The monuments as well as the writers teach us that men wore their hair long, in the next period also, down to the fifth century; we sometimes find hair of such length and thickness depicted that it seems almost incredible that a man’s hair could have been so much developed, even by the most careful treatment. However, it did not often hang quite loose, but it was tied back somewhere near the neck by a ribbon, and, unlike the Homeric head-dress, where each curl is separately fastened, the whole mass of hair was bound together, and then spread out again below the fastening, and fell down the back. Sometimes the hair, after being tightly tied together in one place, was interwoven with cords or ribbons lower down, so that it fell in a broader mass than where it was tied together, but by no means hung loose. Another kind of head-dress is that in which the hair is tied together in such a manner as to resemble a broad and thickish band, something like our head-dress of the last century. The hair falls a little way below the neck, and is then taken up again and tied in with the other piece by a ribbon in such a manner that the end of the hair falls down over this ribbon. Here, too, we find variety, for the hair sometimes fell some way down the back, sometimes was fastened up again at the back of the head. An example of the former kind is the bronze head from Olympia represented in Fig. 44; of the latter, Fig. 43, from a vase painting of the fifth century. [Illustration: FIG. 43.] [Illustration: FIG. 44.] Most commonly, however, in the sixth and fifth centuries men plaited their long hair and laid the plaits round their head. There were two distinct modes of doing this. One was to take two plaits from the back of the head in different directions and fasten them like bandages round the head; the other was to begin the plaits at the ears, turn them backwards so that they crossed each other at the back of the head, then bring them round to the front and knot them together over the centre of the forehead. This is the head-dress of the figure on the Omphalos known as Apollo (Fig. 45), and the head of a youth (Fig. 46). There are also many other differences in detail; sometimes [Illustration: FIG. 45.] [Illustration: FIG. 46.]