A particular aristocratic household in the Roman Empire during the 1st century found itself in an odd situation where multiple men working in the home had nightly dreams of their hair being cut. Afterward, they awoke to find that patches of their locks had been sheared away, as if by scissors. The owner of the household was the wealthy Roman lawyer, government official, and respected statesman, Pliny the Younger (c. 61/62-113), who made sure to pen down a report of the odd incident in a message to one of his friends, Licinius Sura. Pliny wrote, “here is a story I can vouch for myself. One of my freedmen, a man of some education, was sleeping in the same bed as his younger brother when he dreamed that he saw someone sitting on the bed and putting scissors to his hair, even cutting some off the top of his head. When day dawned he found this place shorn and the hair lying on the floor” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.27). This was the first incident, and no alarm had yet arisen in the household. Perhaps, it had been a prank, or the man was balding, or some other mischief or scalp condition was at play. Whatever the case, the odd nightly hair-cutting incidents continued. Pliny continued, writing, “A short time elapsed and then another similar occurrence confirmed the earlier one. A slave boy was sleeping with several others in the young slaves’ quarters. His story was that two men clad in white came in through the window, cut his hair as he lay in bed, and departed the way they had come. Daylight revealed that his head had also been shorn and the hair was scattered about” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.27).
After two separate slumbering hair-cut incidents, the household began to believe something unnatural was afoot. It could have all still been due to a persistent prankster, but Pliny the Younger seemed to believe that the incidents were supernatural in nature, or that it was a series of divine omens from which he could glean information about his present or future. As to what the omens may have been referring to, the hair-cutting incidents reportedly occurred around the death of Emperor Domitian (r. 81-96), who persecuted Pliny’s senatorial and intellectual friends. Pliny wrote, “in view of the custom for accused persons to let their hair grow long, one may interpret the cutting of my slaves’ hair as a sign that the danger threatening me was averted” (Letters, 7.27). Fortunately for Pliny’s household staff, the nightly hair-cutting incidents seemed to have ended, and Pliny went on to live a long, non-persecuted life.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Samson and Delilah, by an unknown 18th-century artist, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and Webumania (Slovak National Gallery)).
Sources:
- The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1963, 1969.
These are haunting tales