The Shocking Truth about Ancient Greek Makeup

There are tons of articles, blog posts, and YouTube videos online about ancient Greek makeup. Unfortunately, I have found that all of them are of utterly abysmal quality. None of the articles that I could find contained any citations to specific passages in ancient sources and all of them contained wildly egregious errors of fact and misconceptions seemingly derived from earlier online sources that, in turn, did not cite any ancient sources.

I have decided to remedy this situation by writing my own article about ancient Greek makeup. Everything I am about to say in this article will be concretely supported by specific passages from actual ancient Greek texts. If you’ve ever wanted to make yourself look like an ancient Greek beauty, or simply wondered what Greek women would look like in movies if they were portrayed historically accurately, then this is exactly the article for you!

Ancient Greek aristocratic men’s attitudes towards makeup

Unfortunately, as I have often lamented, nearly all the written sources that have survived from ancient Greece were written by men, nearly all of whom were at least moderately well-to-do. This means that nearly all our sources display attitudes and prejudices that were common among elite men that were not necessarily shared by all members of the Greek population.

There were a few female ancient Greek authors, such as the lyric poet Sappho of Eresos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE), whom I recently wrote about in this article from a couple weeks ago, and the historian Pamphile of Epidauros (lived c. mid first century CE), whom I wrote about in this article from July 2021. Unfortunately, very little written by female authors has survived to the present day.

Ancient Greek male authors’ attitudes towards makeup were, to put it mildly, extremely negative. They consistently portray wearing makeup as a form of dishonest trickery that people (generally women) use to make themselves appear more beautiful than they really are. Greek authors also routinely associate makeup closely with infidelity and prostitution. I literally could not find a single ancient Greek source that has anything good to say about makeup whatsoever.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to between c. 490 BCE, discovered in an Etruscan tomb at Vulci, depicting a prostitute retying her himation while her male client watches

Probably the most famous source about ancient Athenian aristocratic men’s attitude towards makeup is the Socratic dialogue Gorgias, written by the Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE), who was an ultrawealthy aristocrat. In the dialogue, Plato portrays his teacher Socrates as condemning rhetoric as a form of dishonest pretense. In making this condemnation, Socrates makes comparisons between rhetoric and other things that he regards as dishonest. In section 465b, he condemns cosmetics as a dishonest impersonation of physical fitness. He says:

“τῇ δὲ γυμναστικῇ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον τοῦτον ἡ κομμωτική, κακοῦργός τε καὶ ἀπατηλὴ καὶ ἀγεννὴς καὶ ἀνελεύθερος, σχήμασιν καὶ χρώμασιν καὶ λειότητι καὶ ἐσθῆσιν ἀπατῶσα, ὥστε ποιεῖν ἀλλότριον κάλλος ἐφελκομένους τοῦ οἰκείου τοῦ διὰ τῆς γυμναστικῆς ἀμελεῖν.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And, in the same manner, cosmetics is [a dishonest impersonation] to gymnastic exercise; it is villainous, deceptive, low-born, and slavish. By forms and colors and smoothness and clothing, it deceives men so as to make them, in striving for a foreign beauty, neglect the native kind that comes through gymnastic exercise.”

This passage, although it condemns makeup, interestingly seems to suggest that at least some ancient Athenian men might have worn it in some situations. Plato references people substituting makeup for exercising at the gymnasion. Only men were allowed to exercise in Greek gymnasia, however, so Plato can only be talking about men here.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portrait of the ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates, who, if Plato’s portrayal of him in the Gorgias is true to character, was definitely not a fan of makeup

Another very famous source about aristocratic Athenian men’s attitude towards makeup is the Oikonomikos, a Socratic dialogue about household management written by the Athenian aristocrat Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BCE). In the dialogue, Socrates describes a conversation he had with an extremely wealthy aristocratic man named Ischomachos, who is well known for being extraordinarily skilled at managing his estate.

In the Oikonomikos 10.2–9, Ischomachos tells Socrates about a time when he was very displeased to catch his much younger wife (who is only a teenaged girl, as most Greek women were when they were first forced to marry) wearing makeup. Ischomachos describes to Socrates how he reprimanded his wife for wearing makeup and explained to her why she should never wear makeup again, because he considers it a dishonest form of trickery. Here is the conversation between Ischomachos and his wife, as it is rendered in the translation on the website Perseus:

“Well, one day, Socrates, I noticed that her face was made up: she had rubbed in white lead [i.e., ψιμύθιον] in order to look even whiter than she is, and alkanet juice [i.e., ἔγχουσα] to heighten the rosy colour of her cheeks; and she was wearing boots with thick soles to increase her height. So I said to her, ‘Tell me, my dear, how should I appear more worthy of your love as a partner in our goods, by disclosing to you our belongings just as they are, without boasting of imaginary possessions or concealing any part of what we have, or by trying to trick you with an exaggerated account, showing you bad money and gilt necklaces and describing clothes that will fade as real purple?’”

“‘Hush!’ she broke in immediately, ‘pray don’t be like that—I could not love you with all my heart if you were like that!’”

“‘Then, are we not joined together by another bond of union, dear, to be partners in our bodies?’”

“‘The world says so, at any rate.’”

“‘How then should I seem more worthy of your love in this partnership of the body—by striving to have my body hale and strong when I present it to you, and so literally to be of a good countenance in your sight, or by smearing my cheeks with red lead and painting myself under the eyes with rouge before I show myself to you and clasp you in my arms, cheating you and offering to your eyes and hands red lead instead of my real flesh?’”

“‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I would sooner touch you than red lead, would sooner see your own colour than rouge, would sooner see your eyes bright than smeared with grease.’”

“‘Then please assume, my dear, that I do not prefer white paint and dye of alkanet to your real colour; but just as the gods have made horses to delight in horses, cattle in cattle, sheep in sheep, so human beings find the human body undisguised most delightful. Tricks like these may serve to gull outsiders, but people who live together are bound to be found out, if they try to deceive one another. For they are found out while they are dressing in the morning; they perspire and are lost; a tear convicts them; the bath reveals them as they are!’”

At least some ancient Greek men seem to have even believed that, if a married woman wore makeup at an unexpected time, then it was a sign that she was being unfaithful to her husband, since they assumed that she must be wearing the makeup in order to impress her secret paramour.

The Athenian orator Lysias (lived c. 445 – c. 380 BCE) wrote a famous forensic speech titled On the Murder of Eratosthenes for a defendant named Euphiletos to deliver at his trial for the murder of a man named Eratosthenes. Euphiletos’s defense in the speech is that he did kill Eratosthenes, but the killing was legally justified because Eratosthenes was having sex with Euphiletos’s wife.

In the speech, Euphiletos describes the signs that led him to conclude that his wife was having an affair. One of the clues he mentions in section fourteen of the speech is that he saw his wife wearing makeup, even though her brother had recently died. The Greek text reads as follows:

“ἔδοξε δέ μοι, ὦ ἄνδρες, τὸ πρόσωπον ἐψιμυθιῶσθαι, τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τεθνεῶτος οὔπω τριάκονθ᾽ ἡμέρας: ὅμως δ᾽ οὐδ᾽ οὕτως οὐδὲν εἰπὼν περὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἐξελθὼν ᾠχόμην ἔξω σιωπῇ.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And it occurred to me, oh men, that she had powered her face with white lead, even though it was not yet thirty days since her brother had died. Nonetheless, I did not say anything whatsoever concerning the matter, but left the house in silence.”

So, again, her simply wearing makeup apparently seemed like evidence to him that she was having an affair. This should give you some idea of just how deeply distrustful ancient aristocratic Greek men were of makeup.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue in the Vatican Museums dating to the third century CE, depicting a Greek orator, sometimes said to represent Lysias

Some general observations about ancient Greek makeup

The majority of women in ancient Greece probably either never wore makeup at all or only wore it on special occasions. For one thing, makeup ingredients were generally rather expensive. Enslaved women and girls made up at least a third of the total female population in most Greek poleis. Most enslaved women probably never wore makeup, except in cases where the men who owned them provided them with makeup because they specifically wanted them to look especially beautiful for some reason or another. Poor free women probably could not afford to wear makeup either.

Most free women probably could afford to wear makeup occasionally, but they probably couldn’t afford to wear it every day. Moreover, many free women who could afford to wear makeup probably either chose not to wear it because of the intensely negative male attitudes towards it or were forbidden from wearing it by their husbands. As a result, the majority of free women probably either never wore makeup or only wore it on special occasions when they wanted to look especially beautiful for some reason or another.

There are two distinct groups of women who probably wore makeup on a regular basis. The first group is prostitutes, for whom makeup was not an unnecessary luxury, but rather an essential tool of the trade that they needed in order to attract customers. The second group is “respectable” elite women who could afford makeup, were not forbidden from wearing it by their male guardians, and chose to wear it.

All our surviving evidence strongly suggests that most women who did wear makeup tried to make it look as natural as possible and make it look like they weren’t wearing any makeup. This especially seems to be implied by the fact that male authors so consistently regard makeup as a form of deception; if Greek women were obviously wearing makeup, then we would expect Greek men to condemn it as gaudy and immodest, rather than deceptive.

In many, if not most, cases, ancient Greek women who wore makeup also seem to have worn relatively little makeup compared to many modern women. “Respectable” women seem to have, at least in most cases, only worn white lead face powder and blush. Even prostitutes seem to have generally only worn white lead face powder, blush, and eye makeup.

Use of white lead to make faces appear paler

The most common makeup used by ancient Greek women by far seems to have been lead carbonate, a lead compound also known by the common name “white lead,” which is usually in the form of a white powder and is mentioned in the Greek sources under the name ψιμύθιον (psimýthion). Xenophon describes Ischomachos’s wife as wearing white lead and Lysias describes Euphiletos’s wife as wearing it as well. Indeed, as we shall see, anytime a Greek source mentions any kind of makeup, it nearly always mentions white lead in particular.

As I discuss in this article I wrote back in September 2020 about why it is not accurate to describe ancient Greece and Rome as “white civilizations,” the ancient Greeks generally associated pale skin with femininity and darker skin with masculinity. The reason for this is because Greek women were generally expected to remain indoors and remain pale, while Greek men were generally expected to work outside in the sun and become tanned. In ancient Greek art, women are usually depicted as very pale, while men are usually portrayed as darker-complexioned.

The reason why ancient Greek women sometimes powdered their faces with white lead, then, is because they wanted to make themselves look paler and therefore more feminine.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of one of the “Pitsa panels,” an ancient Greek panel painting discovered in a cave near the city of Corinth dating to the sixth century BCE depicting an animal sacrifice. Notice that all the women are depicted with paler skin than the boys.

At least some ancient Greek women, especially in later periods of Greek history, were almost certainly aware of the fact that lead carbonate is highly toxic. As I discuss in this article I wrote in August 2019, contrary to popular belief, many people in ancient Greece and Rome were actually well aware that lead is poisonous. In fact, many surviving ancient Greek and Roman sources explicitly state that lead is poisonous and accurately describe the signs and symptoms of lead poisoning in great detail.

The earliest surviving description of lead poisoning comes from a poem included in the Alexipharmaka, written by the ancient Greek poet and physician Nikandros of Kolophon, who lived in around the second century BCE. In this poem, Nikandros gives a detailed and vivid description of the effects of poisoning from white lead, the exact same compound of lead that some Greek women used to powder their faces. Nikandros writes, as translated in prose by A. S. F. Gow and A. F. Scholfield:

“In second place consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh color is like milk which foams all over when you milk it rich in the springtime into the deep pails. Over the victim’s jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side, and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this affliction is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses, nor can he stir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overwhelming fatigue.”

Despite the existence of this knowledge in antiquity, many Greek women certainly did use lead carbonate to powder their faces white—either because they did not know the harmful effects or because they knew the harmful effects, but considered it more important to look as pale as possible. Even today, many people will do things that are very hazardous to their health in order to fit society’s beauty standards.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a sample of lead carbonate, commonly known as “white lead,” which ancient Greek women often used to make their faces appear paler

Use of alkanet dye to make the cheeks appear rosier

Another extremely common makeup used in ancient Greece appears to have been ἔγχουσα (énchousa), a kind of red dye extracted from the roots of the plant Alkanna tinctoria, or dyer’s alkanet. Women used this dye to paint their cheeks to make them appear rosier.

Xenophon mentions the use of alkanet dye in the passage from the Oikonomikos that I have already quoted above. The ancient Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) also references the use of alkanet dye as a rouge in his comedy Lysistrata, which was first performed in Athens in the year 411 BCE. Two women characters named Kalonike and Lysistrata have the following conversation at the very beginning of the play, in lines 42–48:

Καλονίκη: “τί δ᾽ ἂν γυναῖκες φρόνιμον ἐργασαίατο
ἢ λαμπρόν, αἳ καθήμεθ᾽ ἐξηνθισμέναι,
κροκωτοφοροῦσαι καὶ κεκαλλωπισμέναι
καὶ Κιμμερίκ᾽ ὀρθοστάδια καὶ περιβαρίδας;”

Λυσιστράτη: “ταῦτ᾽ αὐτὰ γάρ τοι κἄσθ᾽ ἃ σώσειν προσδοκῶ,
τὰ κροκωτίδια καὶ τὰ μύρα χαἰ περιβαρίδες
χἤγχουσα καὶ τὰ διαφανῆ χιτώνια.”

This means, in my own translation:

Kalonike: “And what wise or shining thing could women accomplish?
We sit around like flowers,
wearing saffron robes and putting on makeup,
and Kimmerian dresses and fancy shoes.”

Lysistrata: “These very things are, in fact, the things that I expect to save us:
the saffron dresses, the perfumes, the fancy shoes
the alkanet-dye rouge and the see-through dresses.”

Unlike white lead, alkanet dye is not generally considered to be poisonous when it is applied to the skin, although ingesting it is probably not a good idea.

ABOVE: Detail of a Lucanian fresco from a Greek tomb at Paestum in southern Italy dating to sometime around 340 BCE or thereabouts, depicting a deceased woman going to the Underworld, possibly wearing rouge, now on display in the Paestum Archaeological Museum

Use of eyeliner

Eyeliner and other kinds of eye makeup also existed in ancient Greece, but they seem to have been less commonly used and, in the extant sources, they are much more closely associated with prostitutes than other kinds of makeup.

The Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 CE) retells a story in his Life of Alkibiades 39.2 that the notorious rogue Athenian general Alkibiades (lived c. 450 – 404 BCE) was sleeping with a prostitute named Timandra shortly before his death and he had bizarre dream in which in which he was wearing her clothes and she was decorating his face with her makeup. The passage reads in Greek as follows:

“δὲ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους εἶδε τοιαύτην: ἐδόκει περικεῖσθαι μὲν αὐτὸς τὴν ἐσθῆτα τῆς ἑταίρας, ἐκείνην δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις ἔχουσαν αὐτοῦ κοσμεῖν τὸ πρόσωπον ὥσπερ γυναικὸς ὑπογράφουσαν καὶ ψιμυθιοῦσαν.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And, in his sleep, he saw the following: He thought that he was wearing the clothing of the hetaira, and she had his head in her arms while she put makeup on his face just like that of a woman, drawing eyeliner and powdering his face with white lead.”

The Greek word that I have translated as “drawing eyeliner” is “ὑπογράφουσαν,” which literally means “drawing under.” Nonetheless, in this case, it most likely refers to drawing around the eyes, as with eyeliner or kohl.

Allison Glazebrook argues in her paper “Cosmetics and Sôphrosunê: Ischomachos’ Wife in Xenophon’s Oikonomikos,” published in spring 2009 in the journal The Classical World, Vol. 102, No. 3, pp. 233-248, which you can read on JSTOR if you have access, that only prostitutes wore eye makeup. She writes:

“An emphasis on the eyes is only appropriate for prostitutes and other ‘disreputable’ women, given Greek ideas about the gaze as connected to sexuality and hence dangerous in its erotic power. The bride during the anakalyptêria (“the unveiling”), for example, looked into her husband’s eyes to indicate her acceptance of her husband as her sexual partner. Sôphrones (“chaste”) women were thus careful to keep their gaze lowered in the presence of men to demonstrate their aidôs (“modesty”).”

“Cosmetics around the eyes would easily draw attention to this part of the face and shatter the deportment of female modesty. Similar to Ischomachos’s wife, the women in Lysistrata, Ecclesiazousai, and Lysias 1 do not appear to wear eye makeup.”

I don’t think we should take this as a hard-and-fast rule, but, certainly, the closer association of eye makeup with prostitution is apparent.

ABOVE: The Death of Alkibiades, painted in 1791 by the French Neoclassical painter Philippe Chéry

Euboulos’s mention of mulberry juice as rouge and eye makeup

In addition to the standard cosmetics I have already discussed, there are some lesser-known ancient Greek sources from the fourth century BCE that mention a few other kinds of cosmetics that seem to have been mainly associated with prostitutes.

Euboulos was an ancient Athenian comic playwright who flourished in the middle of the fourth century BCE. He wrote a comedy titled Women Selling Garlands, which has, unfortunately, not survived. The much later Greek writer Athenaios of Naukratis (lived c. late second century – c. early third century CE), however, quotes a speech from the play, in which a character denounces certain women for wearing makeup, in his Wise Men at Dinner 13.557f. The speech is included in modern collections of the fragments of Euboulos as fr. 97 (= fr. 98 Hunter). The Greek text of the speech reads as follows:

“μὰ Δί᾽ οὐχὶ περιπεπλασμέναι ψιμυθίοις
οὐδ᾽ ὥσπερ ὑμεῖς συκαμίνῳ τὰς γνάθους
κεχριμέναι. κἂν ἐξίητε τοῦ θέρους,
ἀπὸ τῶν μὲν ὀφθαλμῶν ὑδρορρόαι δύο
ῥέουσι μέλανος, ἐκ δὲ τῶν γνάθων ἱδρὼς
ἐπὶ τὸν τράχηλον ἄλοκα μιλτώδη ποιεῖ,
ἐπὶ τῷ προσώπῳ δ᾽ αἱ τρίχες φορούμεναι
εἴξασι πολιαῖς, ἀνάπλεῳ ψιμυθίου.”

This means, in my own translation:

“By Zeus! We are not plastered with white lead,
nor do we, like you, touch our cheeks with mulberry juice.
If you go out during the summer,
from your eyes, two streams
run dark, and, from your cheeks, sweat
on your throat makes a red furrow
and, on your face, the faint hairs
seem gray, since they are so caked with white lead.”

The idea that the “deception” of makeup is revealed when the makeup becomes wet and runs or washes off seem to have been an established trope among Greek writers, since it occurs in the passage from Xenophon’s Oikonomikos, as well as in this passage from Euboulos.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a red mulberry fruit in Libya

Alexis’s mention of use of soot to darken the eyebrows and holm-oak to redden the cheeks

The comic playwright Alexis of Thourioi (lived c. 375 – c. 275 BCE) wrote a comedy titled Isostasion, which has, unfortunately, not survived. Athenaios of Naukratis, however, has helpfully preserved a speech from the play, in which a character rants at length about the dishonest tricks prostitutes use to make themselves appear more beautiful, by quoting the full speech in his Wise Men at Dinner 13.568b–c. The speech is included in modern collections of the fragments of Alexis as fr. 98 (= fr. 103 Arnott).

The speech is not mainly focused on makeup, but it does list three kinds of makeup that Greek prostitutes would wear to make themselves appear beautiful in lines 16–18:

“τὰς ὀφρῦς πυρρὰς ἔχει τις; ζωγραφοῦσιν ἀσβόλῳ.
συμβέβηκ᾽ εἶναι μέλαιναν; κατέπλασε ψιμυθίῳ.
λευκόχρως λίαν τίς ἐστιν; παιδέρωτ᾽ ἐντρίβεται.”

This means, in my own translation:

“Does she have fiery eyebrows? They paint them with soot.
Does it happen that she is dark-complexioned? She plasters it in white lead.
Is she exceedingly pale? She rubs herself with holm-oak.”

This speech, of course, mentions the white lead that was evidently commonly used to make women’s faces appear paler. It also, however, demonstrates that some prostitutes used soot or charcoal to darken their eyebrows and holm-oak to redden their cheeks.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of charcoal, which some ancient Greek prostitutes apparently used to darken their eyebrows

Lipstick: a noticeable absence from the ancient Greek cosmetic repertoire

As we have seen, it was fairly common for “respectable” Greek women to wear white lead face powder and blush made from alkanet dye. Eye makeup also existed, but it seems to have been mostly or exclusively worn by prostitutes. Lip makeup, however, seems to have been conspicuously absent from the ancient Greek cosmetic repertoire, since, for all my searching, I cannot find any ancient Greek source that makes any unambiguous mention of lip makeup in any form.

Sadly, this has not stopped clickbait articles on the internet from making all kinds of shocking and baseless claims about supposed ancient Greek lipstick, including the claim that prostitutes could be punished for appearing in public without lipstick because it supposedly meant that they were falsely posing as “respectable” women and the claim that Greek lipstick was made from sheep sweat and crocodile dung.

Both of the claims I have just mentioned seem to have been popularized on the internet through a shockingly poorly researched paper apparently written by a law student named Sarah Schaffer for a course on contemporary food and drug law at Harvard University on 19 May 2006 titled “Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power.”

This paper is, for some reason, posted on a Harvard University dot edu webpage, giving it a false semblance of credibility, despite the fact that Schaffer clearly knew nothing whatsoever about ancient Greek history at the time she wrote this paper. For one thing, she bizarrely seems to think that the Bronze Age Minoan civilization (lasted c. 3500 – c. 1100 BCE) existed concurrently with the classical Greek civilization (generally dated to after c. 800 BCE). She also speaks at one point of a “Greek empire,” without apparently realizing that Classical Greece was not a unified “empire,” but rather a conglomeration of independent city-states that often warred with each other.

The paper’s account of supposed ancient Greek lipstick also does not cite a single ancient primary source, but rather relies entirely on modern secondary sources, mostly ones written for popular audiences by non-historians. Nonetheless, the paper claims:

“Early in the Greek empire, most women eschewed all facial makeup, although they did rely on elaborate hair dyes and fake hair. Lip paint became largely the domain of prostitutes, whose red lip color involved both such standard materials as red dye and wine and such extraordinary ingredients as sheep sweat, human saliva, and crocodile excrement.”

“It was in this context of lipstick signaling prostitution that the first known formal regulation of lipstick arose. In what would become a prominent pattern in lipstick regulation, this first lipstick law focused on lipstick’s potential deception of men and undermining of class divides rather than on its safety for women. Under Greek law, prostitutes who appeared in public either at the wrong hours or without their designated lip paint and other makeup could be punished for improperly posing as ladies.”

Unfortunately, because the paper has been posted online on a Harvard dot edu webpage, many people seem to erroneously assume that it is an authoritative and reliable source. Consequently, it is cited in the Wikipedia article about lipstick and in numerous other articles across the internet, including this article on the website Little Things written by a writer named Jess Butler titled “10 Truly Bizarre Things Women Of The Past Would Use To Get Luscious Lips.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a woman wearing lipstick, which is notably not clearly mentioned in any surviving ancient Greek source

Schaffer, however, is clearly not the ultimate source of these claims about ancient Greek lipstick. Instead, she cites the book Lipstick: A Celebration of the World’s Favorite Cosmetic, written in a colloquial style for non-academic audiences by Jessica Pallingston—an author who, as far as I can tell, has no academic or historical credentials—and published in 1999 by St. Martin’s Press, a non-academic publisher. The book has a short paragraph about ancient Greek lipstick on pages 7–8, which does not cite any sources, ancient or modern. Nonetheless, Pallingston confidently asserts:

“The good Greek housewife was like an ancient version of June Cleaver or Donna Reed. Her liprouge was elegant and tasteful, made from red dyes and strong wines. Some cosmetic ingredients included sheep sweat, human saliva, and crocodile excrement—but even sweat and excrement were to be used with restrained elegance and taste.”

“The real pleasure of gaudy and advanced lip coloring was reserved for another sector of society: prostitutes. Ancient Greece may not have been a Golden Age of lipstick, but it was the Golden Age of prostitution. We may have supermodels today, but this was an age of superprostitutes. These girls had all the fun—sloshing on white lead powder, caking on colors, and having more fun with lipstick than even Boy George.”

“However, the bad babes of antiquity did have some strict and intricate rules of order—there are cases of some prostitutes appearing publicly at the wrong time, minus their designated slut gear or trampy face, then punished for improperly posing as ladies, perhaps the first known incidents of unlawful drag in reverse.”

The claim that Greek lipstick was made from crocodile dung seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the fact that ancient women are, in fact, recorded to have used crocodile dung for cosmetic purposes, but they used it as a cosmetic skin-lightener, not as lipstick. (Ancient sources that specifically mention the use of crocodile dung as a skin lightener include Horace’s Epode 12.11, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria 3.267–272, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History 28.108, Clement of Alexandria’s Paidagogos 3.2.7.3, and Galenos of Pergamon’s On the Nature and Powers of Simple Medications 10.29.)

Furthermore, all the sources that mention use of crocodile dung for cosmetic purposes come from the time of the Roman Empire—not from Archaic, Classical, or Hellenistic Greece. The earliest sources to mention it are Horace and Ovid, both of whom were Roman authors who wrote in Latin in the late first century BCE. This means that we have no evidence indicate that Greek women were already using crocodile dung as a skin lightener during the earlier periods when Greek culture is traditionally said to have been at its apogee.

The claim that prostitutes could be punished if they appeared in public without lipstick appears to be wholly made up as far as I can tell.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Nile crocodile

Sexy unibrows?

Many sources online claim that ancient Greek women considered unibrows ideal and therefore often filled in the space between their eyebrows with charcoal to make it look as though they had a unibrow. Once again, however, I cannot find any ancient source that supports this claim.

If you check the sources that the articles online actually cite, you’ll find that they lead nowhere. For instance, here is an article on Medium written by someone named Travis Boatright that declares in the subheading “Every ancient-era movie you’ve seen is wrong.” The article claims:

“While only prostitutes were expected to go all out with their makeup, women of all classes were known to sport unibrows. Those who weren’t ‘lucky’ enough to be born with a prominent unibrow would take the ‘fake it ’til you make it’ approach and paint one on to their nasal bridge using soot and other powders. In fact, some women were so desperate to achieve the unibrow look that they would create a false one by sticking dyed goat’s hair to their faces with tree resin!”

The article never cites any ancient source that explicitly claims unibrows were ideal, but the word “sticking” in this paragraph links to a preview of the book Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History by Victoria Sherrow. That book, however, only claims that women created false eyebrows by sticking dyed goat’s hair to their faces, without mentioning anything about unibrows specifically. (I also must emphasize that the book does not cite any ancient sources to support its claim about fake eyebrows made of goat’s hair either, so it too should be viewed with skepticism.)

A couple different paintings of ancient women with unibrows are often cited to support the claim that the ancient Greeks considered unibrows attractive—but none of these paintings actually depict Greek women from the Archaic, Classical, or Hellenistic Periods.

The most widely cited artwork to support the claim that the ancient Greeks considered unibrows ideal is a famous wall painting from the Roman city of Pompeii, dating to between c. 50 and 79 CE, depicting the Roman baker Terentius Neo and his wife, whose name is unknown. In the painting, Terentius Neo’s wife has a unibrow.

Terentius Neo’s wife, however, was a first-century CE Roman woman who lived in Pompeii; she was not a Greek woman at all. Furthermore, the mere fact that she has a unibrow in the painting does not mean that unibrows were considered ideal or that they were particularly revered in any way. It just means that some Roman women had them.

ABOVE: Portrait from the Roman city of Pompeii dating to between c. 50 and 79 CE, depicting a baker named Terentius Neo with his wife, who has a unibrow and holds a wax writing tablet and a stylus

Another painting that is widely cited on the internet to support the claim that unibrows were considered fashionable in ancient Greece is a Fayum mummy portrait of a woman from Roman Egypt, probably dating to the second or third century CE.

We have no evidence, however, to suggest that the specific woman in this painting is Greek (although there were plenty of Greek Egyptian women in Egypt at the time). Furthermore, the portrait dates to the time of the Roman Empire—not to any of the earlier periods of Greek history. Finally, the woman in the painting does not even have a complete unibrow.

ABOVE: Fayum mummy portrait of a woman with a partial unibrow from Roman Egypt, probably dating to the second or third century CE

If you look at ancient Greek depictions of women, the vast majority of them do not show women with unibrows. Unibrows do show up occasionally, but they are very far from the norm. I mean, seriously, look at Greek vase paintings from the Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BCE). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman in a Classical Greek vase painting with a unibrow. (I’ve posted a few random photos of Greek vase paintings below to give you all some idea.)

This whole idea that unibrows were universally considered the norm and the ideal and that women who didn’t have them painted them on with charcoal is totally unsupported by any kind of ancient evidence. My best guess is that this claim about unibrows being considered ideal originates from a misunderstanding of the quote from Alexis where he mentions prostitutes using charcoal to darken their eyebrows, perhaps combined with awareness of the painting of Terentius Neo and his unibrowed wife.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic red-figure vase painting showing a young bride being prepared for her wedding (with no unibrows)

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to between c. 480 and c. 470 BCE, depicting Athena and Herakles (with no unibrows)

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a scene from an Attic red-figure amphora dating to between c. 460 and c. 450 BCE, depicting a woman playing a barbiton (with no unibrow)

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a silver kantharos dating to between c. 420 and c. 410 BCE depicting the goddess Aphrodite with her son Himeros (with no unibrows)