Page 95 - BBC History - September 2017

MISCELLANY Q&A

Q How did the Romans shave
QUIZ

BY JULIAN HUMPHRYS themselves and cut their nails?
Try your hand at this C Parker, London
month’s history quiz ONLINE
QUIZZES Upper-class Romans, and There were some female barbers,
historyextra.com
1. What links Sundowner, /quiz A anyone seeking to emulate them, too. The first-century poet Martial
Tamzine, Royal Daffodil didn’t like body hair. Men did shave complained of one: “She didn’t shave
and the Medway Queen?
themselves, but more usually had a me, she skinned me.”
2. What were Fareham reds? ‘tonsor’ (barber) do it for them, Barbers cut hair, of course, but were
using a range of tools including bronze also available to cut corns and remove
3. What was motorist, or iron shears, knives and razors. warts. Their other important role was
speedboat racer and
aviator Mrs Victor Using a barber was preferable to doing cutting the fingernails of male and
Bruce (left) the first it yourself, because the crude tools female customers.
woman to do in involved called for a great deal of skill. Surviving literature suggests that
Britain? Wealthy Romans had personal men preferred to get a barber to cut
barbers (often slaves), while everyone their nails, while in the later Roman
4. Which are the odd
ones out? Benedictines, else, even the working classes, could empire many women used small
Cistercians, Dominicans, visit a barber’s shop. The more metal tools to clean, cut and file
Cluniacs? fashionable barbers could become very for themselves.
5. How is the Roman emperor rich; Emperor Julian was reportedly so Mosaics and statues suggest that
Valerian said to have been humili- outraged at the wealth of one such upper-class Roman males kept their
ated by his captor, the Persian tradesman that he ordered all barbers fingernails short while women
emperor Shapur? be expelled from the empire. generally preferred slightly longer nails

6. Where is this and why might with rounded tips. Roman
the congregations of 19th-century women would often paint their
churches have been grateful to fingernails with henna or a red
its builder? dye imported from India.
Alternatives to a barber
included singeing off
6 beards with
various burning
materials.
Effeminate
Roman youths
were said to pluck
out their facial hair to
avoid the five o’clock
shadow that surely
every Roman male
6 boasted even on
emerging from the
QUIZ ANSWERS barber’s shop.
1. They all took part in Operation Dynamo, the There is also
evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.
2. High-quality bricks used in the construction of, plenty of written
among other major buildings, the Royal Albert Hall. evidence to suggest
3. Be convicted of speeding (in 1911).
4. Dominicans. They are friars while the others that Roman men
are monks. – and, more
5. By being used as Shapur’s footstool. – removed their pubic hair
especially, women
6. Bude Castle in Cornwall, built by Sir Goldsworthy
GETTY IMAGES/ALAMY thousands of churches in the 19th century. Eugene Byrne, author and journalist
Gurney, the inventor of the Gurney stove which heated
too, by shaving, singeing or
plucking it out.
GOT A QUESTION?

Write to BBC History Magazine,
Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN.
Email: historymagazine@historyextra.com ILLUSTRATION BY GLEN MCBETH
or submit via our website: historyextra.com
BBC History Magazine 95