What Made You Ugly In The Ancient World?

Summary

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

Episode Summary: "What Made You Ugly In The Ancient World?"

Release Date: November 1, 2024
Host: Kate Lister
Guest: Caroline Vought, Author of Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body

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Introduction to Ancient Beauty Standards

In this episode, host Kate Lister delves into the intricate perceptions of beauty and ugliness in ancient Greek and Roman societies. Accompanied by Caroline Vought, a respected historian specializing in classical body image, the discussion navigates through the complexities of how ancient cultures defined and valued physical appearance.

Caroline Vought’s Journey and Research

Caroline Vought shares her inspiration behind writing Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body. She recounts her experience at the Wellcome Collection in London, where her presentation on Ovid captivated the audience, leading her to further explore how ancient Greeks and Romans perceived the human body.

[05:27] Caroline Vought: "The Greeks... recognize this was a constant, ongoing struggle. And it was that struggle that made you virtuous and you needed that virtue to be a citizen, man."

Ancient Greek and Roman Beauty Ideals

Male Ideal: The Composite Perfection

Vought explains that the classical statues we admire today, often seen as epitomes of beauty, were actually composites representing idealized forms rather than realistic depictions.

[07:13] Caroline Vought: "The body looks like the 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... an impossible ideal."

She highlights the "spear carrier" statue type, emphasizing its unrealistic proportions—youthful heads paired with more mature torsos and disproportionately small genitalia. This composite reflects the Greeks' pursuit of an unattainable standard of beauty, intertwining physical perfection with moral virtue.

Female Ideal: Fertility and Veiled Femininity

For women, the ideal was often represented as veiled and modest, symbolizing fertility and purity. The Aphrodite of Knidos, noted as the first monumental female nude, stands out as an exception, embodying desire and challenging societal norms.

[12:06] Caroline Vought: "Aha. So the answer's quite complicated... she stands there without any clothes on... but her hands are positioned over her breasts and her pubic area."

Vought discusses how female statues, except for divine representations like Aphrodite, typically depicted women covered up, reinforcing their roles as fertile vessels rather than autonomous individuals.

Perceptions of Ugliness and Social Control

The concept of beauty in ancient societies was inseparable from notions of self-control and virtue. Vought introduces the Greek term enkrateia, emphasizing self-mastery as a societal ideal.

[07:45] Caroline Vought: "It's all about appearing absolutely under control. That means that your genitals in your statues have to be small."

Ugliness was often associated with a lack of self-control or moral failing. This is evident in the contrast between gods like Aphrodite and Hephaestus, the latter being portrayed as physically unattractive to symbolize his association with labor and disorder.

Disability and Physical Deformities

Vought addresses the historical stigma surrounding disabilities, noting that physical imperfections were often linked to moral or societal shortcomings.

[26:21] 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?"

She acknowledges limited evidence of proto-welfare systems but emphasizes the broader context of human vulnerability in antiquity. Disabilities were highly visible and often misunderstood, contributing to societal perceptions of ugliness.

Cultural Exchange: Greek Influence on Rome

The episode explores how Roman culture was heavily influenced by Greek ideals, especially in art and beauty standards. As Rome expanded, it adopted and adapted Greek aesthetics, leading to a blend of cultural values.

[19:37] Caroline Vought: "They make version after version of them. And the Aphrodite of Cunidos and the spear carrier would originally have been in sanctuary spaces... but in the Roman world, they become garden sculpture."

Roman society both embraced and commodified Greek aesthetics, integrating idealized forms into everyday life while grappling with their implications on Roman values.

The Impact of Christianity on Beauty Standards

Christianity's rise brought significant shifts in attitudes towards beauty and sexuality. Vought discusses how early Christian doctrines contrasted sharply with pagan ideals, promoting modesty and spiritual purity over physical perfection.

[35:26] Caroline Vought: "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."

Christian art began to reinterpret classical forms, often depicting religious figures like Christ in ways that balanced divine inspiration with human relatability, further distancing societal norms from classical beauty standards.

Modern Reflections: Enduring Classical Influences

Vought asserts that classical ideals of beauty continue to influence contemporary aesthetics, evident in modern art and media.

[44:34] Caroline Vought: "They are still there... Beyoncé's 'Apeshit'... classical statues set a benchmark, a way of thinking about beauty that was then very influential on Burke and Hogarth and all the artists we've been talking about."

Despite evolving tastes, the foundational standards established by ancient Greece and Rome persist, subtly shaping modern perceptions of attractiveness and bodily ideals.

Conclusion: Evolving Definitions of Beauty and Ugliness

The episode concludes by acknowledging the fluid nature of beauty standards, both in ancient times and today. Vought emphasizes that while specific ideals change, the underlying human concerns with appearance, virtue, and societal acceptance remain constant.

[30:28] Caroline Vought: "Ideas of beauty change all the time... What would have been an ugly body, an ugly person in ancient Greece, an ancient Rome?... it's changing all the time."

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Key Takeaways

• Composite Ideals: Ancient Greek and Roman statues often reflected idealized, unrealistic bodies that symbolized broader societal values.
• Veiled Femininity: Women's beauty was tied to fertility and modesty, with exceptions like Aphrodite challenging norms.
• Self-Control and Ugliness: Physical appearance was intertwined with moral virtue; ugliness often signified a lack of self-mastery.
• Cultural Assimilation: Rome's adoption of Greek aesthetics highlights the enduring influence of classical ideals.
• Christianity’s Influence: The rise of Christianity redefined beauty standards, emphasizing spiritual over physical ideals.
• Modern Echoes: Classical beauty standards continue to influence contemporary aesthetics, demonstrating the lasting legacy of ancient perceptions.

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About the Guest: Caroline Vought

Caroline Vought is a renowned historian specializing in the body, sex, and gender in the ancient world. She teaches at the University of Cambridge, is a fellow at Christ's College, and frequently speaks at academic and public events across the UK.

For more on Caroline Vought and her work, visit the University of Cambridge or attend one of her upcoming talks.

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Produced by: Stuart Beckwith
Edited by: Tom Delaghi
Senior Producer: Charlotte Long
Music: Epidemic Sound

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 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 adulty way, 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 your 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Kate Lister]

Any man.

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[Kate Lister]

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[Caroline Vought]

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness.

[Kate Lister]

What beautiful d. Goodness has nothing to do with it. Dearing. 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 Vought, author of Exposed the Greek and Roman Body, to help us understand the concept 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 Voot. How are you doing?

[Caroline Vought]

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 Vought]

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 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 who've got amazing six packs. Did they not look like that?

[Caroline Vought]

No, they really didn't. But I mean, that's the. 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 aroma 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 pinup 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.

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[Caroline Vought]

The body looks like the 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. Men are so fascinated by this. Why did they have such little willies on their statues and paintings? For your money, why?

[Caroline Vought]

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 enkratea, 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 you 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. They're actually representations of women weren't always around for them. They were mostly there for the boys.

[Caroline Vought]

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

[Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Caroline Vought]

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 stigmatized 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, but I think they're also probably, you know, doing exactly what we get up to in our bedrooms. It's just that representationally, it makes sense to show. If you show two men face to face, then they look equal. They look mutually. Oh, yeah. 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 Vought]

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, 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 equal, you know, of course they're sleeping with men.

[Kate Lister]

Of course they are.

[Caroline Vought]

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 Vought]

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 Vought]

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 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 Vought]

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 that 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 Kos, 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.

[Caroline Vought]

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[Kate Lister]

So the Romans were big fans of Greek culture, weren't they? 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 Vought]

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, 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 Cnidos 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 Cunidos 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 lamp stands or drink trays in elite houses. So they take on this kind of kitsch beauty as well.

[Kate Lister]

They've become marketable?

[Caroline Vought]

Oh, very much so. Really commodified already.

[Kate Lister]

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

[Caroline Vought]

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. 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 Vought]

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 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 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 Vought]

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 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, well, these roundhouses are amazing. We must try and make these ourselves.

[Caroline Vought]

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 labelled. That's how we know 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. 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 shaming me, 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 Vought]

Yeah, I mean, 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 renders 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 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 figures like we mentioned Sappho. Sappho, in ancient biographies of her, is said to have written beautiful verses, but have been despicably ugly. Contemptible to 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 Vought]

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 Vought]

Yeah, I think in some ways that's right. Yeah, I think. I think that's right. You know, I mean, if you read Plato, I mean, Plato's ideas about the body are 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 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 border film classification in 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 Vought]

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, 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 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 each 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 Vought]

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 exposure. There are hints of sort of proto, not systems, but sort of initiatives to help people, but not much.

[Mint Mobile]

Okay.

[Kate Lister]

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 society. Scars, injuries, all of this stuff that now you could go and get fixed, you just couldn't have that then.

[Caroline Vought]

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 change 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 Vought]

Yeah, I think it does. 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 would have thought I was immediately unattractive. I think they do, yeah. And you can see a kind of changing concept of beauty and ugliness already in the statues in antiquity and that, 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, 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 Vought]

Again, it's complicated. I think it goes back to what I was saying about Enkratea 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 Vought]

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 just. They like boys so much, they keep making the girls look like boys. Michelangelo, I'm looking at you.

[Caroline Vought]

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 Conidos that it looks like that.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Carrie after this short break. Thanks for listening to Betwixt the Sheets. To get all history hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes, head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple podcasts with just one click.

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[Kate Lister]

I often imagine Michelangelo, who is 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 and make it look like a woman. And then suddenly looking at it and going, oh God, it's a man again. Oh, damn it, I've done it again. Yeah.

[Caroline Vought]

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. 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 Vought]

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? He 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. And then, you know, we'd never get. And then you would say it was the birth of Christ.

[Mint Mobile]

Right.

[Caroline Vought]

We were like, oh, God, that was a different film. We didn't realize, you know, that had anything to do with classics. 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 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 Kanaidos gives Eve a body. So early sarcophagi that show Eve, she looks like the Aphrodite of Kanaidos, 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 to the extent that in an ideal world everybody would be celibate. It's why men go off into the desert and women are being incited to starve themselves because that will stop their period, 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 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 Vought]

Exactly. Then it all 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 Vought]

Is just, you know, that the letters he's writing to these elite women, you know, you sort of think, my God, there's a 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. 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, he's 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. 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, 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 Vought]

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 part of 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 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 Vought]

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 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 in his passivity, really, in his self sacrifice.

[Kate Lister]

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

[Caroline Vought]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you. 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 Vought]

I mean, 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 uber active.

[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 bit feminine, a bit Amazonian, and other people are going for like a Viking thing. Where are women in all of this? How does that. I mean, it seems that we're back to veils again with the Virgin Mary.

[Caroline Vought]

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 projectorthat's why we call it the projector casket. Projector and Sejanus, that's her husband. 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 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 Vought]

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 Rexer 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 Zion 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 classical sculpture, that sort of recognizes 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 Vought]

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

[Kate Lister]

Are you on social media at all?

[Caroline Vought]

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 the wild west out there. If they want to find you, come to one of your talks. Thank you so much for joining me today. You've been marvelous.

[Caroline Vought]

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 [e-mail] and if you'd like to explore other stories 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 music from Epidemic Sound.

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