Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Crobylus

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

CRO'BYLUS (κρωβύλος or κρώβυλος). Designates a particular manner of arranging the hair, which was characteristic of the earliest inhabitants of Athens (Thucyd. i. 6.), and some uncivilized nations (crobylus barbarorum, Tertull. Virg. Veland. 10.). It was effected by drawing back the hair from the roots all round the head, and fastening it in a knot, or with a tie at the top; and the same fashion prevailed amongst both sexes of the Greeks: but the term crobylus had an especial reference to the men; corymbus, on the contrary, to the women. (Schol. ad Thucyd. l. c.) Yet Thucydides and Heraclides of Pontus (ap. Athen. xii. 5.) use the two words κρώβυλος and κόρυμβος as convertible terms, and both descriptive of the male adjustment. It is, moreover, an unfounded statement to say, as some of the interpreters have done, that the fashion was peculiar to "elderly persons." Thucydides, in narrating the progress of the Greeks towards civilization in dress and manners, remarks that certain antiquated customs, and amongst them that of the crobylus, had but lately been given up by some of the old people. But age is always the most averse to change, and the last to adopt new fashions; and many will remember a similar instance in modern Europe to that mentioned by Thucydides, where some few of the oldest people continued to wear their pig-tails long after they had been generally laid aside by the younger portion of the community. Besides, the Greek artists frequently give a coiffure of this kind to Apollo, Bacchus, and youthful persons, as in our example (Crobylus/1.1), from a bronze figure of a boy discovered at Herculaneum. The precise set of the hair is not given with sufficient distinctness; but in the original it is clearly seen to be turned back and tied up in the same manner as that more plainly shown by the head of the female illustrating the words CORYMBUS.

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  Crobylus/1.1