Vestal Virgins Get Plaited

When St Paul wrote to his favourite disciple, Timothy, he gave him advice about many aspects of church and personal life, telling him how to appoint church officials - bishops and deacons - and the qualities those persons should have, advising him to drink "a little wine" rather than the polluted local water, and, along the way, taking a quick snipe at the fair sex.

"I want," Paul said, "the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."

And ever since Paul's words have been used as an excuse by the Christian equivalent of the Taliban to come down hard on women. Some denominations ban - or try to ban - the wearing of jewellery, because Paul said that women weren't to wear gold or pearls. Some ban colourful clothes and insist that their women dress in drab uniformity, because Paul said that women shouldn't wear expensive clothes. And so it goes on.

Curiously, men have never felt that these restrictions apply to them. Puritans dressed their wives and daughters in dowdy fustian but arrayed themselves in sober black - not because it was sober, but because it was the most expensive dye going. A really black suit was the Puritan equivalent of a Rolex watch or top of the range Nike trainers with super-inflatable airflow soles and tongues the size of cricket protectors.

Even today you can go along to a church where the women dare not wear a wedding ring for fear of episcopal wrath, but the men are all sporting that most useless of personal adornments, a tie! And not just your ordinary nylon tie for $1.99 from Walmart, but a genuine silk tie, held in place with a real gold tiepin tastefully decorated with pearls. To add insult to injury, the men are probably wearing watches the size of soup plates and drove to church in the largest, most luxurious car they could afford (or that their bank managers would let them buy).

Nevertheless, despite a feeling that a sermon or two on that verse "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander also" would do not harm at all, it is undeniable that St Paul wrote the words in question, so it is legitimate to wonder what he had in mind by his strictures on "elaborate hairstyles".

Actually, he didn't say "elaborate hairstyles"; Paul's actual word was "braids". As well as eschewing gold and pearls, women were not allowed to have their hair in braids! Curiously this minor detail seems to have passed the male sobersides by. Peer closely at an Amish or Mennonite woman with her plain gown and drab pinafore and her cute little hat (worn to show respect for her husband) and I bet you'll find a long plait neatly pinned into a bun. In fact, plaits are the single most common hairstyle for women of all ages, from little schoolgirls with jug-handle plaits on either side of their heads to African women with little "corn-row" plaits, to the gorgeous young Scandinavian lady I saw in the British Museum one day with a plait so long that it actually dragged on the floor as she walked!

So why was Paul do "down" on plaits?

An answer can be found in the elaborate coiffures depicted on statues of Roman empresses or goddesses, where a multitude of frizzes and plaits and puffs and tiny curls must have taxed the sculptor's skill to the uttermost. Most men glance at them and desite that they are attractive (or not, as the case may be) and move on to something more interesting, with never a thought for the labour and ingenuity that went into creating the style.

(Just in case you're wondering, ladies, the same goes for your warpaint. We men glance at the finished product and accept it as your natural look; we are completely unaware of the time and cost involved in making you so beautiful and when we do get a glimpse of it - after the wedding, of course - we are appalled and impatient. Our feeling is that before the wedding we knocked on the door and you appeared, instantly, and ravishingly beautiful, so why the **** does it take you so long after the wedding? We have a grave suspicion that you are taking so long out of a perverse desire to annoy us.)

It was interesting, therefore, to encounter a lady archaeologist who does not crawl around in the dirt in unflattering dungarees, but confines her researches to brushes and combs and curling irons. Janet Stephens is a good-looking lady with red hair - though I would not venture any money on what the colour was when she was born! - who calls herself "a hairdressing archaeologist". She studies ancient statues to discover how the ladies of those days wore their hair, and then recruits volunteers with long hair to let her experiment and try and recreate the style.

When a Vestal Virgin did her hair it took seven plaits, three knots and a length of rope to hold it all in place!
When a Vestal Virgin did her hair it took seven plaits, three knots and a length of rope to hold it all in place!

Her latest project has been to explore a style called sine crenes which was worn by Rome's Vestal Virgins. After considerable study and experimentation she believes that she has cracked it. At the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Seattle recently (2013) she reported on her findings - and even better, she made a video and put it on YouTube where we can all see it being created and encourage our wives to try it out. Once it has been practised enough, it only takes half an hour to do ...

I watched the video with one eye while doing something else with the other, but my wife watched it all the way through and then discovered that it led to a raft of other videos by Ms Stephens, recreating the hair styles of Cleopatra, the Empress Plotina, the really elaborate hairstyle of the Flavian period and the classical Greek hairstyle.

And it is that which is the most interesting. Not that the style itself is interesting: it was, in fact, extremely simple. Janet takes 17 minutes to recreate the Vestal Virgin's hairdo - with lots of tedious combing and plaiting skipped - but the classical Greek style is over and done with in 1 minute 54 seconds, including introductory music and closing credits!

Despite his Roman citzenship, St Paul was a Greek; he was brought up in a Greek city, he spoke Greek, he wrote his epistles in Greek, his missionary journeys (with the exception of the last, when he was under arrest and went where he was taken) were within the Greek world. It is not unreasonabe, therefore, to suppose that his mother (I'm sure he had one) and his sisters (not sure about them) were equally Greek. A couple of twists and their hair was done and very attractive it looked too.

So when he found Christian women aping the elabourate and expensive hair styles worn by Roman women - styles that not only took hours to create but required the services of a hairdresser as well, Paul was horrified. The world was about to end and even if it wasn't, life was grim, life was earnest, death was close and any woman worthy of the name of Christian should be praying and running around doing good deeds.

Which, actually, isn't all that unreasonable a point of view. If the highly decorative Misses Kardashian were to vanish into a passing black hole, a few hairdressers and paparazzi photographers might be temporarilty discommoded, but the world would be none the worse for their disappearance. If, on the other hand, Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa had never lived - or had devoted their years to newer and better hairstyles - then the world would indeed be the poorer.

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a hairdresser And hairdressers were not cheap. Quite apart from the initial purchase price, you had to feed them and dress them and keep them in the style to which they were accustomed because if you didn't, they sent you out looking like nothing on earth in last year's hairstyle and Lady Plotina looked down her nose at you and never invited you to her parties again! Return

Misses Kardashian For the avoidance of doubt, I wish the young ladies no ill whatsoever and, indeed, have a certain admiration for the way in which they have exploited their moderate good looks in order to achieve fame and wealth. I just hope they are investing their money wisely, because looks don't last! Return

© Kendall K. Down 2013