BEARD, the hair growing on the chin, and adjacent parts of the face, chiefly of adults and males. See ANATOMY. p. 256.
Various have been the ceremonies and customs of most nations in regard of the beard. The Tartars, out of a religious principle, waged a long and bloody war with the Persians, declaring them infidels merely because they would not cut their whiskers after the rite of Tartary: And we find, that a considerable branch of the religion of the ancients consisted in the management of their beard. Ecclesiastics have sometimes been enjoined to wear, and at other times have been forbid the wearing, the beard; and the Greek and Romish churches have been a long time by the ears, about their beards. To let the beard grow, in some countries, is a token of mourning, as to shave it is the like in others.
The Greeks wore their beards till the time of Alex-
VOL. I. No. 23.
ander the Great, that prince having ordered the Macedonians to be shaved, for fear it should give a handle to their enemies. The Romans did not begin to shave till the year of Rome 454. Nor did the Russians cut their beards till within these few years, that Peter the Great, notwithstanding his injunction upon them to shave, was obliged to keep on foot a number of officers to cut off, by violence, the beards of such as would not otherwise part with them.