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


The Body Beautiful - Ancient Greeks, Good Looks and Glamour

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Transcript


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I'm standing in one of my favourite rooms

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in one of my favourite buildings in the world.

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This is the British Museum.

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

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

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for an educational day trip.

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The Greeks were always my favourite.

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I was obsessed with the statues and the sculpture,

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the pots, the missing limbs - all of it.

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It's so extraordinary.

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Now the museum is putting on a new exhibition

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

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

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

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one of the most fundamental questions about all of art -

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what is beauty?

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

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were the most beautiful forms of the human body.

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Constructing a statue of yourself or of an ideal athlete

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is saying something about your position near to the gods.

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They made sense of their world

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by using the human body as a bearer of meaning.

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I used to be a stand-up comedian,

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so tonight, I'm going back in time -

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

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and to a more distant past,

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

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APPLAUSE

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Ah, thanks very much for coming.

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I am Natalie Haynes, and finally,

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after many years of just almost repeatedly crying,

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the BBC have agreed to let me make a documentary

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about the Ancient Greek world, and specifically,

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

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

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The exhibition I've come to see at the museum

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

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

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on modern thinking about the human form.

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Most of the really path-breaking

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and historically important sculptures in this exhibition

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actually come from the democratic period of Classical Athens.

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That covers approximately the fifth century BC

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and the first half of the fourth.

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It was 150 years of extraordinary cultural innovation.

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

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it seems to me that we have to start

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

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The nice thing about the Greeks is

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not only do they create extraordinary things,

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but they talk about them, they interrogate them,

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

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When they make their extraordinary sculptures -

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their crazily realistic or beautifully idealised sculptures -

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

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they're asking questions.

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

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

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

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Yeah, the discus thrower by Myron.

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

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

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He was an obsessive measurer

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in order to construct, calculate ideal beauty -

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but there is more than that.

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He also used the balancing of opposites,

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which had been the central theme of natural philosophy

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of the sixth century BC

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

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

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the other arm hangs free.

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One leg is weight-bearing,

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the other leg is weight-free.

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One set of toes arch up,

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the other set of toes curl under.

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And when you look at the composition of opposites together,

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you see a construction of balance, harmony and rhythm.

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

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

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

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And there's this saying of Heraclitus,

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"Bios bios" - life is a bow.

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Life is a continuous entasis,

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a continuous tension between the pushing energy

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and the pulling energy of life.

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

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and how they could represent it,

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

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still have a massive impact on how we view ourselves

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and our own body image today.

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

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

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

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

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

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One of the things about the Greek body in particular

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is that it's kind of moulded our subconscious,

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if you like,

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

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

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

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is in their own way responding to a particular aspect

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that goes all the way back to Ancient Greece.

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

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

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So here's Heracles, demigod and hero.

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His body type is 2,500 years old.

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

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

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

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We appreciate people who have taken a little bit more time

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with their bodies.

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

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and your image as your currency.

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One of the things that really interests me about Greek sculpture

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

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this is deeply lifelike,

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this is what the body really looks like -

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

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One of the things people have noticed

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is what they label the iliac crest.

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It's a very strong line,

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

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

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but you can never get it round the back,

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

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Likewise, that deep groove of the chest is something

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

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

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or hyper-naturalistic or hyper-lifelike

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about Greek sculpture.

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

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an ideal of what the body should be -

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

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

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and artificial conventions at work here.

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What I wanted to do was talk to you about beauty

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in the Ancient Greek world by talking about what the Greeks

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thought about beauty in their world

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

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who is of course the father of Western philosophy.

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

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

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

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he has to sting the body politic into behaving properly.

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

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

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Amid the rippling pectorals and bulging biceps of this exhibition,

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there's also this little guy.

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

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and his name is Socrates.

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There are statues of Socrates all over the world now,

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and they all look like this.

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

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Socrates may not have been much of a looker,

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

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He felt that a citizen had a genuine moral obligation

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

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I know that seems a little odd,

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

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but obviously he was still very fit,

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

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maybe he was a hypocrite.

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It's very interesting, isn't it,

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that the philosopher who really invented the discussion

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of the question, "What is beauty?"

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was himself known to be really rather ugly.

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He's not only short with a rather distorted face

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and possibly rather a snubby sort of nose,

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

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who was fascinated with looking at beautiful people.

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For the Greeks,

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looking beautiful was a physical manifestation

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of being beautiful inside.

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If you looked good, you probably WERE moral.

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That connection between physical outward beauty

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and inner ethical goodness

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

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In Ancient Greek, the idea is "kalokagathia" -

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

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

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And that's an ideal, an idea,

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

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

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in Ancient Persia, in Assyria -

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those great empires all have great figural sculpture,

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but all of them clothe the figure,

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

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Greece sees the body quite differently.

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The body is entirely something which can be beautiful,

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can be virtuous, and your duty as a citizen

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

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The nude male body was a uniform of the righteous -

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it was nude but not naked.

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

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

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in Athens high street. That's naked.

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

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but when you take off your clothes to exercise,

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

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there you are wearing a new uniform,

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a virtuous uniform of the citizen pursuing civic values.

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And the Greeks are unique in this respect.

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

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and physical beauty was intimately connected with moral goodness.

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No wonder defining beauty was so important to them.

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It was a subject that the philosopher Socrates

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would discuss in detail in one particular early dialogue.

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

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

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and it takes place between Socrates -

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the man whose only claim to knowledge is to say

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that he knows he knows nothing...

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..between him and Hippias.

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Hippias is a sophist,

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so he's a practitioning philosopher, I suppose.

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And so, Hippias turns up and Socrates says,

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"Hippias, great to see you.

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

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

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Now, you need to understand that whenever Socrates says,

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"I was talking to a friend of mine,"

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-he means him, right?

-LAUGHTER

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He has an imaginary friend.

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

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"That's great. You offer definitions,

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

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LAUGHTER

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

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

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Socrates says, "Great, you start,"

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

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"A beautiful girl is beautiful."

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

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is NOT answer the question.

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

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

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

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but that would rob him of a chance of a masterclass

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in passive aggression.

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-So...

-LAUGHTER

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

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

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

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

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look a great deal more erotically charged than the men.

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Why is that?

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

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There is no male club equivalent for the women.

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So there are differences of experience implied

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in the naked or nude representation of women.

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Athenian women lived lives very separate from their men.

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It was a curiously divided society.

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Now, Athenian women did not do public athletics,

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and it would have been considered very shocking

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if they'd shown themselves naked in public.

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This is Nereid, she's a sea nymph,

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and she's got wet, not unreasonably.

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Nymphs get a terrible press, I think,

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

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

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Nymphs are always trying to avoid having sex with male figures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The drapery does nothing to hide her modesty.

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If anything, it makes her more erotically charged.

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

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

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

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"which is beautiful, would you say, Hippias?

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"Anything at all, like a horse?"

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Wait, what?

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A what?

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

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that isn't a beautiful woman is a horse?

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Has it all gone a bit Equus here?

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

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Hippos would be...

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

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he says, "Yes, a horse is beautiful.

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

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

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"A lovely musical instrument like a lyre,

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

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

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Socrates suggests to Hippias

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that beauty can be in all kinds of objects,

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including a two-handled pot.

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

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This pot is even older than Socrates.

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It dates back from about 480 BC.

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

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and it's still absolutely exquisite.

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This particular pot shows a relatively rare study

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of the African body in Greek art.

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It depicts Memnon, the mythical hero and Ethiopian king,

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flanked by his warriors as they fought to defend Troy

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against the Greeks.

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I think the idea was to show that he had transcended

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

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

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as something of an inspiration.

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

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because there was at that time less of a focus

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

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So I love the idea of looking back

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

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This man's looking at him,

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

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

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That's exactly what I think, yeah.

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-You said he's somebody to be emulated.

-Yeah.

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I think it's a point that often gets overlooked

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

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

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

-Absolutely, yeah.

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Memnon fought with the Trojans,

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

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-not their own guys, the other guys.

-Yeah!

-How rare is that?

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Yeah, I thought it was great,

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because it really does show how respected Memnon was.

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This isn't just some warrior,

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

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that the enemy crafted a vase in his honour.

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

-Yeah.

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So, Hippias, he offers one last definition

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

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

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

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

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-brackets, after they are dead...

-LAUGHTER

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

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"and you're respected by everyone."

0:19:540:19:56

Even in this exhibition, which is filled with so many

0:20:020:20:05

beautiful, living bodies,

0:20:050:20:07

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

0:20:070:20:10

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

0:20:120:20:17

and it's written in Greek.

0:20:170:20:19

Beneath the inscription, there is a decomposing body.

0:20:190:20:23

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

0:20:230:20:28

In other words, we're not seeing a celebration

0:20:280:20:31

of who this person was when they were alive,

0:20:310:20:33

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

0:20:330:20:37

And the inscription backs that up.

0:20:370:20:40

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

0:20:400:20:43

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

0:20:430:20:47

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

0:20:470:20:51

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

0:20:510:20:55

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

0:20:550:20:58

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

0:21:000:21:03

"Number one -

0:21:030:21:05

"things that are beautiful need to be appropriate."

0:21:050:21:08

That sounds reasonable.

0:21:080:21:10

He says, "OK, erm...

0:21:100:21:12

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

0:21:120:21:16

"auditory or visual - auditory AND visual - pleasure.

0:21:160:21:19

"So a beautiful song is beautiful, is fine,

0:21:190:21:24

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

0:21:240:21:27

And then Socrates goes,

0:21:270:21:28

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

0:21:280:21:31

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

-LAUGHTER

0:21:310:21:33

"Could he overlook them? Could we go?"

0:21:330:21:36

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

0:21:360:21:39

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

0:21:390:21:42

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

0:21:420:21:45

"but it is," - and I quote -

0:21:450:21:46

"a contemptible sight..."

0:21:460:21:47

LAUGHTER

0:21:470:21:49

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

0:21:520:21:55

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

0:21:550:21:59

There's just maybe one aspect to these statues

0:21:590:22:04

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

0:22:040:22:07

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

0:22:080:22:10

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

-Do they(?)

0:22:100:22:13

They do, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

0:22:130:22:15

SHE CHUCKLES

0:22:150:22:16

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

0:22:160:22:19

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

0:22:190:22:22

But I think they are...

0:22:220:22:26

sexually reduced, let's say.

0:22:260:22:27

-Let's, let's say that.

-The sexual charge of the object is reduced

0:22:270:22:31

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

0:22:310:22:36

They are representations of the nude ideal figure in art.

0:22:360:22:43

So, in the Hippias,

0:22:550:22:58

Socrates suggests that what's beautiful

0:22:580:23:00

should also be appropriate,

0:23:000:23:03

and this figure doesn't look as obviously appropriate

0:23:030:23:08

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

0:23:080:23:11

as you can see.

0:23:110:23:12

He's a man, quite clearly.

0:23:120:23:14

He's extremely primitive, comparatively speaking.

0:23:160:23:19

He is from the eighth century BC.

0:23:190:23:21

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

0:23:210:23:27

Instead, he's quite a simplistic figure.

0:23:270:23:30

You can see he has quite spindly arms and legs.

0:23:300:23:32

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

0:23:350:23:38

I think it's meant to convey the enormous trauma

0:23:380:23:42

that this character is undergoing.

0:23:420:23:45

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

0:23:450:23:52

for Achilles' armour during the Trojan War.

0:23:520:23:55

He's so traumatised by the loss of face,

0:23:550:23:59

because reputation is everything to Greek heroes,

0:23:590:24:02

that he goes on a killing spree overnight.

0:24:020:24:05

He kills livestock, thinking that they are Trojan enemies.

0:24:050:24:08

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

0:24:080:24:11

that he takes his own life,

0:24:110:24:12

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

0:24:120:24:15

This is the exact moment which this sculpture has caught,

0:24:150:24:19

which makes it especially extraordinary -

0:24:190:24:21

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

0:24:210:24:24

It's a strange piece of sculpture.

0:24:260:24:27

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

0:24:270:24:30

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

0:24:300:24:34

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

0:24:340:24:38

There is something infinitely tragic about him.

0:24:380:24:41

The way his whole body seems to be tensed and strained

0:24:410:24:43

as the knife is coming towards him.

0:24:430:24:46

It's incredibly poignant.

0:24:460:24:48

The Ancient Greeks invented the human body

0:25:020:25:05

as we now understand it.

0:25:050:25:07

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

0:25:070:25:11

They took the representation of the human body

0:25:120:25:15

to an extent of importance in our sense of ourselves

0:25:150:25:21

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

0:25:210:25:26

I think within our Western subconscious

0:25:290:25:31

and within our Western culture,

0:25:310:25:32

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

0:25:320:25:35

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

0:25:350:25:39

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

0:25:390:25:42

The Greek sculpture of the body

0:25:450:25:48

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

0:25:480:25:53

For Europe, what happens in Greece and subsequently

0:25:530:25:56

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

0:25:560:25:59

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

0:25:590:26:03

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

0:26:040:26:06

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

0:26:060:26:09

The final words of this dialogue,

0:26:090:26:11

Socrates quotes an old Greek aphorism.

0:26:110:26:13

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

0:26:130:26:16

"everything beautiful is difficult."

0:26:160:26:18

But it's worth bearing in mind that beautiful objects

0:26:180:26:22

for the Greeks have a resonance that perhaps -

0:26:220:26:24

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

0:26:240:26:27

Perhaps my favourite story about any statue in the ancient world

0:26:270:26:31

is about the statue of Aphrodite at Knidos -

0:26:310:26:34

long since gone, I'm afraid -

0:26:340:26:36

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

0:26:360:26:41

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

0:26:410:26:47

with the statue when he went to visit it,

0:26:470:26:49

and he got himself locked in the temple overnight,

0:26:490:26:52

and then had what I think we can euphemistically describe

0:26:520:26:55

as a delightful evening...

0:26:550:26:57

LAUGHTER

0:26:570:26:58

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

0:26:580:27:04

was visible on the thigh of the statue.

0:27:040:27:07

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

0:27:070:27:10

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

0:27:100:27:13

And he was so ashamed of his behaviour

0:27:130:27:16

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

0:27:160:27:19

So the problem with beauty is that it IS difficult,

0:27:190:27:21

and occasionally too alluring, and cliffs, too near.

0:27:210:27:25

So...that's everything.

0:27:250:27:27

APPLAUSE

0:27:270:27:29

When Socrates tried to define beauty,

0:27:400:27:43

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

0:27:430:27:46

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

0:27:460:27:49

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

0:27:490:27:53

But Socrates also said

0:27:530:27:54

that the unexamined life was not worth living.

0:27:540:27:57

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

0:27:570:28:01

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

0:28:010:28:04

there are a lot worse places to start

0:28:040:28:06

than with the legacy the Ancient Greeks left to us.

0:28:060:28:10

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