they keep a good supply of strong perfumes; for many people will
want a little scent on their hair each morning, even if they wish
no other attention. But it is not an imposition to a barber to
enter his shop, yet never move towards his low stool before the
shining steel mirror. Anybody is welcome to hang around indefinitely,
listening to the proprietor's endless flow of talk. He will pride
himself on knowing every possible bit of news or rumor: Had the
Council resolved on a new fleet-building program? Had the Tyrant
of Syracuse's "four" the best chance in the chariot race in the
next Olympic games? The garrulity of barbers is already proverbial.

[*] Alexander the Great (336-323 B.C.) required his soldiers to be
shaved (as giving less grasp for the enemy!), and the habit then
spread generally through the whole Hellenic world.

"How shall I cut your hair, sir?" once asked the court tonsure of
King Archelaus of Macedon.

"In silence," came the grim answer.

But the proprietor will not do all the talking. Everybody in the
little room will join. Wits will sharpen against wits; and if the
company is of a grave and respectable sort, the conversation will
grow brisk upon Plato's theory of the "reality of ideas," upon
Euripides's interpretation of the relations of God to man, or upon
the spiritual symbolism of Scopas's bas-reliefs at Halicarnassus.

The barber shops by the Agora then are essential portions of
Athenian social life. Later we shall see them supplemented by the
Gymnasia;--but the Agora has detained us long enough. The din and