Abstract

In C.Q,. xxii, 199 Professor R. G. Austin has drawn attention to the short at the front, unusually long at the back. It must be related to that other heroic ‘long back and sides’, the Theseis, which is described by Plutarch who compares Homer's Abantes Il. 2. 542, and adds by way of explanation that the custom was not learnt from the Arabes, as some think, nor from the Mysians, but because the Abantes liked close combat and short front hair denied their adversaries a hand hold. The same explanation probably serves the Hectorean hair style.