having sent for a barber, ordered him to strike the gentleman's beard off 

 without any compunction. With this slight punishment the Count was 

 not less pleased than his gentleman for the latter thought that he had 

 deserved death, and was very glad that he was not hanged, saying, on 

 all occasions, that the punishment which he then underwent was not 

 sufficient for the crime which he had committed."* From such an 

 opinion there will not be many dissidents at the present moment ; but at 

 that time the liberals of Constantinople opposed it tooth and nail ; for 

 'they protested, like the Ultra Liberals of the Westminster Review, that 

 it was not right, under any circumstances, to inflict death upon a fellow 

 creature. 



The anecdote which I have placed before the reader might be con- 

 sidered undeserving of credit, did it stand unsupported by others of a 

 similar tendency. But the authorities, to use a law phrase, are so nume*. 

 TOUS upon the point, that I think their credibility must remain unques- 

 tioned. Thenet, in his Cosmography, assures us, that a short time before 

 the Knights of Rhodes took possession of Candia, the Greeks of that 

 island considered the loss of their beards as the heaviest of punishments. 

 Ulmus informs us, that, while his brother was in* that island, he knew 

 an old man who preferred his beard to his life. The governor, to try 

 his mettle, enjoined him, through one of his guards, to cut off his beard 

 without delay. The old man immediately stretched forth his throat, 

 and said to the astonished messenger, " Tell your master he must first 

 cut off this head." Philelphus, the virulent and abusive adversary of 

 Poggio and Valla, and the original hero of the story of Hans Carvel's 

 ring, converted a Greek of the name of Timotheus, who had been a 

 warm friend, into a bitter enemy, by insisting that he should strip him- 

 self of his barbal honours, which he had lost to him in a wager. The 

 incident is narrated at considerable length by Jovius, in his Elogia, but 

 may be shortly described thus : Philelphus and Timotheus quarrelled 

 about the signification of a Greek word. Each wagered his beard that 

 he was right; reference was made to the requisite authorities; and 

 Timotheus then discovered that he was wrong. Philelphus called on 

 him to pay his forfeit. Timotheus begged hard to be excused. Phi- 

 lelphus was inexorable. The beard of Timotheus was cut off, and, to 

 make the loss of it more severely felt, was paraded before the literary 

 friends of Philelphus as a trophy, not of his valour, but of his matchless 

 erudition. So much for the Greeks of the Eastern Empire. 



The modern Greeks are not a whit less attached than their ancestors 

 to a majestic beard. Spon, in his travels to the East, declares, that, in 

 his time, it was dearer to them than their religion; and, as a proof of 

 his assertion, informs us, that, when some of them were condemned by 

 the Turks to shave themselves, they apostatized, in order to avoid so 

 melancholy a mishap. Even in our days the Mainotes, if I am to believe 

 a correspondent in the Constitutional, spend much of their time in the 



* Chronique de Savoye, par Maistre Guillaume Paradin, Chanoine de Beau-jeu A. 



Lyon, 1552, ad pag. 305. There is in the Facetiae of Poggio a still more ludicrous instance 

 of this punishment ; but we can do i?o more than allude to it. 



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