The Roman Ideal of Female Beauty

This video explores the elusive classical conception of female beauty.

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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:07 Helen of Troy
1:56 Ovid
2:24 Greek art
3:36 Frescoes from Pompeii
4:48 Art vs. life
6:09 Trade Coffee

[slayerhuh]

I follow a ton of history channels but I gotta say, I think you're the king of coming up with subjects for videos on a regular basis that no one else covers.

[mateusz]

lmao, the Vogue cover, if only we had articles like that from the ancient world, that'd be awesome

[Kenan-Z]

The "RomeHub" with the "too hot for YT" warning made me spit my tea😂 Also, I'm just curious about the "Key Looks from the Mediolanum Fashion Week" on the Vogue cover. The humor in Toldinstone videos is peerless. 👌

[Jon.A.Scholt]

Damn, I didn't know Hadrian was such an avid snowboarder; I thought the Romans were skiers only! I knew Antinous loved to snowboard, but I guess now that I think about it, it makes sense.

[Xankreigore]

Great episode, I want to thank you while I was just a student in school I loved ancient history, but fell out of love with it for years, because of your vids I am now more in love with ancient history than ever before, eternally grateful!

[pietervoogt]

Academics always claim that beauty standards were different in the past (it seems an important academic ritual to state that we can't apply our current values on the past) but when I look at old statutes and paintings I notice mostly commonalities. There are some strange exceptions like the oval faces of japanese art and uncertainty around highly stylized art (Inca, African) but a lot of ancient art, Egyptian, Etruscan, Hindu seems not very alien to modern taste.

[BloBlas]

Me trying to explain to my girlfriend why I think she's beautiful:

[Lionslycer]

I finally got your new book. I’m very excited for it. Your first book was such a blast to read.

[eugenekupiec]

I always appreciate your pragmatic attitude toward the evidence you present. It makes your channel a valuable source of entertainment

[crystalcastillo]

This was tastefully done. I'm glad it was fully aware of the nuance that exists in history. Great video!

[carlcushmanhybels]

Interesting topic. A problem for the video is that most of the pictorial depictions are not from Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece, but from Romanticized 19th century re-imaginings of what they wanted to think Romans and Greeks were like.

[NickCharles-vp]

I had to watch as soon as this popped up! I love watching your videos. Please continue to enlighten us. Between you and Mary Beard, I've learned quite a bit visually, as I read Suetonius, Livy and Tacitus.

[m.e.]

Back in 2003 I took "Busabout" through Europe (that was a long time ago, but it was good for college-age tourists).. When we crossed the border into Italy, the guide warned that young ladies, especially those with blond hair, might be the object of unwanted attention. Some things never change I guess.

[FlorinSutu]

When the Romans reached Germania (their name for the lands of Germany), they brought to Rome captured Germanic women as slaves, who were natural blondes. The Roman men liked these blondes a lot. The women of Rome understood this with a grudge, considering unfair competition. The first to adapt were the prostitutes of Rome: they dyed their hair to be blonde. As result, in Rome from those days, "blonde locks" became synonym with prostitute, literally!
Poppaea Sabina, Roman empress as the second wife of the emperor Nero, was hated by many people, with some justified reasons, if I remember right. She also started to dye her hair to be blonde, to the great satisfaction of her enemies, because "blonde locks" was already in use to define prostitutes.

[davidmajer]

Every Friday, I look forward to these videos.

[Jaroartx]

a good book on the matter of the different social periods is Storia della bellezza. Umberto Eco (2004, co-edited with Girolamo de Michele) and of course his partner Storia della bruttezza (Bompiani, 2007) they really show via language, art and history the conceptions of beauty

[うきあ]

Looks like the ancients had interesting uses for jars as well...

[screamingalgae]

There are indeed objective standards of beauty.

In every known human culture, a woman's hips are expected to be wider than a her waist, while a man's shoulders are expected to be wider. Per a documentary I saw years ago, Masai men (considered effeminately skinny by Western standards) and both sexes in Samoa (considered overweight) conform to average world ratios (incidentally, the waist/hip ratios of Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss were determined to be the same).

The same documentary also explored the imporance of symmetry between features. A Victorian experiment of finding the "typical criminal" by averaging hundreds of photos together resulted in a face better looking than expected. More recently, a complex calculation of several dozen symmetrical relationships between the eyes, nose, and mouth was applied to the photos of about 20 celebrities, and results matched what most people would think instinctively (FYI, the celebrity closest to Perfect Beauty was Mariel Hemingway).

[Illavoratore]

One of the best ancient history channels!!, keep it up. Cheers!

[Lines]

For the record, old hair styles are about being able to afford a stylist, not looking good. The big hairdos of the 80s looked goofy and that's a firsthand account.