The beard was carefully attended to by the Greeks. The barber's shop, with its talkative inmate, was not only frequented by those requiring the services of the barber in cutting the hair, shaving, cutting the nails and corns, and tearing out small hairs, but it was also, as Plutarch says, a symposion without wine, where political and local news were discussed. Alkiphron depicts a Greek barber in the following words: "You see how the d----d barber in yon street has treated me; the talker, who puts up the Brundisian looking-glass, and makes his knives to clash harmoniously. I went to him to be shaved; he received me politely, put me in a high chair, enveloped me in a clean towel, and stroked the razor gently down my cheek, so as to remove the thick hair. But this was a malicious trick of his. He did it partly, not all over the chin; some places he left rough, others he made smooth without my noticing it." After the time of Alexander the Great, a barber's business became lucrative, owing to the custom of wearing a full beard being abandoned, notwithstanding the remonstrances of several states.[22] In works of art, particularly in portrait statues, the beard is always treated as an individual characteristic. It is mostly arranged in graceful locks, and covers the chin, lips and cheeks, without a separation being made between whiskers and moustache. Only in archaic renderings the wedge-like beard is combed in long wavy lines, and the whiskers are strictly parted from the moustache. As an example we quote the nobly formed head of Zeus crowned with the stephane in the Talleyrand collection. The usual color of the hair being dark, fair hair was considered a great beauty. Homer gives yellow locks to Menelaos, Achilles, and Meleagros; and Euripides describes Menelaos and Dionysos as fair-haired.