[Thread] Rarely have I been so wracked with esprit d’escalier as after recording this show. I wish I’d talked more about those places where skin colour prejudice shows up in Latin poetry, such as Eclogue 2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000lgkb

(one of my favourite poems!), when Corydon compares Menalcas unfavourably to Alexis because Menalcas is ‘niger’, Alexis ‘candidus’ – but then goes on to warn Alexis not to place too much importance on his complexion, for white privet berries are left to fall from the branch

whereas dark bilberries are picked (‘O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori!/ alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur’)
And I wanted too to talk about how behind the figures of Corydon and Alexis there lie Polyphemus and Galatea,

and how Galatea is milky-white if ever anyone was – and yet, where A.D. Melville’s translation of Met. 13.789 has Polyphemus calling her ‘whiter than snow’, Ovid’s Latin reads ‘candidior folio nivei… ligustri’ (‘brighter than the leaf of the snowy privet’)

and how though privets may have white berries their leaves are green, and so the comparison must be to lustre or shininess rather than whiteness per se, and Melville fails to do justice to the original in beauty or interest. Or how, a little earlier,

while Scylla is combing Galatea’s hair, Ovid describes Scylla’s fingers using the adjective ‘marmoreus’ – and again Melville translates this as ‘white’ – but does ‘marmoreal’ denote ‘whiteness’ here?

It could mean finely sculpted, or lucent, or many other qualities of marble (which is not always white, and ancient marble sculptures were anyway painted) – and again the translation is reductive and far less interesting than the original.

And it’d have been great to talk a bit about Winckelmann, and how though he does indeed say that white figures are the most beautiful he also prefers what he describes more fleshy tone of Parian marble to the dazzling white of Carrara, and praises as beautiful

figurative statues in various coloured materials, such as porphyry and black basalt, and how in that infamous passage where he says that colour is not beauty but contributes to beauty and that white figures are most beautiful he also goes on to say that a ‘Moor’ can be beautiful,

if he has beautiful facial features (‘Ein Mohr könnte schön heißen, wenn seine Gesichtsbildung schön ist, und ein Reisender versichert, daß der tägliche Umgang mit Mohren das widrige der Farbe benimmt, und was schön an ihnen ist, offenbaret’),

just as the use of bronze or of black or green basalt does not detract from the beauty of ancient portrait busts (‘so wie die Farbe des Metalls, und des schwarzen oder grünlichen Basalts, der Schönheit alter Köpfe nicht nachtheilig ist’),

But that, far from meaning that Winckelmann thought that ‘black is beautiful’ (as Oliver Primavesi has quipped) this illustrates how racialisation occurs not just on the basis of hierarchised distinctions of skin colour (which is, after all, highly variable)

but also of other observable physical characteristics, such as facial features, body shape, and hair texture, and how the focus on form or line and deprioritisation of colour also reflects the privileging of ‘dessein’ over ‘coloris’, intellect over passion in European

traditions of philosophy and aesthetics that deeply informed Winckelmann’s art theory, and result in him likening Black Africans to chimps, on the basis of facial features, and aligning us with the passions, rather than reason,

(‘Der aufgeworfene schwülstige Mund, welchen die Mohren mit den Affen in ihrem Lande gemein haben, ist ein überflüssiges Gewächs und ein Schwulst, welchen die Hitze ihres Clima verursachet, so wie uns die Lippen von Hitze, oder von scharfen salzigen Feuchtigkeiten, auch einigen

Menschen im Zorne, aufschwellen’) (And sorry I can't bear to tweet that in English),

and such distinctions still structure racialisation today (as @EmmaDabiri explores in her book), and how sometimes the talking about ‘Whiteness’ can unhelpfully obscure this by suggesting it’s all about the colour of skin

when racism is far more complex and devious than that. But also how there are moments in Classical texts that can surprise us and disrupt some of these prejudices, for example in the Odyssey

when Athena beautifies Odysseus before his meetings with Nausicaa, with Telemachus, with Penelope, and the great beauty (πολὺ κάλλος) that she pours about his head turns his hair fleecy, like the hyacinth flower

(κὰδ δὲ κάρητος/ οὔλας ἧκε κόμας, ὑακινθίνῳ ἄνθει ὁμοίας). And she also makes him dark of skin (μελαγχροιὴς), and Herodotus uses the same vocabulary at 2.104 to describe the appearance of the Aethiopians who settled Colchis (μελάγχροες εἰσὶ καὶ οὐλότριχες) and how,

though I don’t think Athena turned Odysseus into an Ethiopian, this a striking moment that disrupts prejudices (ancient and modern) against darker skin and textured hair and makes for a great critical reflection point in the Classics classroom,

and how, as someone of African-Caribbean heritage, who has darker skin and textured hair, since reading Homer I can now smile to think of myself as 'hyacinthine’ because after all, the Greeks praised this dark-purple flower as one of the most beautiful,

and though I didn’t come to the Classics looking to see myself in the writings of Greeks and Romans (and still find it weird that others do) representation matters, language matters, and it’s nice to have these little moments that cheer you and help you to hold your head high.

[End - except to say I'm also glad the BBC let me send them some further links to essays by people who really work on this stuff. They're on the website.]