On Blondes

by Joanna Pitman

  In many ways they did. The men of Greece were bewitched by blonde hair. It was exquisite. It represented a piece of fantasy and wealth. Above all, it was sexy. Luminous and bright, it shimmered and glowed, producing, in a country of few natural blondes, a rare and exciting contrast to the mass of Mediterranean dark hair all around. And it was also symbolically charged with fertility and the powers of creation. Men flocked to gaze at blondes. Men worshipped and adored blondes, singling them out and celebrating them in verse. The poet Alcman conformed to the prevailing colour code in his seventh-century-BC songs, praising golden hair as one of the most desired characteristics of female beauty. ‘The girl with the lovely yellow hair’ and the girl with the ‘hair like purest gold’ are raised as the most beautiful in Alcman’s practical experience. Alcman came from Sparta, where physical fitness and beauty were particularly cultivated by women, so his aesthetic ideals would have influenced the views of many.1

  With Aphrodite’s seal of approval, blonde hair had become a tangible sign not only of great beauty but more explicitly of sexual attraction. For the Greeks, golden blondeness was already associated with some powerful imagery. Homer lingered obsessively over his gorgeous Aphrodite, raising her fully formed from the foaming sea wearing nothing but her rippling blonde hair. ‘Golden’ was the master epithet for Aphrodite in all of Homer’s work. To him she was intrinsically golden. She also, Homer tells us, had flashing eyes, soft skin, a charming smile and golden ornaments. And the beauty of her breasts was such that Menelaus dropped his sword on catching sight of them during the sack of Troy, narrowly missing his toes. Sappho, too, made Aphrodite golden in homage to her physical beauty. Since gold is pure of rust, she wrote, golden hair symbolised Aphrodite’s freedom from pollution, ageing and death.

  The colour gold had long been established in the classical canons of beauty and power. Almost two thousand years before Homer, in the time of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the colour was connected to the worship of sun and fire, and to the adoration of a yellow dawn goddess. For the Phoenicians and the Mycenaeans, both ardent trading civilisations, possession of gold metal had been a sign of the utmost superiority. The Persians had plaited their beards with gold threads, wearing their riches on their chins. The Assyrians had gone one step further, displaying and disposing of their wealth in one stroke by powdering their hair with extravagant clouds of gold dust.

  The Greek sense of beauty was therefore saturated with ancient allusion and example, and in the pantheon of popular feminine imagery the golden-haired woman was among the most mighty. Everywhere she was reflected and celebrated in images of Aphrodite, in the statues that peppered the public spaces of Ancient Greece. More were made in worship of her than of any other ancient divinity. In marble, stone and terracotta, her flesh painted in natural colours, her hair coloured blonde, this beautiful woman infiltrated the gardens and public and private spaces of Greek society in an entirely natural and provocative way.

  The most famous by far was the statue by Praxiteles of Aphrodite, enshrined and worshipped at Knidos, a harbour on the Asiatic shore of Greece. The sculpture was originally commissioned by the people of Kos, but when they inspected the completed work they were so shocked by its nudity and untrammelled eroticism that they immediately cancelled their order. Instead they opted to buy for the same price another statue of the goddess. This one, also by Praxiteles, was more soberly draped. In the meantime the people of Knidos had got wind of the sensation and they hurried to view it. Being more daring and – as history proves – more artistically discerning, they snapped it up on the spot. Theirs, as it turned out, was the superior deal. The Knidos Aphrodite became for several centuries an obligatory stop on any tourist itinerary of eastern Greece, and an unfailing source of revenue for the city. So valuable did it become, as Pliny the Elder put it, that King Nikomedes tried to buy it from the Knidians, ‘promising that he would cancel the city’s whole debt, which was enormous. They preferred, however, to bear everything, and not without reason. For with that statue Praxiteles made Knidos famous.’

  Given the marked aptitude of the Greeks for regular and ingenious forms of sexual gratification, it is no surprise that the tall, naked blonde attracted such attention. Some visitors even recorded the intimate erotic fantasies they had experienced upon gazing at it. Pliny was not impervious to the pleasures of the statue himself: ‘Superior to any other statue,’ he wrote in his Natural History, ‘not only to others made by Praxiteles himself, but throughout the whole world, is the Venus [Aphrodite] which many people have sailed to Cnidus [Knidos] to see.’2 He described it placed in a shrine, visible from all sides, and told the delicate story of a young man who, overcome with passion for the statue, managed one evening to conceal himself inside the locked enclosure. He ‘embraced it intimately; a stain bears witness to his lust.’ Another traveller describes, in a play attributed to the Roman philosopher Lucian, how the crowds used to visit the Aphrodite of Knidos, set in fragrant gardens of myrtle, bay trees, cypresses and vines. In the deepest shade of this sylvan retreat there were ‘pleasure booths’ to cater for those particularly inspired by this most exquisite goddess.3

  The Knidos Aphrodite was so thoroughly celebrated – and vicariously enjoyed – that before long thousands of copies began to appear in temples, gardens and villas all over Greece. At the same time more explicit images of the goddess, an Aphrodite the Whore, an Aphrodite of the Beautiful Backside, and an Aphrodite who Rode Astride, sprang on to plinths in public places in splendid evocation of the inspiration of love and beauty. More than two thousand marble Aphrodites survive today, as well as many more in bronze and in terracotta, from temples, tombs and gardens. So two thousand years ago her image must have been seen by everyone, a universal and utterly democratic blonde goddess inspiring Greeks of all classes, ages and inclinations.

  The Knidos Aphrodite remains one of the most celebrated statues ever made of the goddess, but the woman who is thought to have modelled for it has won her share of fame too. She was Phryne, the voluptuous mistress of Praxiteles. As a powerful courtesan, Phryne naturally plundered much of her sexual imagery from Aphrodite, and one of the key weapons in her arsenal was her abundant hair, probably dyed blonde, with which she attracted many powerful and wealthy clients. Fact and fable are difficult to distinguish in her story, but enough biographical anecdotes have collected around the name of Phryne to put together a picture of this beautiful and manipulative woman. Her power and reputation in her lifetime were considerable, and her sexuality was described on a correspondingly vast scale. She was born in about 370 BC in Thespiae, north-west of Athens, the daughter of Epikles. As a young girl, she moved to Athens, where she lived for a while in the sort of Cinderella-like poverty necessary to her spectacular story. Her outstanding beauty, however, soon allowed her to make a living by taking lovers and she was quickly elevated to the status of hetaira, which classed her as a superior ‘companion’ to men. Within only a few years of arriving in Athens she had become a top-class courtesan and had learned to play men like puppets.

  Phryne clearly had a talent for personal image-making and she soon turned herself into a striking impersonator of Aphrodite. She employed a household of slaves to attend to her appearance, styling herself as the sensuously smooth goddess whom Homer had so lovingly described. Phryne’s beauty and her carefully nurtured powers of sexual appeal were to inspire poets, painters and writers for many hundreds of years to come. A nineteenth-century engraving of her, presumably shaped by the personal fantasies of its anonymous maker, shows a tall, voluptuous and naked beauty, her slender arms spreading open a length of wispily transparent chiffon to expose a long mane of hair streaming down around her breasts. Her face is slim, her nose is of tiny, nineteenth-century proportions and her expression is open and proud. She advances delicately on tiptoe towards an appreciative crowd of men. It is the face, body and posture of a shameless seductress, an uncanny preview of a twentieth-century movie star.

  Phryne’s talents for mimicry brought her notori
ety. Given her special fondness for exhibitionism, she became very popular with the Athenians in religious rituals, appearing frequently at the festival of Poseidon in her favourite role. Many years later, in AD 200, the poet and essayist Athenaeus described the scene, during the festival, of Phryne entering the sea naked, with her hair flowing provocatively loose. It is an enduringly sexy yarn, which William Sanger recreated in 1859, with the help of a little fanciful embroidery: ‘she appeared on the steps of the temple at the seaside in her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd. She next advanced to the waterside, plunged into the waves, and offered sacrifice . . . returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment before the crowd which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair priestess vanished into a cell of the temple.’4

  It is possible that Phryne first met Praxiteles at Eleusis when she was the star attraction of the festival of Poseidon. Athenaeus tells us that she also caught the eye of Apelles, who painted his Aphrodite Anadyomene rising from the sea with Phryne in mind. The painting has not survived, but a number of sculptures of Aphrodite rising from the sea and wringing out her hair have been found and are believed to have been based on it. Phryne was known as the most beautiful woman in Athens and her love affair with Praxiteles was evidently passionate, celebrating both his fame as a sculptor and the exoticism of her profession as a courtesan. But as her powers of attraction grew Phryne took many more lovers besides Praxiteles, and she became fabulously wealthy. She dedicated a beautiful figure of Eros to her hometown, Thespiai, and she is said to have been rich enough to rebuild the walls of Thebes, which had been destroyed by Alexander the Great in 335 BC. She was also acquisitive, and cunning with it. Pausanias tells the story of how she pestered Praxiteles to tell her which masterpieces he considered his favourites. When repeatedly he refused to say, she sent a message claiming that his studio was on fire. As he hurried over, Praxiteles revealed that he hoped his statues of Eros and a satyr had survived. Phryne was delighted, admitted it was all a trick and asked if she could have the Eros. Praxiteles bowed cravenly to her demand and offered it to her. Greedily, she accepted.

  Phryne was proud, ambitious, uninhibited, vulgar and vain, the third century BC’s equivalent of Marilyn Monroe. And she was seemingly incapable of living without the addictive frisson of scandal. Her growing number of conquests and the trail of ruined men left in her wake soon brought her up against legislation and she was charged with profaning religious occasions. Dragged into the all-male court, which was no doubt packed for the occasion, she found that her case nicely highlighted the ambivalent attitudes of educated Greek men towards the glamorous and seductive hetaira class. The orator Hyperides, who happened to be one of her lovers, took up her defence, but the case began badly for Phryne. She was an independent courtesan, educated, opinionated and with a taste for self-publicity – precisely the opposite of the model Athenian woman, whose sole job it was, according to many historians, to conceive and bring up heirs, unobserved and in silence. There were some sticky moments as Phryne’s critics slung down well-argued and convincing accusations. The case seemed lost until – as the story related by Athenaeus goes – Hyperides, in a last-ditch attempt to save his lover, ripped open her dress to reveal her naked breasts. This proved to be the knock-out argument. How, he argued, no doubt gesturing approvingly at the bared breasts, could such god-given attributes possibly profane any religious festival? To press charges on Phryne would be to bring charges against Aphrodite herself, and that would be inviting divine retribution. The judges, no doubt electrified by the show, agreed, and all charges were dropped. But the story survived and hundreds of years later it was still being appreciatively chewed over by the blonde-obsessed Venetian poets of the Renaissance and again later by nineteenth century painters. In 1861 Jean-Leon Gerome painted the sensational scene showing Phryne standing in court stripped entirely naked, smooth as a classical statue and golden-blonde, her face hidden behind her arm in supposed shame. The ageing judges have abandoned all pretence of composure and are seen lurching forward for a closer view, their faces charged with leering approval.

  Phryne was perhaps an unusually influential hetaira in her link with one of the most famous works of art of all time. She was dangerously alluring, it is true, but society (governed by appreciative males) never regarded her as immoral. In the context of her times, she was one of the foremost champions of her class. ‘In one sense,’ according to the historian Elaine Fantham, ‘the hetaira was the only woman in Greek society who enjoyed a freedom comparable to men, running her own household and finances, with the right to choose the company she admitted to her home, and to attend the symposia and dinner-parties of the men-folk.’5

  While an entirely déclassé and miscellaneous riff-raff of other prostitutes scraped a living on the fringes of society, it was the hetairai who were the most elevated both in the hierarchy of whores and in female society as a whole. Only they visited the studios of the greatests artists of the Greek world. They alone listened to Socrates reasoning and discussed politics with Pericles. They were the only women participating in the intellectual fray of Greece. As a result, many of them were well-connected and well-informed and some established their own salons where men would gather to listen to conversation, poetry and philosophy. No wonder Athenian men soon became addicted to the glittering company of hetairai, relegating their wives to the status of domestic drudge.

  This was not a sexual democracy, much less a Utopia for women. While hetairai, given the privilege of immodesty, were free to drive through the streets with their blonde heads brazenly uncovered and displaying their gorgeous clothes, most scholars believe that respectable Athenian married women led stunted indoor lives of obedience, patience and dependence. On the rare occasions when they were free to venture out in public, for funerals or special festivals, they were expected to swathe their bodies and heads in copious thick veils. Inside the home, the women were restricted to their own quarters and kept strictly out of sight of visitors. Had they been allowed to socialise with the highly educated men of their class, they would have had nothing to say, for education and intellectual knowledge were forbidden, as the mark of the whore. The contrast between these mute married ladies, all shrouded and hidden, and the striking golden-haired high-class courtesans with their fine clothes, their confidence and their wealth could not have been greater. Aphrodite was the inspiration behind these powerful blondes, and her influence was to extend down the centuries in a variety of different but equally compelling guises.

  2

  The Empress and the Wig

  Rumour has it that Cleopatra was a blonde. A great queen of fabulous wealth, exceptional power, unlimited ambition and flamboyant sexual charisma, she has always represented a bounty of inexhaustible speculation. Every age has restyled her in the image of its own preoccupations. Pliny claimed that she challenged Mark Antony to outspend her and then, to win the bet, dissolved the world’s largest pearl in a jug of vinegar and drank it. It is a popular but improbable tale. Equally improbable is that she arranged to meet Caesar for the first time by having herself delivered to his quarters rolled in a carpet, as another early chronicler wrote. Sextus Propertius alleged that ‘she fornicated even with her slaves’; and another ancient fantasy had her copulating with crocodiles. Whatever the reality of this bewitching character, her reputation as a voracious and fatal temptress was firmly established within her own lifetime. It is no wonder that admirers imagined her as a blonde. Tiepolo painted Cleopatra as a blue-eyed golden-blonde, her curls vital with erotic energy. Vasari also painted her as a blonde, as did Cagnacci and several other Renaissance painters. Cleopatra lived fast and died young just as the power of her empire was beginning to ebb, and her fascination endures precisely because she has always been the source of wonderful, timeless myth.

  By the late second century BC, the Ancient Greek civilisation had blazed its way to astonishing achievements in almost
every field of human endeavour. In religion, philosophy, literature, music, art, architecture and science Greece had experienced great awakenings and consolidated a culture which was to form the core of later European history. But its political and military strength was exhausted. The advance of the Roman legions was relentless and Rome was beginning gradually to unite the Mediterranean world under its own banner. Within three years of the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC, Augustus controlled an empire which extended from Spain to Syria, and the absolute supremacy of Rome was an established fact.

  Rome’s cultural debt to Greece was enormous. In their literature, philosophy and science, the Romans consciously used Greece as their model. In the case of religion they embraced the Olympian gods, changing only their names. Zeus became Jupiter, Aries became Mars, and Aphrodite was seamlessly converted into the exalted Venus, who became as important a deity for the Romans as she had been for the Greeks. Venus retained all the finest aspects of her Greek forebear: the epiphany from the waters who became the goddess of love, beauty and sexual desire, and a divine body which was permanently youthful, naked and prodigiously pleasurable. Cult images of Venus, painted with pale-coloured flesh and golden-blonde hair, soon adorned theatres, baths, fountains and palaces and were commonly seen inside private houses. Roman writers took up her cause, too, and the body of their work has been bequeathed to us in a rich legacy of poems, eulogies and colourfully erotic epigrams to the goddess.