Another resemblance of the locusts was that “they had faces as faces of men.” This distinguished them from the Goths and other kindred barbarian hordes; the faces of these being noticed by Jerome, who was contemporary with their earliest invasions, as having faces shaven and smooth, like women’s faces. The beard was not always worn by the Romans. From Nero to Hadrian, the imperatorial custom was to have the beard shaven; from Hadrian to Constantine, unshaven; afterwards (with the exception of Julian), down to Phocas, shaven. But the locusts did not shave. They wore beards, and so vindicated their relationship to the bearded race, and their antagonism to all shaven crowns.
Pliny, who was contemporary with John, speaks of the Arabs as wearing the turban, having the hair long and uncut, with the moustache on the upper lip, or the beard, that “venerable sign of manhood,” as Gibbon, in Arab phraseology, calls it. In the age immediately preceding the great Saracen irruption, in the poem, Antar, the Arabs are portrayed with moustache and beard, long hair flowing on the shoulder (“hair as the tresses of women,” which the Greeks regarded as shameful), and the turban also.