The most celebrated ancient writers, and several modern ones, have spoken honourably of the finest beards of antiquity. Homer speaks highly of the white beard of Nestor and that of old king Priam. Virgil describes Mezentius’s to us, which was so thick and long as to cover all his breast; Chrysippus praises the noble beard of Timothy, a famous player on the flute. Pliny the younger tells us of the white beard of Euphrates, a Syrian philosopher; and he takes pleasure in relating the respect mixed with fear with which it inspired the people. Plutarch speaks of the long, white beard of an old Laconian, who, being asked why he let it grow so, replied: _’Tis, that, seeing continually my white beard, I may do nothing unworthy of its whiteness_. Strabo relates, that the Indian philosophers, the Gymnosophists, were particularly attentive to make the length of their beards contribute to captivate the veneration of the people. Diodorus, after him, gives a very particular and circumstantial history of the beards of the Indians. Juvenal does not forget that of Antilocus, the son of Nestor. Fenelon, in describing a priest of Apollo in all his magnificence, tells us, that he had a white beard down to his girdle. But Perseus seems to outdo all these authors: this poet was so convinced that a beard was the symbol of wisdom, that he thought he could not bestow a greater encomium on the divine Socrates, than by calling him the bearded master, _Magistrum barbatum_. Several other writers have treated of this subject. Voltaire often touches on it in his voluminous writings. The author of the _Modes françoises_ has bestowed many pages on it; the learned Don Calmet has not thought this subject beneath his attention, on which he has written a particular work, intituled _Histoire de la barbe de l’homme_. The Italians have a modern work, intitled: _Barbalogia del Caval. Valeriano Vanetti_, 1760. This Vanetti, after giving an account of the revolutions which beards have undergone, enters into a very learned and serious dissertation on the various manners in which they were worn among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans; but the most obscure and least authenticated part of his work is that where he warmly maintains, against _Van-Helmont_, that Adam was created with a beard on his chin. I readily confess I have not carried my inquiries so far into remote antiquity. In the 16th century there were a great number of works published on the beard, of which I shall have occasion to speak in another place. But the most extraordinary account in the history of beards is that given by Titus Livius. Infinitely better than the eloquence of a Demosthenes or the courage of an Alexander could have done, did the beard suspend on a sudden the ferocity of a people of barbarians thirsty of the blood of their enemies.