The Body Beautiful - Ancient Greeks, Good Looks and Glamour Secret Knowledge

I'm standing in one of my favourite rooms

in one of my favourite buildings in the world.

This is the British Museum.

I've been coming here since I was a little girl,

when my mum and dad used to drive us down to London

for an educational day trip.

The Greeks were always my favourite.

I was obsessed with the statues and the sculpture,

the pots, the missing limbs - all of it.

It's so extraordinary.

Now the museum is putting on a new exhibition

about Ancient Greek sculpture which I can't wait to see.

It's not just going to be for Classics nerds like me

because it's going to ask - and I hope answer -

one of the most fundamental questions about all of art -

what is beauty?

In this room, you can see 500 years of what Europeans have thought

were the most beautiful forms of the human body.

Constructing a statue of yourself or of an ideal athlete

is saying something about your position near to the gods.

They made sense of their world

by using the human body as a bearer of meaning.

I used to be a stand-up comedian,

so tonight, I'm going back in time -

both to my own past when I walk on stage again,

and to a more distant past,

as I'll be exploring the Ancient Greeks and their ideas of beauty.

APPLAUSE

Ah, thanks very much for coming.

I am Natalie Haynes, and finally,

after many years of just almost repeatedly crying,

the BBC have agreed to let me make a documentary

about the Ancient Greek world, and specifically,

they've agreed to let me run around the British Museum after hours,

having a lovely time, so I'm extremely excited.

The exhibition I've come to see at the museum

is called Defining Beauty - The Body In Ancient Greek Art.

And it's looking at the influence the Greeks still have

on modern thinking about the human form.

Most of the really path-breaking

and historically important sculptures in this exhibition

actually come from the democratic period of Classical Athens.

That covers approximately the fifth century BC

and the first half of the fourth.

It was 150 years of extraordinary cultural innovation.

If we're going to talk about beauty in the Ancient Greek world,

it seems to me that we have to start

with the Greeks talking about beauty in the Ancient Greek world.

The nice thing about the Greeks is

not only do they create extraordinary things,

but they talk about them, they interrogate them,

they ask questions about them, and it's constant.

When they make their extraordinary sculptures -

their crazily realistic or beautifully idealised sculptures -

they're not just putting them out there and leaving you to it,

they're asking questions.

Now, I think... I don't want to offend any of the others,

but I feel like if there's one statue which probably everyone knows

above all others, it must be the discus thrower, the Discobolus.

Yeah, the discus thrower by Myron.

So, Myron is demonstrating that sculptors can be philosophers, too,

and he employs more symmetria in his figures than any other sculptor.

He was an obsessive measurer

in order to construct, calculate ideal beauty -

but there is more than that.

He also used the balancing of opposites,

which had been the central theme of natural philosophy

of the sixth century BC

in determining the nature of the world and man's place in it.

One arm extends behind holding the discus, the muscle contracted,

the other arm hangs free.

One leg is weight-bearing,

the other leg is weight-free.

One set of toes arch up,

the other set of toes curl under.

And when you look at the composition of opposites together,

you see a construction of balance, harmony and rhythm.

And you also see the arc of a bow running through the arms,

and then the zigzag of the string attached to that bow,

pulled as if it were the outline of the right flank.

And there's this saying of Heraclitus,

"Bios bios" - life is a bow.

Life is a continuous entasis,

a continuous tension between the pushing energy

and the pulling energy of life.

As you can see, the Greeks were obsessed with the human body

and how they could represent it,

and their ideas - some of which are over 2,500 years old -

still have a massive impact on how we view ourselves

and our own body image today.

I think when you come into the first room of the exhibition,

and you see the great heroic figures of the discus thrower,

you are in the world that we now regard - still regard -

as what the athletic, male, muscular body ought to be.

And you are really looking at our modern conceptions of the body.

One of the things about the Greek body in particular

is that it's kind of moulded our subconscious,

if you like,

for thinking about how our bodies are, or how our bodies should be.

Anyone who's spent time working out, anyone who worries

about what they eat, anyone who wants to bulk up or slim down

is in their own way responding to a particular aspect

that goes all the way back to Ancient Greece.

No-one goes to the gym to look like a Henry Moore.

They go to the gym in order to have the ideal body.

So here's Heracles, demigod and hero.

His body type is 2,500 years old.

He doesn't look like he's gone out of fashion to me.

No, definitely not. I think that is still the type of body that we want.

Obviously, you can see he's got very strong arms and nice abs.

We appreciate people who have taken a little bit more time

with their bodies.

We're in the age of, like, the gym selfie

and your image as your currency.

One of the things that really interests me about Greek sculpture

is that everyone says, of course, this is deeply naturalistic,

this is deeply lifelike,

this is what the body really looks like -

yet there are all sorts of elements that are deeply non-realistic.

One of the things people have noticed

is what they label the iliac crest.

It's a very strong line,

a line of ligament that separates the legs from the torso.

If you try and work out very hard in the gym, you can get that line,

but you can never get it round the back,

which is one of the things that you find on Greek sculptures.

Likewise, that deep groove of the chest is something

that you can never actually achieve, however hard you try,

so there's something, kind of, hyper-realistic

or hyper-naturalistic or hyper-lifelike

about Greek sculpture.

And so, once again, I think that Greek sculpture has given us

an ideal of what the body should be -

one that's resonated throughout the last 2,000 years-plus

of Western art history, and yet there are all sorts of fabrications

and artificial conventions at work here.

What I wanted to do was talk to you about beauty

in the Ancient Greek world by talking about what the Greeks

thought about beauty in their world

and the right place to do that is to begin with Socrates,

who is of course the father of Western philosophy.

Erm, he's kind of a nuisance, I'm not going to lie to you.

Erm, I mean, brilliant - don't get me wrong.

He's always called himself "Athens' gadfly",

he has to sting the body politic into behaving properly.

He's always asking questions about the world that we live in,

and his primary question is, "Ti esti?" - "What is it?"

Amid the rippling pectorals and bulging biceps of this exhibition,

there's also this little guy.

He was fascinated by the question, "What is beauty?"

and his name is Socrates.

There are statues of Socrates all over the world now,

and they all look like this.

He's instantly recognisable with his turned-up snub nose, with the beard.

Socrates may not have been much of a looker,

but he was certainly fascinated by beauty, particularly male beauty.

He felt that a citizen had a genuine moral obligation

not to let themselves run to seed, to get fat or out of shape.

I know that seems a little odd,

cos he's definitely got a slight paunch going on there,

but obviously he was still very fit,

or maybe he was just - I can't bear to say it -

maybe he was a hypocrite.

It's very interesting, isn't it,

that the philosopher who really invented the discussion

of the question, "What is beauty?"

was himself known to be really rather ugly.

He's not only short with a rather distorted face

and possibly rather a snubby sort of nose,

and he, I think, just grew up as an ugly little boy

who was fascinated with looking at beautiful people.

For the Greeks,

looking beautiful was a physical manifestation

of being beautiful inside.

If you looked good, you probably WERE moral.

That connection between physical outward beauty

and inner ethical goodness

is absolutely integral to a Greek idea of the body beautiful.

In Ancient Greek, the idea is "kalokagathia" -

a bit of a mouthful, but it means "kalos kai agathos" -

to be beautiful, to be handsome, is the same as being ethically good.

And that's an ideal, an idea,

that again has resonated throughout the longue duree of Western history.

If you look at the figure, the human figure in Ancient Egypt,

in Ancient Persia, in Assyria -

those great empires all have great figural sculpture,

but all of them clothe the figure,

and to be shown naked in those cultures is to be humiliated.

Greece sees the body quite differently.

The body is entirely something which can be beautiful,

can be virtuous, and your duty as a citizen

is to make your body beautiful, and to make your mind virtuous.

The nude male body was a uniform of the righteous -

it was nude but not naked.

Naked is what you are when you're walking down the street

and suddenly, your trouser elastic goes and your bottom's showing

in Athens high street. That's naked.

Or if you behave lewdly without your clothes on, that's naked,

but when you take off your clothes to exercise,

or you put on a skin of bronze and go into battle,

there you are wearing a new uniform,

a virtuous uniform of the citizen pursuing civic values.

And the Greeks are unique in this respect.

So we know the Greeks saw nudity as an honourable state,

and physical beauty was intimately connected with moral goodness.

No wonder defining beauty was so important to them.

It was a subject that the philosopher Socrates

would discuss in detail in one particular early dialogue.

The Hippias Major is the dialogue that I want to talk to you about,

written in 390 and asking the question, "What is beauty?"

and it takes place between Socrates -

the man whose only claim to knowledge is to say

that he knows he knows nothing...

..between him and Hippias.

Hippias is a sophist,

so he's a practitioning philosopher, I suppose.

And so, Hippias turns up and Socrates says,

"Hippias, great to see you.

"I was trying to discuss beauty with a friend of mine the other day,

"and I couldn't quite do it and I was wondering if you could help."

Now, you need to understand that whenever Socrates says,

"I was talking to a friend of mine,"

-he means him, right?

-LAUGHTER

He has an imaginary friend.

And so, he says, "Yeah, yeah, I can help," and Socrates says,

"That's great. You offer definitions,

"and then I'll pretend to be my hypercritical obnoxious friend...

LAUGHTER

"..and critique your ideas. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

And so, they agree that they'll discuss beauty.

Socrates says, "Great, you start,"

and Hippias says, "OK. What is beauty? Erm...

"A beautiful girl is beautiful."

Now, you've probably noticed that what he's done there

is NOT answer the question.

The question wasn't, "Could you give me an example of something beautiful?" -

the question was, "What is beauty?" Socrates knows that, too.

He could say, "Actually, you haven't answered the question,"

but that would rob him of a chance of a masterclass

in passive aggression.

-So...

-LAUGHTER

..he instead says, "Oh, yeah, a beautiful girl is beautiful.

"That's a great answer, Hippias, I love that.

"A beautiful girl is beautiful - brilliant, yeah."

The women, I think it's fair to say, when they're naked,

look a great deal more erotically charged than the men.

Why is that?

Because it is as sexual objects that they're being represented.

There is no male club equivalent for the women.

So there are differences of experience implied

in the naked or nude representation of women.

Athenian women lived lives very separate from their men.

It was a curiously divided society.

Now, Athenian women did not do public athletics,

and it would have been considered very shocking

if they'd shown themselves naked in public.

This is Nereid, she's a sea nymph,

and she's got wet, not unreasonably.

Nymphs get a terrible press, I think,

because their name implies that they are all up for sex all the time -

hence "nymphomaniac" - but actually, the opposite is true.

Nymphs are always trying to avoid having sex with male figures

who are pursuing them - they're always on the run.

She's wearing clothes, but as you can see,

they make no difference whatsoever to how naked it makes her look.

The clothing is so thin, you can see her navel through it,

you can see the line at the bottom of her belly,

and the lines of the drapery, if anything, draw our eyes

down her body to make us gaze at her more longingly.

The drapery does nothing to hide her modesty.

If anything, it makes her more erotically charged.

It's a direct contrast to the way the male statues are shown.

Anyway, where were we? And then, Socrates says,

"No, hold on a minute. Is there anything that isn't a beautiful girl

"which is beautiful, would you say, Hippias?

"Anything at all, like a horse?"

Wait, what?

A what?

That's your first counter-example of something that's beautiful

that isn't a beautiful woman is a horse?

Has it all gone a bit Equus here?

Well, not Equus, cos that would be Latin. Erm,

Hippos would be...

Doesn't matter now. Erm, so, yes,

he says, "Yes, a horse is beautiful.

"Yeah, fair play - a beautiful horse can be beautiful."

And Socrates says, "Well, what about man-made things?

"A lovely musical instrument like a lyre,

"or a pot, a beautiful pot - are those beautiful?"

and Hippias says, "Yeah, those are beautiful."

Socrates suggests to Hippias

that beauty can be in all kinds of objects,

including a two-handled pot.

Looking at this, you can't help but think he was right.

This pot is even older than Socrates.

It dates back from about 480 BC.

So it would have been ten years old when Socrates was born,

and it's still absolutely exquisite.

This particular pot shows a relatively rare study

of the African body in Greek art.

It depicts Memnon, the mythical hero and Ethiopian king,

flanked by his warriors as they fought to defend Troy

against the Greeks.

I think the idea was to show that he had transcended

to becoming godlike, that he really had risen in the ranks

and fought in battle, and here he was - now he stands before you

as something of an inspiration.

He is both black but also part of the Greek identity,

because there was at that time less of a focus

on your race being what defined you, and more about strength and ability.

So I love the idea of looking back

and seeing a heritage of incredibly strong, able, black heroes.

This man's looking at him,

it looks to me with a little envy in his heart, do you think?

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? It looks like it's where he would like to be!

That's exactly what I think, yeah.

-You said he's somebody to be emulated.

-Yeah.

I think it's a point that often gets overlooked

is that this vase was made in Greece, in Athens,

and the Greeks were on the other side of the Trojan War.

-But they still love him that much to celebrate him.

-Absolutely, yeah.

Memnon fought with the Trojans,

and that's who they've chosen to celebrate on this pot -

-not their own guys, the other guys.

-Yeah!

-How rare is that?

Yeah, I thought it was great,

because it really does show how respected Memnon was.

This isn't just some warrior,

this is one who came in and impressed the enemy so much

that the enemy crafted a vase in his honour.

-Yeah, he's a hero to his enemies.

-Yeah.

So, Hippias, he offers one last definition

before Socrates takes over. He says, "OK, a beautiful life,

"a fine, beautiful life," - the word is the same in Greek, "kalos" -

he says, "OK, one of those - that's if you live for a long time,

"and you're healthy and you're rich, and you bury your parents,"

-brackets, after they are dead...

-LAUGHTER

"..and you, in turn, will be buried by your children,

"and you're respected by everyone."

Even in this exhibition, which is filled with so many

beautiful, living bodies,

there's a little bit of death, including this fellow here.

This is a Roman grave marker from the second century AD,

and it's written in Greek.

Beneath the inscription, there is a decomposing body.

You can see his skull, his ribs, the bones in his arms and legs.

In other words, we're not seeing a celebration

of who this person was when they were alive,

we're seeing who they're rotting away to be now that they are dead.

And the inscription backs that up.

It asks the question of a passer-by, "Can you tell who's buried here?

"Is it Hyllus..." - a very beautiful youth, a friend of Heracles,

"..or is it Thersites?" - a very plain, ugly man from the Iliad.

In other words, was this person beautiful or were they ugly?

It doesn't matter - in death, we're all the same.

And Socrates says, "OK, I'll offer some definitions. I'll do that.

"Number one -

"things that are beautiful need to be appropriate."

That sounds reasonable.

He says, "OK, erm...

"So maybe what's beautiful is a type of pleasure,

"auditory or visual - auditory AND visual - pleasure.

"So a beautiful song is beautiful, is fine,

"a beautiful painting is fine... Yeah, this is great."

And then Socrates goes,

"I suppose my friend might have a couple of exceptions..."

-And Hippias is like, "Oh, come on!"

-LAUGHTER

"Could he overlook them? Could we go?"

So, he tries one last time, one final roll of the dice.

Socrates' clinching argument, he says, "And sex?

"Which feels delightful, it's a very pleasant experience,

"but it is," - and I quote -

"a contemptible sight..."

LAUGHTER

So in every regard, these men are admirable and desirable,

and which not-so-six-packed person wouldn't want to look like them?

There's just maybe one aspect to these statues

that I think people might not find quite so...

..ambitious - is that fair? What's that, Natalie?

-It's the fact that they all have really small genitals.

-Do they(?)

They do, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

SHE CHUCKLES

I mean, they could be average, don't judge me.

Well, once that's been said, nobody's going to deny it, are they?

But I think they are...

sexually reduced, let's say.

-Let's, let's say that.

-The sexual charge of the object is reduced

so as to emphasise the fact that these are not sexual objects.

They are representations of the nude ideal figure in art.

So, in the Hippias,

Socrates suggests that what's beautiful

should also be appropriate,

and this figure doesn't look as obviously appropriate

to an exhibition on the Greek body as some of the other pieces

as you can see.

He's a man, quite clearly.

He's extremely primitive, comparatively speaking.

He is from the eighth century BC.

There's no musculature or beauty obvious to it at first glance.

Instead, he's quite a simplistic figure.

You can see he has quite spindly arms and legs.

As for the mystery of why he has an erect penis,

I think it's meant to convey the enormous trauma

that this character is undergoing.

He's probably Ajax, the Greek hero who loses a fight with Odysseus

for Achilles' armour during the Trojan War.

He's so traumatised by the loss of face,

because reputation is everything to Greek heroes,

that he goes on a killing spree overnight.

He kills livestock, thinking that they are Trojan enemies.

He's so humiliated when he realises it the next morning

that he takes his own life,

and he does that by driving a sword in to his belly.

This is the exact moment which this sculpture has caught,

which makes it especially extraordinary -

that it's telling a whole story with this tiny, tiny figure.

It's a strange piece of sculpture.

I thought, when I first saw it, that I probably didn't like it,

because it's so much less beautiful than so many other pieces here.

But the more time I spend looking at it, the more I've taken to him.

There is something infinitely tragic about him.

The way his whole body seems to be tensed and strained

as the knife is coming towards him.

It's incredibly poignant.

The Ancient Greeks invented the human body

as we now understand it.

They invented the human condition, they invented the human being,

They took the representation of the human body

to an extent of importance in our sense of ourselves

that nobody has been able ever since to forget it or to deny it.

I think within our Western subconscious

and within our Western culture,

we've inherited a Greek ideal of the beautiful figure.

We're married to this legacy of antiquity for better and for worse,

and I think we have to recognise that in all sorts of different ways.

The Greek sculpture of the body

shapes and changes the way Europeans think about the body today.

For Europe, what happens in Greece and subsequently

is the determinate model, and that is the point of the exhibition -

it changes the way you can look at something you thought you knew.

So in the end, they agreed that they know nothing.

They are exactly where they started out, knowing nothing at all.

The final words of this dialogue,

Socrates quotes an old Greek aphorism.

He says it is true that, "khalepa ta kala" -

"everything beautiful is difficult."

But it's worth bearing in mind that beautiful objects

for the Greeks have a resonance that perhaps -

well, let's say hopefully - they don't always have for us.

Perhaps my favourite story about any statue in the ancient world

is about the statue of Aphrodite at Knidos -

long since gone, I'm afraid -

which was legendarily beautiful and extremely saucy, to put it mildly.

So saucy, in fact, that legend has it that a young man fell in love

with the statue when he went to visit it,

and he got himself locked in the temple overnight,

and then had what I think we can euphemistically describe

as a delightful evening...

LAUGHTER

..and then, the next day, proof of his delightful evening...

was visible on the thigh of the statue.

I'm trying so hard not to use the word "stain" and it's going so badly

that I think we're just going to have to accept it.

And he was so ashamed of his behaviour

that he ran and threw himself off a cliff and died.

So the problem with beauty is that it IS difficult,

and occasionally too alluring, and cliffs, too near.

So...that's everything.

APPLAUSE

When Socrates tried to define beauty,

the best he could come up with was that it was difficult to define.

That's exactly how I feel 2,500 years later.

Like Socrates, I guess, at least I know that I know nothing.

But Socrates also said

that the unexamined life was not worth living.

Asking questions is important, coming up with answers, less so.

If you do want to ask questions about what beauty really is,

there are a lot worse places to start

than with the legacy the Ancient Greeks left to us.