Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

American and Athenian religious belief

Fascinating numbers in this Harris poll on 21st-century Americans’ beliefs about ghosts, astrology, witches, and other supernatural phenomena. For example:

73% believe in miracles.
61% believe in a devil.
40% believe in ghosts.
25% believe in astrology.

And so on, with interesting breakdowns of the data based on sex, political affiliation, and amount of education.

Which reminds me of this from John Hale’s Lords of the Sea, on 5th-century BCE Athenians’ beliefs about omens, divination, and the gods:

“The majority of Athenians believed in omens and divination. Prophets accompanied all Athenian expeditions of any importance. They read the signs for the generals at the morning sacrifices and interpreted the meaning of comets, eclipses, phases of the moon, the flight of passing birds, and even dreams. To counterbalance this religious intrusion into military and political affairs, Pericles welcomed natural historians, city planners, philosophers, military engineers, and astronomers to Athens. Debates over their ideas and teachings were far from abstract or academic. Some Athenians readily accepted innovations, but others found them shocking. Among the common people there was a widespread mistrust of scientists or philosophers whose theories seemed based on the theory of a universe without gods” (p. 132).

Plus ça change …?

[The first image is one of Giotto's Nativity paintings, and the red-figure vase portrays the birth of Erichthonius.]

Facial hair and philosophers

From John Hale’s Lords of the Sea, The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (p. 113):

“In Athens haircuts and hairstyles had social and political implications. Aristocratic horsemen still wore long braids and gold hairpins. The common man (and the politicians who spoke for him) preferred a short cut, though not quite a crew cut. The customer sat on a low stool, his body draped in a sheet to catch the shorn locks. The barber then cropped and curled the hair, anointed the head with scented oil, and trimmed the beard to a neat point. (At Athens any man with a long unkempt bead ran the risk of being mistaken for a philosopher).” The gods forbid.

Notes the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities: Among the Greeks a beard was a sign of manliness (after all, only women and youths are beardless), and longer beards had become a status symbol of philosophers, giving rise to the common saying “A long beard does not make a philosopher” (πωγωνοτροφία φιλόσοφων οὐ ποιεῖ or Barba non facit philosophum).

The Latin version of the phrase takes us to Rome, where later many Romans shaved their beards in order not to be taken for Greeks, Greek influence sometimes being politically suspect. The paranoid emperor Domitian once ordered philosophers to be banished from Rome, and many shaved their beards to disguise their profession.

Stoic philosopher Epictetus wrestled lightly with the dilemma and, in a small act of defiance, refused to shave: “Come, then, Epictetus, shave yourself.” “If I am a philosopher, I will not shave myself” (page 10 of this edition of the Discourses).

Domitian was assassinated in the year 96. Coincidence?

All of which makes one wonder about the true significance of Ockham’s Razor and our professional preoccupation with Bertrand Russell’s Barber Paradox.

A side note: Michael Gilleland has lines from ancient poets making fun of beards, especially philosophers’ beards.

11.156 (Ammianus): “Do you suppose that your beard creates brains and therefore you grow that fly-flapper? Take my advice and shave it off at once; for that beard is a creator of lice and not of brains.”

11.368 (Julian Antecessor): “You have such a heavy crop on your hairy face that you ought to have it cut with scythes and not with scissors.”

11.430 (Lucian): “If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat with a fine beard is at once a complete Plato.”