Beauty Standards in Ancient Greece

Beauty Standards in Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece the rules of beauty were all important. Things were good for men who were buff and glossy. And for women, fullerfigured redheads were in favor.

For years, classical Greek sculpture was believed to be a perfectionist fantasy—an impossible ideal,but we now think a number of the exquisite statues from the 5th to the 3rd Centuries BC were in fact cast from life.

Those with leisure time could spend up to eight hours a day in the gym. They would have been seriously ripped-thin-waisted, oiled from his“glistening lovelocks” down to his ideally slim toes.

Being a good-looking man was fundamentally good news. Being a handsome woman, by definition, spelt trouble. Hesiod, an 8th/7th Century BC author whose works were as close as the Greeks got to a bible, described the first created woman simply as kalonkakon—“the beautiful-evil thing.” She was evil because she was beautiful, and beautiful because she was evil.

Beauty contests—kallisteia—were a regular fixture in the training grounds of the Olympics at Elis and on the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos,where women were judged as they walked to and fro. Triumphant men had ribbons tied around winning features—a particularly pulchritudinous calf-muscle or bicep.

My favorite has to be the contest in honor of Aphrodite Kallipugos—Aphrodite of the beautiful buttocks. The story goes that when deliberating on where to found a temple to the goddess in Sicily it was decided an exemplar of human beauty should make the choice. Two amply-portioned farmer’s daughters battled it out. The best endowed was given the honor of choosing the site for Aphrodite’s shrine. Fat-bottomed girls clearly had a hotline to the goddess of love.

So wide hips and white arms, sometimes blanched by the application of white-lead make-up,were all good for the Greeks. Redheads could also take comfort. Though they were spurned as witches across the later medieval world—and still are in some countries even today—they had prehistoric power, as shown in one of the most sublime pieces of art from all of antiquity.

The Bronze Age wall-paintings on the Greek island of Thera (modern-day Santorini), preserved when the island-volcano erupted 1600BC, show a gaggle of beauties. Just one young woman is allowed to approach the goddess—after restoration it became clear this exquisite creature is uniquethanks to a mane of deep red

古希臘人的審美標準

古希臘時期，男性以身材健碩、膚色光滑為帥，女性以體態豐腴、頭發紅潤為美。

多年來，人們一直以為古希臘雕塑是一種完美主義的幻想。但現在我們認為，從公元前五世紀到公元前三世紀，許多精美的雕像其實來源于生活。

那些有空閑時間的希臘小伙們每天都可以在健身房待上八個小時。鍛煉讓他們體態輕盈、腰桿纖細，從前額卷發到纖纖腳趾都散發光澤。

男性英俊是件好事，女性美麗則被認為會招致禍端。古希臘著名詩人赫西奧德將宙斯創造的第一位女性稱作“潘多拉”，意即“美麗的邪惡事物”。她因美麗而邪惡，因邪惡而美麗。

在伊萊斯的奧林匹克訓練場以及特內多斯和萊斯博斯的島嶼上會定期舉行選美比賽，參賽女性在場上走秀接受評判；洋洋得意的男性吸引人們把緞帶系在他們身體最美的部位，比如十分健壯的小腿及或者二頭肌上。

我最喜歡的賽事是為了紀念愛與美之神阿佛洛狄忒而舉辦的“阿佛洛狄忒美麗臀部”。傳說在考慮西西里眾神廟位置時，大家決定由最美麗的人來做決定。最后兩個繼承豐厚遺產的農夫的女兒一決高下，勝者將被賦予決定愛神神殿位置的殊榮。顯然，下身豐滿的女孩得到愛神的眷顧。

古希臘人喜歡肥臀和玉臂，即使有時這些是用美白化妝品的效果。紅發也受人青睞，雖然紅發在中世紀后期乃至今日的一些國家被認作是女巫的標志，但在一件古希臘最具盛名的藝術作品中，紅發女子卻被認為擁有神秘的洪荒之力。

希臘錫拉島（今日的圣托里尼）上，大批青銅時期的壁畫中美女云集。這些女性中，只有一名年輕女子獲許接近女神。壁畫修復后，人們發現這名女子的特殊之處，在于她有著深紅的頭發。

古希臘語Xanthos的意思是“金色”或“褐黃色”，常用來形容史詩文學中的英雄人物。金發美女特洛伊海倫在《伊利亞特》第三冊里第一次出現時，長者的聲音抑揚頓挫，像蟬鳴般吟道，“啊，絕世美人啊。”“女神一般，美得令人心生恐懼”，意思是這種美麗讓男性神魂顛倒。

有趣的是，人們認為海倫的妖艷不是源于她的外貌，而是源于她讓男人產生的想法和行為。文學作品中的海倫不但將男人引上床，還將他們引向死亡。她的美貌具有大規模殺傷性。

古希臘人認為，萬物存在皆有其意義。美貌也有其特殊意義。

美麗是精神和肉體的結合，既關乎個人品質，也關乎上天恩賜。哲學家蘇格拉底抨擊過所有古希臘的審美標準，而他本人步態招搖、目光斜視、鼻頭肥大、后背多毛、大肚便便。蘇格拉底對話的內容，實際上是在發掘在這個看似色鬼的軀殼下所蘊藏的閃光人格。但是，蘇格拉底和他的門生柏拉圖在打一場硬仗。僅在古希臘墳墓中發現的鏡子數量就說明外表的確很重要。

恐怕古希臘人都是外貌協會的吧。?

（譯/辛美慧 韓袁鈞）

Xanthos—“golden” or tawny—is a standard epithet used to describe heroes in epic literature.When we first meet Helen in book three of Homer’s Iliad, the old men sing, their voices rising and falling, like cicadas: “Oh what beauty!” they say.“Terrible beauty—beauty like that of a goddess”—meaning the kind of presence that drives men to distraction.

Interestingly the femme-fatale-ness of one blonde-bombshell—Helen of Troy—was considered to stem not from the way she looked, but how she made men feel and what she made men do. The literary Helen drew men both to her bed and to their deaths. Her beauty was a weapon of mass destruction.

In the Greek mind everything had an intrinsic meaning; nothing was pointless. Beauty had a purpose.

Beauty was a psycho-physical parcel that had as much to do with character and divine favor as chest size. The philosopher Socrates famously confounded all ideas of how a beautiful Greek should look, with his swaggering gait, swiveling eyes, bulbous nose, hairy back and pot belly.Passages in the Socratic dialogues are dedicated to a radical exploration of how this satyr-like shell might in fact contain a luminous character.But Socrates and his pupil Plato were fighting an uphill battle. The sheer number of mirrors found in Greek graves show that beauty really counted for something. Looks mattered.

The Ancient Greeks were, I’m afraid, faceist. ?