Roman Barbers, Razor Cuts, and Spider-Web Bandages

Marcus Valerius

You want to know the true test of Roman courage? It-it-it isn't facing the Dacian tribes on the cold northern frontier, no. It's... well, it's sitting on a three-legged wooden stool in the middle of a crowded street, letting a man with a heavy, blunt iron blade scrape your throat. To be a respectable citizen under our great Emperor Trajan, you must be clean-shaven. Absolutely smooth. Anything less and... well, you look like a hairy barbarian from the wilds, a man in deep mourning, or... or worst of all, one of those pretentious Greek philosophers who spends all day talking and never bathes. So, every few days, we submit to the torment. I- I- I find myself today at the shop of Antiochus. It's not really a shop, just a tiny stone booth, a tonstrina, wide open to the noise of the street. The air is thick... it smells of cheap olive oil, stale sweat, and the damp wool of too many customers packed into a small space. There is no lather. No soap. No warm, soothing towels like you might dream of. Just Antiochus, his heavy iron razor--the novacula--and a bronze bowl of cold, greasy water. He dips the blade, splashes my chin, and then... the scrape begins. You can hear it. A dry, rasping sound, like a metal shovel dragging over gravel. Scraping, pulling, ripping the hair from the skin. It takes a steady hand, and absolute, dead silence from the victim.

Marcus Valerius

But silence is... well, it's impossible in Rome. Just as Antiochus gets the iron blade right against my throat, under my jaw, in walks Aulus. You know Aulus. The kind of man who... he never stops talking, always hunting for a free dinner, sniffing out rumors like a street dog. He squeezes into the shop, nearly knocking over my stool, and starts shouting. Have I heard about Trajan's new baths? Are they really using imported marble from Numidia? And what about Senator Rufus--did he really lose his entire estate on a single chariot race at the Circus? Antiochus, of course, can't just shave. He has to participate. He is leaning in, his breath smelling of garlic and sour wine, nodding along. He turns his head... he actually turns his head away from my throat to yell at a mule driver who just blocked his doorway. And then... snap. A sudden, sharp sting. A hot trickle of blood immediately starts running down my neck, dripping onto my clean white toga. Antiochus doesn't even apologize. Why would he? He just reaches up, climbs onto his wooden stool, and starts sweeping his fingers along the dusty rafters. He pulls down a thick, grey clump of spider webs. Yes, cobwebs. He mixes them with a splash of sour vinegar from a little clay jar, makes a wet, sticky paste, and slaps it directly onto the cut. It stings like the furies, but... well, the bleeding stops. The poet Martial once wrote that if you want to avoid a goat-like beard, you must flee the barber, or you'll end up looking like a scarred gladiator. But... I walk back out into the sun, my face burning, smelling of vinegar, with a grey wad of spider webs glued to my jaw. But my chin is smooth. I am, once again, a respectable Roman. Until the day after tomorrow, when we do it all again.