One of the most common misconceptions I have encountered about the ancient Greeks is the notion that ancient Greek men were all incredibly buff, muscle-bound bodybuilders. This misconception seems to arise from the naïve assumption that ancient Greek statues depict how average ancient Greek men really looked, perhaps also influenced by the similarly naïve assumption that the 2007 epic fantasy action film 300, written and directed by Zack Snyder, is a historically accurate depiction of ancient Greece.
The reality is that there was never a time when the majority of Greek men really looked like the physical specimens portrayed in Archaic and Classical Greek sculptures. These sculptures represent what upper-class Greek people regarded as physically ideal, not what the average Greek person actually looked like.
The truth about ancient Greek statues
The ancient Greeks did not have a concept of l’art pour l’art or “art for art’s sake.” When ancient Greek painters, sculptors, and other artists created their art, they invariably did so for a specific purpose. For instance, a sculptor might create a sculpture to be a cult statue of a particular deity to be worshipped, to be made as a dedication offering for a particular deity, to decorate a particular public building, to serve as a marker for a particular tomb, or to decorate a particular rich person’s home.
Generally speaking, Greek sculptors created their sculptures under the assumption that they would be displayed in a prominent place where lots of people would be able to see them. Consequently, they devoted a lot of time and effort to making their sculptures look as aesthetically pleasing as possible according to the conventional tastes and standards of upper-class Greek people at the time.
From around the seventh century BCE through the middle of the fourth century BCE, Greek full-sized sculptures of human beings generally tended to fall into two basic categories:
- Sculptures of extremely buff, young, naked men
- Sculptures of beautiful, young women dressed in fine, elaborate clothing
Neither of these kinds of sculpture was meant to represent what average people at the time actually looked like, but rather what upper-class Greek people thought of as physically ideal for a person of the particular gender being represented.
Looking at one of these statues can tell you about as much about what real ancient Greek people actually looked like as looking at the photos in a contemporary bodybuilding magazine can tell you about what contemporary men look like or looking at the photos in a contemporary fashion magazine can tell you about what contemporary women look like. They can give you a sense of what the hairstyles, the beauty standards, and the fashions of the period were, but they can’t tell you how buff or beautiful the average person was.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Kroisos Kouros, an ancient Greek statue of a nude young man dating to between c. 540 and c. 515 BCE, originally a grave marker for a young man named Kroisos at Anavyssos in Attike, now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Phrasikleia Kore, an ancient Greek statue of a young woman in fine clothes dating to between c. 550 and c. 530 BCE, found buried at Myrrhinous in Attike, now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens
The extent of idealization
There are several ways we can tell that ancient Greek sculptures are idealized. The first way is by examining what the ancient historical sources tell us about the purposes of sculptors at the time. These sources reveal that sculptors really weren’t trying to keep it any kind of secret that they were making highly idealized works of art.
Notably, the sculptor Polykleitos, who lived in the fifth century BCE, wrote a treatise known as the Canon of Polykleitos, in which he laid out a canonical set of precise, idealized proportions that he felt all sculptures of nude men should follow in order to maximize aesthetic appeal. The fact that he was trying to find ideal proportions, rather than strictly realistic ones, tells us a lot about what his artistic aspirations were.
Polykleitos is perhaps best known today for his statue Doryphoros, or Spear-Bearer, which he may have created specifically in order to demonstrate his canon of idealized proportions. Polykleitos’s original version of the Doryphoros was made of bronze, but that version has not survived. Instead, the Doryphoros is only known from much later Roman marble statues based on Polykleitos’s bronze original.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue from Pompeii dating to the first century BCE or first century CE, based on Polykleitos’s Doryphoros, now on display in the Naples National Archaeological Museum
Historical evidence
We also know that Greek sculptures are idealized, however, because the historical evidence contradicts the idea that all the men in ancient Greece were super-muscular. For one thing, all our evidence suggests that the average ancient Greek person’s diet probably wasn’t extremely high in protein and, as I understand it, it is generally much more difficult for a person to build rippling muscles when they aren’t eating a very high-protein diet.
Unlike today, there was no corporate meat industry in ancient Greece. Most of the time, an ancient Greek person could not go out and buy beef, pork, or mutton at the marketplace. Generally speaking, the only ways they could obtain these kinds of meat were if they sacrificed their own livestock or they shared in eating some of the meat after a large public sacrifice.
Since less wealthy people could not afford to sacrifice livestock very often and public sacrifices only happened on certain occasions, your average Greek person probably only had the opportunity to eat meat from land animals on special occasions. Meat from fish and poultry was probably more readily available than meat from cattle, pigs, and sheep, but even these meats were far less readily available for your average ancient Greek person than your average American today.
Aside from meat, there weren’t many other immediate sources of protein available to the ancient Greeks. (Soybeans weren’t cultivated in Greece until 1939!) Consequently, it probably would have been somewhat difficult for your average, non-wealthy Greek person to build up the kind of muscle that we usually see in Greek statues of nude men. Greek men probably tended to be fairly lean—tough from doing lots of hard work, but not especially bulky in terms of muscle.
There are also many references throughout ancient Greek writings to specific individuals who did not even remotely resemble the artistic ideal portrayed in sculptures. Most famously, the philosopher Socrates (lived 470 – 399 BCE) had a reputation for being “ugly” because he had a snub nose, large eyes, a potbelly, a bald head.
ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to between c. 510 and c. 500 BCE, depicting two men ritually sacrificing a pig to the goddess Demeter
“Imperfect” bodies in Classical Greek vase paintings
There is even artistic evidence to support the conclusion that not everyone in ancient Greece was in gorgeous shape. Although people with less-than-perfect bodies according to traditional elite standards rarely appear in full-sized Greek sculptures from the Classical Period, they do occasionally appear in vase paintings and miniatures.
For instance, there is an Attic red-figure kylix (i.e., a kind of shallow drinking cup) painted by the ceramic painter Pheidippos sometime around 510 BCE or thereabouts that was discovered at Vulci in Etruria and is now held in the British Museum in London. Side B of the kylix depicts four young men participating in athletics.
The two athletes on the right have the idealized bodies that we normally see in Greek art, but the two athletes on the left do not. The athlete on the far left is unusually tall and lanky and he is hunched over in order to still fit on the side of the cup. Meanwhile, the athlete on the center left is obese, with a large, drooping belly and gynecomastia.
ABOVE: Photograph from the British Museum website of Side B of an Attic red-figure kylix painted by Pheidippos dating to c. 510 BCE, discovered at Vulci, depicting four athletes, including one who is obese and one who is tall and lanky
Depictions of satyrs in Classical Attic vase paintings also tend to show them with less-than-perfect bodies. For instance, an Attic red-figure psykter (i.e., wine cooling vessel) dating to between c. 500 and c. 490 BCE depicts a relatively lean-bodied, drunken, balding, snub-nosed satyr with hair covering his torso balancing a kantharos (i.e., a kind of deep drinking cup with large handles) on the head of his long, thin erect penis.
ABOVE: Detail from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic red-figure psykter dating to between c. 500 and c. 490 BCE, depicting a drunken, balding, snub-nosed satyr with a relatively lean body and a hairy chest
Emergence of new trends in Greek art, starting in the fourth century BCE
One final reason why we know that Greek sculptures of buff naked men are idealized is because, in the fourth century BCE, Greek artistic trends actually started to change and some sculptors started to create life-sized sculptures of people other than buff nude young men and fully clothed young women. One of the earliest signs of the changing artistic milieu was the emergence of the first full-sized nude female sculptures.
The first Greek sculptor to create a full-sized statue of a nude woman is said to have been the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles (lived c. 400 – c. 340 BCE). In around the 350s BCE or thereabouts, he carved a life-sized statue that became known as the Aphrodite of Knidos, which depicted the Greek goddess Aphrodite standing completely naked, with her right hand lowered to cover her pubic region. The model for the sculpture is said to have been the famous hetaira Phryne of Thespiai (lived c. 371 – probably after 315 BCE).
Praxiteles’s original Aphrodite of Knidos has not survived to the present day, but it became wildly famous. The later Hellenistic Greeks and Romans produced hundreds of marble sculptures based on it. Many of these later marble sculptures have survived. Some of them follow Praxiteles’s original statue more closely, while others deviate from it greatly.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite based closely on Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Knidos, now in the collection of the National Museum of Rome
“Imperfect” bodies in late classical and Hellenistic art
In the latter half of the fourth century BCE, artistic representations of people with less-than-perfect bodies according to traditional elite standards began to become somewhat more common. For instance, a terra-cotta figurine from the Greek city-state of Thebes dating to between c. 350 and c. 320 BCE that is now held in the Louvre Museum in Paris depicts an elderly obese woman with a large belly with rolls of fat and large, drooping breasts.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a terra-cotta figurine from the Greek city-state of Thebes dating to between c. 350 and c. 320 BCE, depicting an elderly obese woman, now held in the Louvre Museum in Paris
During the Hellenistic Era (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE), Greek sculptors became interested in creating life-sized, realistic depictions of people with bodies that they considered “imperfect” or even “ugly.” They became especially interested in depicting elderly people.
For instance, sometime in around the late third century BCE, a Greek sculptor created a statue of a withered old fisherman. The original statue has not survived, but several later Roman statues based on it have, including one that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
ABOVE: Photograph from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website of a Roman marble statue depicting an old fisherman, dating to the first or second century CE, based on an earlier Hellenistic Greek sculpture dating to the late third century BCE
Around this same time, Hellenistic sculptors became fascinated with making statues of withered old prostitutes. For instance, sometime in around the late third or early second century BCE, a Greek sculptor created a sculpture depicting a drunk, withered old woman sitting on the ground, clutching a large jug of wine. Scholars believe that the woman is probably supposed to be a prostitute, based on her clothing. This statue was probably originally meant as a votive offering to Dionysos, the Greek god associated with wine and drunkenness, and probably decorated one of his temples or sanctuaries.
The original statue has not survived, but two later Roman statues based on it have. The older and better sculpture dates to the first century CE and is held in the Glyptothek in Munich. The other sculpture dates to the second century CE and is held in the Musei Capitolini in Rome.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue depicting a drunk old prostitute clutching a jug of wine, dating to the first century CE, based on an earlier Hellenistic Greek sculpture dating to the late third or early second century BCE
Sometime around the same time, another Greek sculptor created a statue depicting a withered old woman wearing a crown of ivy on her head and carrying a basket of fruits.
As with the previous statue I mentioned, scholars believe that the woman is most likely supposed to be a prostitute, based on her clothing. The crown of ivy that the woman is wearing strongly suggests that she is supposed to be on her way to a festival in honor of Dionysos. The fruits in her basket are most likely supposed to be offerings for the god.
As it happens, the statue itself was probably originally meant as a votive offering for Dionysos and probably originally decorated one of his temples or sanctuaries. The original statue has not survived, but a Roman statue based on it dating to between c. 14 and c. 68 BCE was discovered on the Capitoline Hill in 1907 and is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
ABOVE: Photograph from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website of a Roman marble statue depicting an old prostitute carrying a basket while heading to a festival of Dionysos, dating to between c. 14 and c. 68 CE, based on an earlier Hellenistic Greek sculpture dating to the second century BCE
Also interestingly, around this same time, Greek sculptors began making statues that blur the lines between male and female. As I discuss in this article I wrote back in August 2020, Hermaphroditos is a figure from Greek mythology who is usually represented in art with a penis, but a mostly feminine body.
The earliest full-sized fully nude statues of Hermaphroditos date to the third century BCE. This includes one statue of Hermaphroditos from the city of Pergamon in Asia Minor that is now held in the İstanbul Archaeological Museums and is believed to be a Hellenistic original, rather than a later Roman imitation.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Hellenistic Greek marble statue of Hermaphroditos from the city of Pergamon in Asia Minor, dating to the third century BCE
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a statue of Hermaphroditos on display in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in England, dating to between c. 70 and c. 100 CE
Hellenistic sculptors were also interested in depicting people with unusual physical conditions that traditional elite standards regarded as deformities. For instance, a very famous marble statue that was originally discovered in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome that is now held in the Art Collection of Villa Albani depicts a man with dwarfism, a potbelly, and a hunched back. The statue is traditionally assumed to represent the fabulist Aisopos, but this identification is questionable.
The statue is the only one of its kind and the version that survives is thought to date to the second century CE, but the style of the work clearly derives from Greek sculptures of the third century BCE and it may, in fact, be based on an otherwise unknown Greek sculpture of the third century BCE that has since been lost.
In any case, the fact that people who are not physically “perfect” appear so frequently in Hellenistic art suggests that these people existed in the Hellenistic world. They probably didn’t just appear all of a sudden out of nowhere, so we can probably safely assume that they also existed during the earlier Archaic and Classical Periods.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman statue dating to the second century CE depicting a man with dwarfism, a potbelly, and a hunched back, traditionally assumed to be the fabulist Aisopos, now held in the Art Collection of Villa Albani in Rome
A word about the movie 300
The misconception that ancient Greek men were all extraordinarily buff seems to also be fueled to a certain extent by the movie 300, which many people do not seem to realize is almost entirely a work of modern fantasy that has very little basis in historical fact of any kind. I’ve written a whole article debunking a few of the major historical inaccuracies in the film and I don’t feel I need to go into too much detail here explaining why you should not get your history from Hollywood, but I’ll make a brief note nonetheless.
In the film, all the Spartans are portrayed as extremely buff, hyper-masculine men who go into battle and fight almost completely naked without armor so that we can all see their bare, rippling muscles and yet somehow they rarely seem to get injured. This is partly because buff men fighting almost completely naked are more visually appealing than men fighting while covered from head to toe in armor.
It is also, however, partly because 300 has a not-so-subtly coded fascist message. You’ll notice that every single character in the film who is not a specimen of physical perfection is portrayed as base, cowardly, and traitorous. That’s no accident; it’s part of the deliberate messaging of the film. (You’ll also notice that every single character in the film who is supposed to be “good” is white and every single person of color who appears in the film is portrayed as evil and monstrous; that’s part of the deliberate messaging of the film also.)
ABOVE: Image of a totally buff, near-naked Leonidas from the film 300
Why this misconception is actually harmful
Unfortunately, the popular misconception that ancient Greek men were all incredibly buff and hyper-masculine is actually, to some degree, dangerous, because it plays directly into a lot of common themes in contemporary fascist propaganda.
Contemporary fascists like to recruit people into their ideology by contrasting extremely idealized, inaccurate portrayals of ancient Greece and Rome as glorious societies in which all men were extremely buff and hyper-masculine with portrayals of the contemporary “west” as a broken, degenerate society that tolerates weakness, effeminacy, and homosexuality in men.
In 2017, the Neo-Nazi organization Identity Evropa campaigned heavily on American college and university campuses using posters with photos of Classical, Renaissance, and Neoclassical statues depicting buff nude men, including the Apollo Belvedere and Michelangelo’s Statue of David. These posters were clearly meant to imply that white men used to all be strong and masculine and have since fallen into degeneracy and weakness.
Fascists then use this false narrative that “the west” has declined from ancient glory to contemporary degeneracy and weakness to convince people that we need to “return” to the imaginary perfect time in the ancient past when all men were supposedly dominant, masculine, and heterosexual, all women were supposedly weak and totally submissive to male authority, and everyone was supposedly white.
The way that fascists want to do this is by violently purging society of all people who do not meet their standards, including all people whom they do not consider “white,” all people whom they regard as physically and/or mentally disabled, gay men, transgender women, and leftists.
It’s ok for someone to be a buff man, it’s ok for someone to want personally to be a buff man, and it’s ok for someone to admire statues of buff men—but, if you start thinking that all men should be buff, then you’re starting to verge into fascist territory.
ABOVE: Photograph of white supremacist posters placed by the Neo-Nazi organization Identity Evropa on a college campus in 2017
Spencer, you write…
“…what upper-class Greek people thought of as physically ideal for a person…”
Are you suggesting here lower-class Greek people did not have the same ideals? That would be an unwarranted assumption!
When I say “upper-class Greek people,” I’m deliberately avoiding making any kind of statement about what non-elite Greek people thought. The fact is, we don’t really know what lower-class Greek people thought about ideal standards of the human body because, generally speaking, they were not the ones commissioning sculptors to create statues representing their ideal standards.
These “idealized” Greek statues served a public function and were displayed publically for everyone.
Can’t make the argument these were ideals of the elites. That smacks of “elitism”!
Well, many ancient Greek statues actually weren’t “displayed publicly for everyone,” since many of them were displayed in rich people’s private homes. In any case, as I said in my previous comment, I didn’t say that elite people were the only ones who regarded these statues as representing perfect bodies; I just said that we don’t really know much about what non-elite people thought on the subject.
Also, you seem confused by the definition of “elitism.” Elitism is not saying that members of the upper-class have distinct values; elitism is saying that members of the upper-class have inherently better values than everyone else.
You are being disingenous!
There was no “Greek elite” culture separate from the “poor Greek” culture! With shared “ideals”, religion and destiny.
The transition from “ideal” to “real” depictions has nothing to do with class differences. But rather, evolution in Greek Thought and technical skills and aesthetics.
Look, I literally took an entire class at my university in fall 2020 that was all about the Athenian aristocracy. There was, in fact, a distinct elite social class in classical Greece.
In any case, you seem comically desperate to read more into my words than I’ve actually said. I literally don’t say anything in my article about whether the lower classes disagreed with upper-class aesthetic opinions. The only reason why I specify that these were upper-class opinions in the first place is because we don’t know much about what lower-class people thought of them, because wealthy people were generally the ones who paid sculptors to create statues for them.
If you seriously can’t even handle the idea that there were distinct socioeconomic classes in ancient Greek society, I don’t know what to tell you.
Spencer, if you haven’t already read them, the books of Jo Walton’s “Just City” trilogy are a wonderful fictional examination of what happens if one attempts to create Plato’s Republic. In Walton’s universe the gods exist but can also learn and evolve. Humans from different times and places pray to Athena/wish in their hearts to live in the Republic. She places them all on the isle of Santorini (before the earthquake) to see if they can make the experiment work. The full panoply of human experience ensues. It’s amazing–and a great rebuttal to the fascist interpretation of the past.
thanks for the tip! I’m always on the prowl for books.
You can read an excerpt from the first book here. I really liked this trilogy.
As a kid, I always though Socrates looked like Santa Claus even though I dont think I saw a statue like that. We were in Greece when I was abut 5 so who knows what I saw and remembered…or disremembered!
“…wealthy people were generally the ones who paid sculptors to create statues for them.”
You are arguing that the “ideal” Greek sculpture reflect the values of the Greek aristocracy.
So who paid for all the “not-so-ideal” Greek sculptures?
I am not denying there was an aristocratic class. I am denying identifying the “ideal” Greek sculpture with them! And not with the Greek culture generally.
You are once again projecting your own thoughts and values here! I am only trying to make you realize that. Because I am impressed with your scholarship. And wish you to come closer to the truth!
You’re not even listening to what I’m saying here, so I’m going to try to put what I’ve already said several times, both in my article above and in my comments, into as simple phrasing as possible, using numbered points:
1. Greek statues from the Archaic and Classical Periods are idealized.
2. In most cases, wealthy people commissioned these statues.
3. It is reasonable to assume that these statues reflect the standards that many wealthy Greek people at the time regarded as ideal.
4. Other Greek people who were not wealthy may have also believed that these standards were ideal, but they were generally not the ones paying for statues, so we don’t know as much about what they considered ideal.
And, yes, wealthy people paid for the non-idealized statues of the Hellenistic Era too. That doesn’t contradict my point.
There was no cultural difference between “the haves” and “the have nots”!
Plato was an aristocrat. Socrates his teacher was a stone masson.
Once again you are projecting your own notions of how people are. Further, you can’t even recognize it!
“…closer to the truth” is you’re not listening!
I think you might be being a bit unfair on 300 (at least the book, if not the film). The narrator is Dillios the Spartan, and it is set just before the Battle of Plataea, so it has to be understood as a pre-battle pep talk. In this case it seems to me to make perfect sense that the Spartans as portrayed as idealised men, in the same way that sculptures are, and similarly the negative portrayal of the Persians makes sense in that context. It’s now thirty years since I finished my Classics degree, but I remember a bit of a course I took by Professor Paul Cartledge called “The Greeks and Others” (I think), which discussed the way the Greeks saw foreigners, and I think 300 reflects that. However, undermining my argument, I cannot deny that the politics of the writer Frank Miller have been questioned, and he definitely seems to have a “thing” about buff, physically strong men, and you could also argue there’s a fascist element to his portrayal of Batman. But I do think 300 has to be seen as a Spartan fantasy.
I’ve heard the objection that 300 is supposed to be one Spartan character’s wild tale and that audiences are meant to be skeptical of it. There are, however, several problems with this objection.
One problem is that the story contains many elements that appeal specifically to modern prejudices, rather than ancient ones. Most notably, the portrayal of the Spartans as distinctively white and the Achaemenid forces as distinctively not white is purely an invention of 300 that is not based on any ancient sources whatsoever and that is clearly meant to appeal to modern white supremacists. There are also many inaccuracies in the portrayal of the Spartan government that are clearly meant to glorify autocratic authoritarianism and demonize all other forms of government in a way that is distinctly modern and fascist.
The other problem with this objection is that neither the comic book nor the film does anything significant to undercut the audience’s trust in Dilios’s narrative. Instead, if anything, they actively encourage the audience to trust what he says.
Saying that ripped muscles are merely a result of low body fat is pretty demonstrably wrong, considering that I’m as skinny as a twig with hardly an ounce of body fat on me and I, almost by definition of being skinny, don’t look anything like the Doryphoros. In any case, as I’ve already pointed out, some ancient Greek people were, in fact, overweight.
As far as I’m aware, no one has conducted any investigations on ancient Greek skeletons to determine whether they were all buff, possibly because those who think the ancient Greeks were all buff simply take it for granted and those who don’t think they were all buff don’t think that the proposition that they were is worth investigating.