Did the Ancient Greeks Invent Beauty?

by Madeleine Kando

I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston the other day. It is rated as the second best Fine Arts Museum in the country, so it is a mystery why I don’t go more often.

Amongst their many galleries, they have an incredible Ancient World collection of 85,000 works of art. There are rooms full of Greek and Roman statues, pottery, coins and jewelry and one feels somewhat overwhelmed. As Greek and Roman statues usually are, they are large, white and the ones that are full bodied are mostly of muscular, extremely well-built men. This period in history and art was totally devoted to the human form. And how do you portray the human form best? Naked of course.

It is an orgy of male beauty, not female beauty. Women are conspicuously absent in these rooms. It is ALL about men. Men eating, fighting, disk throwing, killing lions, making love (to other men)… The concept of beauty was the domain of men, not women. Greeks and Romans adored the human body, but it was the male body that they went bonkers over.

Another hallmark of these ideal nude statues, is the small size of their penises. It is as if the sculptor got so tired after chiseling these powerful bodies, that he didn’t bother spending time on their private parts. But in fact, small penises were considered classy in those days. A sign of moderation and self-control, virtues that formed the Romans’ view of ideal masculinity. Isn’t that refreshing? Aristophanes summed up the ideal traits of his male peers as “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks, and a little prick.” Heroes, gods and nude athletes had small penises. Erect, large penises were reserved for Satyrs and various other non-ideal men, men of the lower class.

That is not to say that Ancient Greeks didn’t like sex. Judging by the scenes painted on some of the vases, they liked it a lot. But again, it wasn’t sex with women that they liked. It was sex with young boys. Yes, I know, it sounds terrible, but it was part of their culture. Initiating a young male into the life of an adult was by courting him, educating him and possibly having sex with him. They had a recurring event called the ‘symposium’, where men (not women, unless they were courtisanes) drank, talked, recited poetry, sang and yes, had sex with their young proteges.

There were rules, though. You didn’t have sex with a very young boy, or with another adult male. Once these proteges started to grow facial hair, they were considered off-limits. What a strange reversal of values. Nowadays, it is verboten to have sex with a minor, not with an adult of either sex.

Nudity was so valued in the Ancient World, that Spartan warriors sometimes went into battle in the nude. This might be a myth, but there is no doubt that nudity was a symbol of strength and virtue. When you see a battle scene that shows a naked figure and one with clothes on, you know which one is the conqueror. Nakedness equates power.

After you have been subjected to this orgy of nudity, you enter the galleries that house later periods in art. Going from the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the gallery that houses the Middle Ages collection is a bit of a shock. What happened? Where are the bodies? Hidden under long, finely chiseled covers, up to the neck preferably. Even the heads are covered. Unless it is a potbellied cherub, Jesus Christ on the cross or dying in the arms of a group of fully draped women, nudity is completely absent.

I know, it’s all about chastity and celibacy, values promoted by the Christian faith, which took over Europe during the Dark Ages. Aren’t we fortunate that the Renaissance brought back the Greek and Roman veneration of the human form? Otherwise we would still be stuck guessing what is under all these layers of masterfully cut marble.

These days it is not so much the male form that enchants us, but the female form. We are obsessed with breasts and buttocks, small waists and long legs. A woman in Ancient Greece would feel quite vindicated if she knew how she has made a come-back after all these centuries of being shunned and portrayed as being closer to animals than humans. In fact, the more beautiful a Greek woman was, the more she was thought to be deceitful and manipulative.

Either way, my visit to the museum made me realize that the concept of beauty has changed throughout history. For the Greeks and Romans, the human body also represented spiritual perfection. Beauty was the link between the physical and the spiritual. It was also influenced by their mathematical, rational approach to defining beauty. It had to do with symmetry, the right proportions and balance. They combined this with their love of life and the living world, including the human body. They were humanists.

But of course, there is a lot more to beauty than simple equations and I am not one to judge what qualifies as beautiful. It is much too complicated and personal. And a little imperfection goes a long way to make beauty more interesting.

That said, it gave me a sense of satisfaction to be surrounded by art whose main purpose is to represent the human body as a perfect creation. Our culture and customs might have changed drastically, but gazing at theses Adonises, it didn’t feel like they were so different from you and I: we still have the same physique. Some of their perfection rubbed off on me and I walked out of the exhibit slightly taller than when I entered. leave comment here