History of the Peloponnesian War

On the mainland also men plundered one another; and even to-day in many parts of Hellas life goes on under the old conditions, as in the region of the Ozolian Locrians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and the mainland thereabout. And these mainlanders' habit of carrying arms is a survival of their old freebooting life.

Indeed, all the Hellenes used to carry arms because the places where they dwelt were unprotected, and intercourse with each other was unsafe; and in their everyday life they regularly went armed just as the Barbarians did.

And the fact that these districts of Hellas still retain this custom is an evidence that at one time similar modes of life prevailed everywhere.

But the Athenians were among the very first to lay aside their arms and, adopting an easier mode of life, to change to more luxurious ways. And indeed, owing to this fastidiousness, it was only recently that their older men of the wealthier class gave up wearing tunics of linen and fastening up their hair in a knot held by a golden grasshopper as a brooch ;[*](The mode of wearing the hair in a knot on the top of the head with the insertion of a pin in the form of a cicada seems to have persisted long at Athens, a mark of antiquated manners as characteristic as the queue or pig-tail with us.)and this same dress obtained for a long time among the elderly men of the Ionians also, owing to their kinship with the Athenians.