Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Tonsor

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

TON'SOR (κουρεύς). A barber; whose occupation amongst the Romans consisted in cutting the hair, shaving the beard, paring the nails, and pulling out stray hairs with the tweezers (volsellae). Mart. viii. 47. Plaut. Aul. ii. 4. 33. Wealthy persons kept a barber in their own houses amongst their slaves; but the people at large had recourse to the barber's shop (tonstrina); for the Roman rarely shaved himself, at least after the year U.C. 454, when the first barber was introduced from Sicily; and previously to that period the hair and beard was worn long. Plin. H. N. vii. 59.