WOULD YOU BE BEAUTIFUL IN THE ANCIENT WORLD?

In ancient Greece the rules of beauty were all important. Things were good for men who were buff and glossy. And for women, fuller-figured redheads were in favour - but they had to contend with an ominous undercurrent, historian Bettany Hughes explains.

A full-lipped, cheek-chiselled man in Ancient Greece knew two things - that his beauty was a blessing (a gift of the gods no less) and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection. For the Greeks a beautiful body was considered direct evidence of a beautiful mind. They even had a word for it - kaloskagathos - which meant being gorgeous to look at, and hence being a good person.

Beauty was a psycho-physical parcel that had as much to do with character and divine favour as chest size. The philosopher Socrates famously confounded all ideas of how a beautiful Greek should look, with his swaggering gait, swivelling 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.

SOURCE: BBC