Slave’s hair

Use in the book

The deliberately incongruous bodily feature is placed on the soul. Socrates says women would describe the politicians this way, marking the phrase as a reported expression within his mockery. They have not yet cast off the hair, still speak like barbarians, and seek to flatter the city rather than govern. The cluster gives an image of civic authority assumed before formation: the politicians look grown-up enough for office but remain unprepared in the part that matters.

The joke supports the need for education but is also socially disparaging. A lexicon should register its use of slave status as a term of humiliation without treating that valuation as a judgement about real enslaved people. Nor should it invent a precise custom behind the hair: the supplied edition expressly says the custom is uncertain. The conceptual contrast with later virtue and freedom can be noted, but the concrete practice cannot be recovered from this line alone.

Places to read

1. 120bThe soul-hair, lack of culture, barbarizing speech and flattery form one derisive portrait.

Translation in this edition

The translation preserves the bodily incongruity and the attribution to women. Explanations in terms of a particular shaving, depilation or initiation practice would exceed the source’s acknowledged evidence.

ἀμουσία

Attested: ἀμουσίας (amousias; 120b). Lack of culture or education, the stated reason for the unshed soul-hair. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀμουσία. See Slave’s hair.

ἀνδραποδώδης

Attested: ἀνδραποδώδη (andrapodōdē; 120b). Slave-like, qualifying the figurative hair still on uncultured souls. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀνδραποδώδης. See Slave’s hair.

ἀποβάλλω

Attested: ἀποβεβληκότες (apobeblēkotes; 120b). To cast off, here the figurative slave-like hair. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀποβάλλω. See Slave’s hair.

θρίξ

Attested: τρίχα (tricha; 120b). Hair, impossibly located on the soul in the disparaging image. Lexical identification: lemma: θρίξ. See Slave’s hair.