Beauty & Ugliness in the Ancient World

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Beauty & Ugliness in the Ancient World

Release Date: March 4, 2025
Host: Kate Lister
Guest: Caroline Vuitt, Author of Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body

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Introduction and Guest Overview

In this episode of Betwixt The Sheets, host Kate Lister delves into the intricate perceptions of beauty and ugliness in ancient Greece and Rome. She is joined by Caroline Vuitt, a historian and author of Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body, who sheds light on how these ancient societies defined and interacted with concepts of attractiveness and disfigurement.

Beauty Standards in Ancient Greece

Caroline begins by challenging the commonly held belief that ancient Greek and Roman bodies were universally idealized as chiseled and perfect. She explains that much of what we consider the "ideal" is a composite and often unrealistic portrayal influenced by art and cultural narratives.

Caroline Vuitt [07:47]: "There's nothing real about this body. It's a composite to produce some sort of ideal that even the Greeks and Romans recognized was an ideal, an impossible ideal."

She points out that the famous spear carrier statues, admired for their symmetry and muscularity, were not authentic representations but rather artistic constructs meant to embody perfection. These statues often displayed exaggerated features, such as disproportionately small genitals, which symbolized self-control and virtue.

Male Bodies: The Ideal and Ugliness

The discussion shifts to the male ideal, characterized by a rippling torso and athletic build. Caroline addresses the intriguing question of why ancient male sculptures often depicted small genitalia, a stark contrast to the more prominent features seen in other cultures.

Caroline Vuitt [07:59]: "I think it's all about appearing absolutely under control. That means that your genitals in your statues have to be small."

She relates this to the Greek concept of Encratea, which emphasized self-mastery and control, linking physical representations to spiritual and moral virtues. This ideal contrasted sharply with depictions of satyrs, who embodied the antithesis of civilized restraint.

Female Bodies: Ideal and Representation

When discussing female beauty, Caroline highlights the complexity of ancient portrayals. The ideal Greek woman was often veiled and portrayed in a manner that suggested fertility and modesty, contrary to the more nude representations like the Aphrodite of Knidos.

Caroline Vuitt [12:20]: "She's famous because at least apocryphally she's the first ever monumental, freestanding female nude. But she's a goddess. No mortal woman would ever have appeared in monumental form without any clothes on at that period."

This portrayal underscores the societal view of women primarily as vessels of fertility, a perspective that significantly influenced later artistic representations, including Renaissance art.

Cultural Overlap Between Greeks and Romans

The episode explores how the Romans, enamored with Greek culture, adopted and adapted Greek beauty standards. Caroline explains that as Rome expanded, Greek art and aesthetics became deeply ingrained in Roman society, leading to a blending of cultural ideals.

Caroline Vuitt [19:37]: "They make version after version of them. And they're fascinated by them, and they make version after version of them."

However, this adoption also brought tension, as Romans struggled to balance their own cultural identity with the allure of Greek perfection.

Transition to Christianity and Its Impact on Beauty Standards

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on how the rise of Christianity altered ancient perceptions of beauty. Caroline articulates how Christian doctrines introduced new moral frameworks that conflicted with existing Greek and Roman ideals.

Caroline Vuitt [35:05]: "Early Christian writers really target women in particular... ideally, when you had sex with your wife, you didn't feel any pleasure, she didn't feel any pleasure."

This shift emphasized modesty and sin over physical aesthetics, leading to reinterpretations of classical art and possibly influencing the portrayal of religious figures like Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Concepts of Ugliness in Ancient Societies

Caroline addresses how ugliness was perceived, noting that it was often associated with lack of self-control or moral failings rather than mere physical deformity. Ugliness served as a counterpoint to beauty, reinforcing societal norms through contrast.

Caroline Vuitt [24:11]: "Even among the gods, you get Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and sex. She's married to Hephaestus, considered ugly by Greek society."

This dichotomy highlighted the virtues of self-mastery and the vices of excess, with figures like Hephaestus embodying societal fears of loss of control.

Disability and Social Perception

The conversation delves into the portrayal and treatment of disabilities in ancient times. Caroline emphasizes that disabilities were often stigmatized and visible scars were seen as marks of valor or shame, depending on their placement.

Caroline Vuitt [27:34]: "Disability must have been extremely visible. And there are also, of course, many invisible disabilities."

She also touches upon the broader vulnerabilities of the human body in antiquity, such as high mortality rates and lack of medical advancements, which influenced societal attitudes towards physical imperfections.

Legacy of Ancient Beauty Standards Today

Caroline and Kate reflect on how ancient ideals continue to influence modern perceptions of beauty. From ancient sculptures to contemporary media, the legacy of Greek and Roman aesthetics persists, shaping today's beauty standards and societal expectations.

Caroline Vuitt [44:35]: "They are still there... classical statues set a benchmark, a way of thinking about beauty that was then very influential."

She cites modern examples like cultural references in music and public art that draw directly from classical imagery, illustrating the enduring impact of these ancient standards.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a discussion on the evolving nature of beauty and ugliness, acknowledging that while ideals change over time, the foundational concepts established by ancient civilizations continue to resonate. Caroline underscores the importance of understanding these historical contexts to comprehend contemporary beauty norms.

Caroline Vuitt [31:07]: "Body types are shifting from the 5th century to the 4th century... they're changing all the time."

Notable Quotes

• Caroline Vuitt [07:47]: "There's nothing real about this body. It's a composite to produce some sort of ideal that even the Greeks and Romans recognized was an ideal, an impossible ideal."
• Caroline Vuitt [12:20]: "She's famous because at least apocryphally she's the first ever monumental, freestanding female nude. But she's a goddess."
• Caroline Vuitt [24:11]: "Even among the gods, you get Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and sex. She's married to Hephaestus, considered ugly by Greek society."
• Caroline Vuitt [35:05]: "Early Christian writers really target women in particular... ideally, when you had sex with your wife, you didn't feel any pleasure, she didn't feel any pleasure."
• Caroline Vuitt [44:35]: "They are still there... classical statues set a benchmark, a way of thinking about beauty that was then very influential."

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Additional Information

For those interested in exploring more about Caroline Vuitt's work, she is a fellow at the University of Cambridge and frequently engages in talks across the country. While not active on social media, her academic contributions are accessible through the University of Cambridge's platforms and her published works.

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened.

Transcript

[Kate Lister]

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[Kate Lister]

Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets and I'm sure you know the kind of conversations that we have on this podcast. But just in case you're new or in case you have suffered a complete mental collapse and can't remember, then I will give you the fair dues warning so you can't get mad at us if you happen to keep listening and get offended. Right, here we go. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adultery covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. And now we've got that covered. On with the show. Hello, one and all. You have joined me just as I'm popping down to my local blacksmiths in ancient Rome to pick up a new pewter vase for a fresh bouquet of flowers. It sure is hot down here, but it's so much cheaper going to the source. There's an insider tip for you. Oh, and would you look at that. Working here among the blacksmiths is none other than Hephaestus, the God of fire and crafts. Don't get that down your local blacksmiths very often, do you? Gods work here. But I guess when he's not making weapons of the gods in Olympus, he has to earn a crust just like everybody else. Despite being a Greek God and being married to the epitome of beauty, Aphrodite, Hephaestus is considered ugly by Greek society. What made the Greeks and the Romans consider him ugly, though? I mean, I like a man who's good with his hands, but how did ugliness shape their opinions on beauty? Well, I am ready to find out if you are.

[Unknown Speaker]

What do you look for?

[Kate Lister]

A man?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Oh, money, of course.

[Kate Lister]

You're supposed to rise when an adult.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Speak speaks to you.

[Kate Lister]

I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Goodness.

[Kate Lister]

What a beautiful d. Goodness has nothing.

[Caroline Vuitt]

To do with it.

[Kate Lister]

During. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. In both the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, beauty standards were high, and you can see that by the many, many beautiful gods that they had Hephaestus not included. But is that the full story? How did they view beauty? How did they view ugliness? How did the transition to Christianity affect their ideas of beauty? And why were the Romans fine with body scars as long as they were on your front and not on your back? Joining me today is Caroline Vuitt, author of Exposed the Greek and Roman Body, to help us understand the concepts of beauty and ugliness in the ancient world. And if you like the sound of this episode, then why not scroll back and have a listen to our episodes on sex in ancient Rome and what the ancient Greeks got wrong about the female body. But without further ado, let's get on with it. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Carrie Voote. How are you doing?

[Caroline Vuitt]

I am very well, thank you, Kate.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for coming on to talk to us about your research because this sounds absolutely fascinating. You are the author of Exposed the Greek and Roman body. And you are looking at perceptions of beauty, but also perceptions of ugliness in the classical world. What brought you to this research and made you think I need to write a book about this?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Well, I've been working on bodies and sex and gender for years and years and I was actually at the Wellcome Collection in London giving a sort of five minute little thing at the book launch of another author, a medic. And I thought no one's going to be interested in me. You know, they're all here for this great medic and this fantastic work about, about body shape shifting and changing. And I was doing five minutes on Ovid and actually everyone in the audience was like, wow, this is so amazing. You know, they thought like this in antiquity and it was really that that made the welcome collection sort of approach me and get together and think about doing something about the Greek and Roman body.

[Kate Lister]

I mean, when I think about Greek and Roman bodies, I immediately think of the classical statues and the Renaissance paintings of all the beautiful Greek nymphs and Roman gods. And people are slightly chubby apart from the men. You've got amazing six packs. Did they not look like that?

[Caroline Vuitt]

No, they really didn't. But I mean that, that's the start. Funny that, but that's the starting point of the book that, you know, you're not the only one that thinks that when you say Greek and Roman bodies, everybody thinks that this kind of chiseled white marble ideal, right. And that comes with all sorts of problems of its own. But no, they didn't look like that. I mean, if you take something like. So there's a really famous body type called the spear carrier, the original of which doesn't survive because it was made in bronze and it was melted down at some point in history. But the Romans were obsessed with this type and so they made lots of versions of it. So we have lots and lots of Roman versions of it. And it's held up as being the absolute pin up of beauty, symmetry, naturalism. And yet, you know, when you look at it, the head looks like the head of a 20 year old. A bit mask like, but 20 year old body looks like this sort of chiseled torso of a 30 to 40 year old. The genitals are the size of a child. So, you know, there's nothing real about this body. It's a composite. And it's a composite to produce some sort of ideal that even the Greeks and Romans recognized was an ideal, an impossible ideal.

[Kate Lister]

And that was the male ideal. Wasn't it the kind of the rippling torso. Can I just ask straight away, because I'm endlessly fascinated by this. Why did they have such little willies on their statues and paintings for your money? Why?

[Caroline Vuitt]

It's the question I get asked most when I go out to schools. So we don't know. My sense is that the Greeks in particular put a huge amount of emphasis on what they called Encratea, which is different from the sort of self denial that the Christians will teach later on. It's more a self mastery and it's about being in control of yourself, which they recognized wasn't easy. They recognized this was a constant, ongoing struggle. And it was that struggle that made you virtuous and needed that virtue to be a citizen, man. So I think it's all about appearing absolutely under control. That means that your genitals in your statues have to be small. The only, you know, representations in ancient Greece that have really big genitals are satyrs, which are half man, half horse creatures who are, you know, representationally policing the boundaries between what civilized men can do and what foreigners and animals can do.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. One of the most interesting things, I think, about Greek culture is they were very, I'm just going to say homoerotic. I don't know if that's the right word that can. But actually, representations of women weren't always around for them. They were mostly there for the boys.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah. I mean, when we think about Greek culture in particular, we do tend to think about male. Male desire.

[Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Caroline Vuitt]

And that's because of authors like Plato, and it's because of Greek pottery. And it is true that male. Male desire in classical Athens was widely represented, widely practiced, and not stigmatised at all, but actually celebrated. And in some senses, you know, if you follow the Platonic line, seen as being sort of more cerebral, more interesting than heterosexual sex, which was kind of functional because it was to make babies. Now, in some ways, you know, when we think of pots, as I say, you think about those depictions, but actually there aren't that many Greek pots that show male. Male desire. And the ones that do, interestingly, don't show anal sex. They show scenes of courtship or kissing or men facing each other and kind of having sex between the thighs. It's fascinating. You don't get those representations in Rome, actually, this sex between the thighs thing. And scholars have made a big deal about this saying, oh, in ancient Greece, they all practiced intercrural sex. Well, you know, they might have done. I think they're also probably, you know, doing exactly what we get up to in our bedrooms. It's just that representation. It makes sense to show. If you show two men face to face, then they look equal, they look mutually. So you don't make one of the men receptive because that would be almost to make him feminine and for him to, you know, lose his self control in a sense also, you know, you show men like that and it leaves the viewer wanting more. You know, they're images of desire rather than climax. So I think it's very interesting, this terrain.

[Kate Lister]

And you need to be careful anyway about looking at a few pots and then trying to extrapolate general sexual practices from that evidence, don't you?

[Caroline Vuitt]

You've got to be very, very careful. I mean, you know, we're always dealing with discourse here. You know, we have no idea what they're doing. I mean, Rome is interesting in this regard because in Rome, you know, there's a lot of material that suggests that the male. Male desire between citizen men was a big no, no, you know, it was criminalized almost. And yet, you know, you go to the poetry and it's all over the poetry. You go to the ancient historians and the Emperor Claudius is criticized precisely because he only sleeps with women. So the Romans don't seem to know kind of what they think about this, but they're equ, you know, of course they're sleeping with men.

[Kate Lister]

Of course they are.

[Caroline Vuitt]

The lacuna, the gap is female, female desire. Where Roman authors are pretty gross about it. We get very few glimpses, you know, and that's why Sappho is held in the way that she is, because she gives us this slight window onto women feeling for other women.

[Kate Lister]

So the Greeks had this idea of the spear thrower for the ideal body of a man. What about the ideal body for a woman in ancient Greece? Because am I right in thinking that the first statue of a woman was the Aphrodite of Knossos?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Aha. So the answer's quite complicated. So the ideal woman, I think in many ways for a Greek was a veiled woman.

[Kate Lister]

Nice, right? Okay.

[Caroline Vuitt]

A bundled up veiled woman. Representations of mortal women wearing a lot of material, with their heads covered go on to be the most proliferating statue type right through the Hellenistic period and into Rome. But the body type that we associate as the Greek female body is the body that you mentioned, the body of the Aphrodite of Knidos. And Knidos is a place in modern Turkey, but was then Asia Minor. And she's famous because at least apocryphally she's the first ever monumental, freestanding female nude. But she's a goddess. She's the goddess of desire. No mortal woman would ever have appeared in monumental form without any clothes on at that period. In Rome, it's a bit different, but only in funerary art, really. But in Greece, her power was that she shocked and that men stood there, they saw this representation, they felt that they were in control. They were invited to sort of move around her and admire her. They thought, wow, we're getting on one over on a goddess. But of course, they're also growing up with stories that show them that if mythological figures spot a goddess bathing and the goddess doesn't want to be seen, oh, dear. You know, you get blinded or you get ripped apart by your own hunting dogs. So the power is always with the God and she's the goddess of sex. So she has to make you feel, whether that be turned on or embarrassed, but she's got to make you feel something. But it's that image of female, a very sort of fecund, fertile body that's then gone through history, shaping the Renaissance paintings that you were talking about before.

[Kate Lister]

Thinking about that statue and thinking about the classical Greek woman. She's not as muscly as the fellas, but she's quite defined in certain ways. There's a little bit of a belly. Her boobs are kind of perky rather than big. It's quite a juicy body that she's got.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it's interesting. When I go to schools, they sometimes ask me, why is it that if you look at perfume ads and stuff today or fitness magazines, the male bodies photographed look pretty much like those chiseled bodies from antiquity, whereas the female bodies don't. They don't look like the Aphrodite with the perky boobs and the sort of. And I think that's because it's the body of a woman at the kind of height of her fertile powers. Now there are so many more legitimate body moments that women can embrace, you know, so that you get the kind of prepubescent, sort of almost boy like body. You know, when I was a kid, I grew up wanting to look like Kate Moss.

[Kate Lister]

Same.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Whereas now, you know, everybody wants to look like Jennifer Lopez or, you know, the body types have changed, you know, hugely, even within our lifetime. Yeah, but in antiquity, that's all that women really were good for. In ancient eyes, they were walking wombs.

[Kate Lister]

It's so depressing, but it's so true. I'll be back with Carrie after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

So the Romans were big fans of Greek culture, weren't they? Like, they're sort of like the original culture vultures, really. They sort of, they, they took a lot. And what did they take when it came to attitudes around beauty and ideal bodies?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, so they do take a lot because they expand into the Greek east from, you know, about 300 BC on. And so Greek culture becomes Roman culture. The Romans, as you say, they love that they can't but be kind of attracted by this extraordinary craftsmanship and beauty. But they're also in danger of being corrupted by it. And it threatens everything that Rome stands for. And Roman had always been if you think about Roman Republican portraits. So if you think about what Cicero looks like or Caesar looks like, they're not beautiful by us. They're quite kind of jowly and warty. And that's because the one thing they didn't want to look like was Greek. You know, being Roman was really hard work. You know, the Greeks, they were in the gymnasium all the time, just sort of faffing around trying to look good, whereas being Roman was hard work. But then at the same time, you know, once statues like the Aphrodite of Knidos and the spear carrier flood into Rome, then what do you do? You either smash them up or you embrace them. And they're fascinated by them, and they make version after version of them. And the Aphrodite of Konidos and the spear carrier would originally have been in sanctuary spaces. In the Greek world, they were religious images. But in the Roman world, they come into the bathhouse, the gymnasium. They become garden sculpture. Some of the male sculptures are adapted to carry little trays or lights, so they actually function as lampstands or drinks trays in elite houses. So they take on this kind of kitsch beauty as well.

[Kate Lister]

They've become marketable?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Oh, very much so. Really commodified already.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. What's the timeline of this? Just out of interest, because obviously Greece has already always been there and Italy has always been there, but at what point did the Romans meet the Greeks? When was this kind of cultural overlap?

[Caroline Vuitt]

It's important, I think, to stress this because we tend to think of, like, when we think about antiquity, we think, you know, there was Greek culture and it ended, and then there was Roman culture. And of course, that's not true. I mean, the Greeks are interacting with the Romans from pretty early on. And a lot of the Greek pots of the sort we've been talking about that have the most explicit sex scenes on. As far as ancient Greek visual material is concerned, they're found in Etruscan tombs, so they're found in Italy, where they were traded already in 500 BC.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Okay.

[Caroline Vuitt]

But Rome as we understand it, as a city which then goes on to be an empire, it starts expanding first into the rest of Italy, then into the Greek cities of Italy, and then into the east and into Greece. And that happens from about 300 BC onwards. And so by the time you get to the first Roman emperor, Augustus, Greek culture is kind of Roman culture, and vice versa. And the problem with a word like, you know, if you say Greek, it's an ethnic category. If you say Roman it's actually a legal category, so you can be Roman and Greek. And by the time you get to the 2nd century AD, a Roman emperor like Hadrian, who builds the wall, is walking around the empire with his boyfriend, who's a Greek boy, Antinous, from Asia Minor. They really overlap, these cultures.

[Kate Lister]

I wonder why they were so drawn to Greek culture. Because they were. They were having a great time invading lots of different places. And what was it about the Greeks that made them go, oh, this is kind of. Maybe we could put a toga on like that, and maybe we could do it a bit like that. I wonder why it was so appealing to them.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Rome's a bit of an upstart. It kind of comes onto the big Mediterranean map quite late in the day. And, you know, I think the Mediterranean is key here, you know, because it's that. That kind of gives the connectivity. And Greece has just been all over that forever in a day. So. And they have produced this extraordinary literature, everything from Homer right through to the Greek tragedies like, you know, by Sophocles and Euripides, all of this amazing sculpture. There's nothing like that in Rome. And from that expansion, moment onwards, the Romans are taking it, adapting it, reinvigorating it, changing it, editing it, making it the Greek culture that. That we know today.

[Kate Lister]

I mean, it is very impressive, isn't it? They were never going to turn up in Britain and go, all these roundhouses are amazing. We must try and make these ourselves.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Well, I mean, thinking about sex and one of the most interesting representations for me to survive from antiquity is actually a piece of relief sculpture from modern Turkey, from Asia Minor, from a Greek city that cozies up to Rome and becomes Roman, a city of Aphrodisias. And this little piece of relief sculpture is part of a really big monument, but it shows the Emperor Claudius conquering Britain, conquering this little island of Britain, and it shows it as a scene of sexual aggression. So it shows Claudius looking like a Greek hero bearing down on Britannia. And it's labeled. That's how we know it's. It's Britain. And she's like sort of a woman sprawled on the ground, her clothes coming off her body. It's really difficult to look at because as far as Aphrodisias was concerned, Rome and Aphrodisias were like in the same great story of cultural civilization, whereas Britain was like some poxy backwater that deserved everything it got.

[Kate Lister]

So we've spoken a little bit about beauty, but I think it's probably quite important to try and understand how these people thought about a sense of ugliness. Because even today, our world is very, very defined by narratives around ugliness and social acceptance. And it can really be dominant themes in people's lives as much as we're trying to, you know, undo ideas around body shaming or fat shaming or all this kind of stuff. But I imagine if you'd gone back to an ancient Greek person and gone, excuse me, I think you're fat sham, they would have just laughed in your face. So how did they understand the notion of ugliness and what did it mean to them?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's interesting about fat shaming because actually, I mean, it's not that there's not a discourse of fatness in the ancient literature, because there kind of is, but it's linked to living at large, to sort of conspicuous consumption and tyranny. There isn't much, you know, you very rarely get sort of in the literature, oh, he was a bit fat or she was a bit thin, or. They don't seem to think like that, which is interesting. I mean, in terms of ugliness, they recognize that if you're going to praise beauty, you've got to have its antitype. They understand that. And so, you know, even among the gods, you get Aphrodite, whom we've been talking about, goddess of beauty and sex. She's married to Hephaestus, who's the blacksmith God. He's the only God to have a job. And having a job friend is him less impressive, really, because he has to work for a living. And he doesn't just have a job, he works in a forge. So he's sweaty and, you know, he's constructed in the literature as being kind of laughable almost. He's also, unfortunately, because the ancients bundled up all sorts of ways of being that were not, as they perceived, normative. He was also disabled. So, you know, here you have a God whose body, at least in. In literary terms, is very, very different from the kinds of bodies we've been talking about so far. I mean, in the visual record, he often looks as beautiful as they do. But that's interesting. And it's also interesting to think that, you know, figures like we mentioned Sappho. Sappho, in ancient biographies of her, is said to have been, you know, written beautiful verses, but have been despicably ugly, Contemptible ugly. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Considering how influential Sappho has been. We don't know very much about this woman at all, do we? Tiny fractions but apparently she was ugly. Wow.

[Caroline Vuitt]

So these sort of pseudobiographies claim. But I mean, I think that's probably early homophobia. Yes, that's the way I kind of read that. I don't know whether I'm right, but that's how I see that. I mean, somebody like Socrates is also ugly, but that's because Socrates is a philosopher. And so, you know, for him it's all about what's going on in your head, not your body. So your body's sort of irrelevant, really.

[Kate Lister]

Is that like a really early version of our kind of brains versus brawn thing that still goes on today, that if you're this big, hunky, muscle bound person, then you clearly can't be very clever?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I think in some ways that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I mean, if you read Plato, I mean, Plato's ideas about the body is sort of changing depending on the dialogue you read. But, you know, he does very famously think the body is a prison. It's just something that you kind of carry around with you. And the sooner you can get rid of it and your soul can be free, the better.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Okay. Okay, Plato. There's some self esteem issues that I think you need to work on there, but you touched on disability there. And the history of disability is fascinating because it's long been unfortunately lumped in with evilness, moral failing. This kind of very crude idea that a physical disability must be representative of. Of some kind of internal disability as well. And you can see this all throughout literature and it still happens today, I think. Was it the British Board of Film Classification the last few years had to bring in some rule of like, no more disabled bad guys, please. No more James Bond villains with scars. No more of this stuff. But there's a really old history of that, isn't there?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yes, very much so. And I mean, scars are interesting because of course, in the Roman world you've got a culture of, as you said, of warfare. You must have had, you know, cows had loads of scars, walking around with scars. And there's a real kind of discourse of, you know, the more scars you have on the front of your body, the greater you are because it shows you're not a coward. You know, you never ran away. But we've even found ancient prosthetic limbs. You know, there's a tomb in Italy where we found a prosthetic limb. Disability must have been extremely visible. And there are also, of course, many invisible disabilities. And this is a world before glasses. So you Know, a lot of people are going to be suffering from really quite extreme eye strain. You know, if their hearing goes, there's nothing to help them. And life expectancy is also, for everybody, on average, much shorter than it is now. Many, many women are dying in childbirth. Many, many children are dying, you know, before they reach the age of one. So I think disability has to be put into that much, much broader context, too, of the broader vulnerability of the human body.

[Kate Lister]

Was there any kind of help or welfare system for disabled people? Is it true that the Romans and the Greeks used to leave babies with disabilities out to die because they didn't consider them worthy of being Roman citizens? Or is that one of those myths?

[Caroline Vuitt]

I mean, there is a bit of evidence for that. There's also, and I can't now remember the details, but I remember finding them out. For example, there are hints of sort of proto, not systems, but sort of initiatives to help people, but not much.

[Kate Lister]

Okay. I mean, when you think about it, and I don't want to be too disparaging of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans, but their levels of ugliness must have been a lot higher than ours are. I'm going to be very clumsy now, but like. But just by virtue of the fact that diseases that can be treated now couldn't be treated, things like smallpox, things that are disfigured, and as you said, these are violent societies, societies, scars, injuries, all of this stuff that now you could go and get fixed. You just couldn't have that then.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I mean, they're also, you know, they're putting cosmetics on their faces that have lead in them. There's a sense in which, you know, the disparity between that statue we were talking about at the start and real people on the ground is, as we talk, getting bigger and bigger, isn't it?

[Kate Lister]

Ideas of beauty changes all the time. As you said, they change within our lifetimes. I remember when, if you said, does my bum look big in this? That was a bad thing. And now having a big bottom is a very good thing, to the point where people are going to get surgery to have bigger bottoms. It changes all the time. But does our perception of ugliness change as what people regard as being unattractive? Does that change, too?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I think it. I mean, I think it does, because I think those two things sort of march along together, don't they? You know, exactly as you've just described that. You know, when I was a teenager, if someone had said I had a big bum, I thought I was immediately unattractive. I think they do, yeah. And you can see a kind of changing concept of, of beauty and ugliness already in the statues in antiquity and that.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Caroline Vuitt]

You know, body types are shifting from the 5th century to the 4th century. Male body type looks a little bit different. The Roman bodies, some of them look exactly like Greek bodies, but some of them look a bit different. So, you know, it's changing all the time.

[Kate Lister]

What would have been an ugly body, an ugly person in ancient Greece, an ancient Rome? I mean, excluding, you know, people with, you know, horrendous physical deformities and things like that. Because I can't imagine they'd have been too kind about that. But just your everyday. What did they regard as ugliness?

[Caroline Vuitt]

Again, it's complicated. I think it goes back to what I was saying about Eencrata and being in control of your body. You weren't in control of your body. If you did anything to excess, even if you slept with too many women as a man, then you were deemed to be effeminate.

[Kate Lister]

Isn't that weird? The way that works is this. There's a constant fear that underpins these cultures about becoming too feminine, about becoming too girly, about losing control. And it's this weird proximity to women themselves that seem to do it for them.

[Caroline Vuitt]

That's right. And then, you know, also you define yourself as a 5th century Greek in the mirror of what you're not. So, you know, you know, you're a Greek rather than a foreigner. And so, you know, the representations of Scythians and Persians are often shown sort of, you know, in strange little animal leotard costumes with slightly gurning faces. And so the other is also kind of more satyr like, more ugly.

[Kate Lister]

I wonder if the women panicked about becoming more masculine. And I only say that because some of the statues that are left to us from Greece and Rome of naked women, sometimes they do look quite buff. They look quite like. Their torsos are quite muscly and rippling. Did they want to look more man like or is that just classical statues and sculptures from the Renaissance who are just. They like boys so much, they keep making the girls look like boys. Michelangelo, I'm looking at you.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, I think it is, you know, all of this really is a product of the male gaze. I mean, you know, we have snippets, we have the odd name of a female painter to survive from antiquity. But, you know, all of the sculptors that we hymn to the heavens today as being the greats of the classical era, they're all men. And you know, it's because a man has made the Aphrodite of Konidos that it looks like that.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Carrie after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

I often imagine Michelangelo, who's a bit further forward than the period that we're talking about, about him, trying desperately to paint a woman of going, like, really focus, really focus on this, make it look like a woman. And then suddenly looking at it and going, oh, God, it's a man again. Ah, damn it, I've done it again.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah. A lot of them do look, you know, like male torsos with a couple of boobs plonked on top.

[Kate Lister]

That's exactly it. Exactly. It's what was the influence of Christianity? The Romans are going, God, we really love the Greeks. And the Greeks were maybe borrowing a bit from the Romans. And then suddenly this wave of Christianity comes in which has vastly different attitudes to sex and to pleasure. And how did that change attitudes to beauty in the Roman and Greek world?

[Caroline Vuitt]

So I used to have a teacher here at Cambridge when I was a student who used to tease us as undergraduates by saying, what was the most important thing that happened in the reign of Augustus, who was the first Roman emperor? And we would all be like, you know, trying to think of, oh, was it a battle? It must have been this battle. Or it was. And then, you know, we'd never get. And then you would say it was the birth of Christ. Right. We were like, oh, God, that was a different film. We didn't realize we knew that had anything to do with classic. Right. So, yes, I mean, Christianity gets in the way of this Greek and Roman history and disrupts it and moves it in directions that you could never really imagine. So the Aphrodite of Kanaidos statue that we were talking about, she is standing there without any clothes on and she's kind of moving her hands. Well, she's not moving them, but she's positioned her hands sort of over her breasts and her pubic area. And it's a bit unclear in that statue whether she's trying to cover herself up or whether she's actually signalling to the viewer. Look, look at this. By the time you get to Eve. So, you know, Christianity adopts the Adam and Eve story from Judaism and really ramps it up. And the Aphrodite of Konidos gives Eve a body. So early sarcophagi that show Eve, she looks like the Aphrodite of Konidos, except her hands are clamped down and any sense of shame has now become sin. The Christians believed. Early Christians believed that you were born fundamentally sinful and, you know, you had to spend the rest of your life trying to crawl out of the pit of iniquity humanity gave you. And early Christian writers really target women in particular in this, you know, to the extent that in an ideal world, everybody would be celibate. It's why, you know, men go off into the desert and, you know, women are being incited to starve themselves because that will stop their periods, stop their feelings of sexual desire, stop them being as dangerous to men. If you were really weak in the most extreme early Christian writer's eyes, then you got married because that was the sort of ultimate compromise. But ideally, you know, when you had sex with your wife, you didn't feel any pleasure, she didn't feel any pleasure. I mean, they all knew that this was all kind of, you know, impossible.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, because there's a serious flaw with this particular approach, isn't there? Like, if everyone's a virgin and nobody ever has any sex, then we're going to run out of Christians pretty quick.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Exactly. Then it all done. The human race dies out, and they recognize that too. But, you know, I think it is. Some of those early Christian writers make for very difficult reading. I mean, there's Jerome in particular.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, my God. Yeah, he sounds like a barrel of laugh.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Is just, you know, that the letters he's writing to these elite women, you know, you sort of think, my God, there's bit of me sometimes that thinks Jerome is responsible for, you know, all of the problems that all of us have with body image and with, you know, and I mean, of course that's not true, but it is that kind of full On. And it's also the case that with Christianity, you know, before Christianity, to put it a bit crudely, Greek and Roman gods looked like men and women. They were man and woman shaped.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Caroline Vuitt]

But with Christ, Christ is fully man and fully God simultaneously. Or at least he is. By the time the councils have decided that, you know, if you've got a God that is fully flesh, then if he's fully flesh and fully man, he's got to have all the working bits that a man has. But then how on earth do you represent Christ in a way that's okay.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Caroline Vuitt]

And, you know, his image remains and has remained through history really problematic. And that then, you know, kind of causes anxieties amongst men who before that knew how to perform a masculinity. But, you know, how do you perform your masculinity to other men if you're in the desert being an ascetic, you know, you don't have an audience anymore. So it's, it just, it changes kind of everything.

[Kate Lister]

And how do you represent Christ? Like, if you've been given the task of please paint a big picture of Jesus and possibly God on this big wall, stroke ceiling, what on earth do you go for? Like, do you give him a six pack? Do you make him attractive? Do you, like, what on earth are you gonna do with this?

[Caroline Vuitt]

So the early Christians do make him very attractive. Oh, they do. They go for quite a young image. So that the kind of, you know, the bearded image of Christ looking like a Jupiter or a Zeus, doesn't really become canonical until, you know, 600 and on. Initially, in the sort of third century A.D. you have Christ depicted as a sort of Apollo figure, because Apollo is light and the sun and civilization and culture and music. And so Christ appears with sort of long, flowing locks, beardless skin. He is very lovely looking, or he appears philosophic, like a philosopher or a magician, sometimes on a horse or a donkey, a bit like a Roman emperor. They're kind of feeling their way, these early artists.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. Trying to work out what would he look like.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I mean, there's a brilliant sarcophagus in Milan that's one of the latest sarcophaguses, sarcophagi to Survive, which shows a sort of series of scenes from the life of Christ. And the last one is his resurrection. And there it shows Thomas sticking his hand in the wound. And Christ looks like an Apollo, but also actually like a wounded Amazon. And that's fascinating. So he. He sometimes looks quite girly in that early literature because, you know, on a Sliding scale of really masculine towards feminine. You need Christ to be a different kind of man. And he's a man whose power is all. All in his passivity, really, in his self sacrifice.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose this is. This is also the early Christian church trying to make this figure more palatable to cultures that are in that transition phase. And if you make him look more like a Greek or a Roman God, he's more recognizable.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you've got your task cut out, really. You know, there are many new gods on the block. And how do you ensure that people understand what kind of a God this new God is? If you're going to do that with art, you have to use a template that already exists, because otherwise people are not going to understand what it is they're looking at.

[Kate Lister]

I'm thinking of. There's the early Germanic English Christian poem, the Dream of the Rood. And what stands out about that is the way Christ is depicted. He's very much like a Germanic warrior. He's like a warrior chief leading his men into battle. And there's been a lot of argument about that, about that's why this Christ looks this way, is that he is a Germanic war chief in this poem, because that would make him more acceptable.

[Caroline Vuitt]

I mean, you do get. You get Christ looking quite warrior like in one of the mosaics in Ravenna, but that's, you know, later than the very early period we're talking about. No, they tend to go for something quite an image of masculinity that attracts the gaze. So, as I say, passive might not be quite the right word, but certainly not uberactive.

[Kate Lister]

And where does this leave women? Like, if Christ is kind of in this period of flux of, like, some people are making him look seriously buff and other people are making him look perhaps a little bit feminine, a bit Amazonian, and other people are going for like a Viking thing. Where are women in all of this? How does their. I mean, it seems that we're back to veils again with the Virgin Mary.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Yeah, I mean, early Christian art, you know, when you get domestic scenes, it's usually scenes of marriage. You know, the woman is, again, got her head covered and she's playing at being the obedient wife. I mean, I suppose the most interesting early Christian image of a woman I know is probably on this quite large silver box in the British Museum called the projector casket, where it shows. It's a sort of toilet box, so it probably held cosmetics. And it may have been a wedding box, but it has a picture of a Woman on it, all covered up, but looking at herself in a mirror. Her attendants are bringing the mirror and it's a very polished silver box. So as the woman on it looks at herself in the mirror, the owner of the box probably could see her own reflection in the mirror. And on the top of the box it says projector. That's why we call it the projector. Casket projector. And Sejanus, that's her husband, they live in May you live in Christ. So they're clearly Christians. But directly above the image of the woman looking at herself in a mirror, fully clothed, you have Venus without any clothes on in her shell, looking at herself in a mirror. So, you know, you've got this early Christian woman still kind of finding some sort of frisson in pre Christian images of goddesses, sex goddesses, you know, I think that's really lovely.

[Kate Lister]

So, final question. Do you think that we're still being influenced by these ideas of beauty from Greece and Rome, or is beauty, as we've said, it changes so much within a few years. Are we away from them now or do they still exert an influence? I mean, no man would want to have his willy represented that small in any kind of depiction of himself. So I think willies have definitely changed fashion. But what influences can you see from the classical world on us today?

[Caroline Vuitt]

I think they are still there. And I think I'm gonna forget the name of this song, but Kylie Minogue's latest collaboration with Bebe Rexha and somebody else whose name I've now forgotten, do forgive me, whoever you are called My oh My or something, is set in Scion House and she is. Kylie is dressed like a goddess. And they've picked Sion House because it's full of plaster casts of ancient statues. And so you've got these wonderful kind of classical statues sort of, you know, in the background, as these women kind of almost play at being goddesses themselves. And so, you know, I think it is there, you know, if you think about Beyonce's apeshit, which was in the Louvre, you know, and which was doing all sorts of things with the paintings, but also with classic classical sculpture that sort of recognises that, in a way those statues set a benchmark, a way of thinking about beauty that was then very influential on Burke and on Hogarth and on all the artists that we've been talking about too. It's inescapable. And, you know, if you come to Cambridge and you get off the train in Cambridge, the first thing you see on the forecourt now is Gavin Turk's sculpture of Ariadne, you know, and she's all bundled up. It's a sort of a very different image of. But it's based on a statue of a reclining, wet look drapery, female that, you know, was famous in antiquity. And there she is, you know, just erected a couple of years ago.

[Kate Lister]

Carrie, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Caroline Vuitt]

So I teach at the University of Cambridge and I'm a fellow at Christian College and I'm always giving talks all around the country and so, you know, but you can find me here in Cambridge.

[Kate Lister]

Are you on social media at all?

[Caroline Vuitt]

I'm not a great social media person, I have to say. I knew that's what the answer you wanted, but I was thinking, no, I'm not really.

[Kate Lister]

No, no, don't even worry about it. No, it's, it's the Wild west out there. If they want to find you, come to one of your talks. Thank you so, so much for joining me today. You've been marvelous.

[Caroline Vuitt]

Thank you very much, Kate. It's been a real joy.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Carrie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then please email us @betwixt history hit.com and if you'd like to explore other stories from from this period, why not check out our sister podcast, the Ancients. It's not as good as this podcast, but it is a very, very good podcast. We've got upcoming episodes on everything from the President's Sex Lives to the real Sylvia Plath all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaghi and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by history hit. This podcast contains media music from Epidemic Sound.

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[Kate Lister]

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