Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body

by Caroline Vout

WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC RUNCIMAN AWARD

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

'A gloriously intimate tour of the body in antiquity' Gavin Francis

'Vout tackles a huge range of ideas and subjects with irrepressible energy ... full of arresting, sometimes startling ideas and facts that topple the Greeks and Romans from their lofty, pristine, snow-white pedestals' Guardian

'A triumph ... an extraordinary book that stopped me in my tracks' Peter Frankopan

The Greek and Roman body is often seen as flawless - cast from life in buff bronze and white marble, to sit upon a pedestal. But this, of course, is a lie.

Here, classicist Caroline Vout reaches beyond texts and galleries to expose Greek and Roman bodies for what they truly anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and responsible for a legacy as lasting as their statues. Taking us on a gruesome, thrilling journey, she taps into the questions that those in the Greek and Roman worlds asked about their bodies - where do we come from? What makes us different from gods and animals? What happens to our bodies, and the forces that govern them, when we die? Vout also reveals the surprising actions people often took to transform their bodies - from sophisticated surgery and contraception to body oils, cosmetics and early gym memberships.

You've seen the paintings, read the philosophers and heard the myths - now here's the classical body in all its flesh and blood glory.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Art, Art History, Classics, Mythology, Ancient History

432 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2022

About the author

Caroline Vout is a cultural historian with a particular interest in the Roman imperial period and its reception (see e.g. Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome, Cambridge University Press, 2007, The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City, Cambridge University Press, 2012 and, co-edited with Helen Lovatt, Epic Visions, Cambridge University Press, 2013). Her most recent book is Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome, published by the British Museum Press (2013). She was curator of the international exhibition of ancient sculpture, Antinous: Face of the Antique, at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (summer 2006) and author of its accompanying catalogue, and in 2008 was awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize for her work on Art History. She is an editor of Omnibus, Perspective (the journal of the National Institute of the History of Art in Paris) and the Cambridge Classical Journal, on the council of the Classical Association and Chair of the Criticos Prize. She has both appeared on and consulted for television and radio and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Reviews

[Saimi Korhonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

”No man is an island. It is why so much of this book has been about bodily interaction, not just mortal bodies with gods’ bodies and with nature, but human body with human body – in sexual congress, in the gym, arena, bathhouse and sanctuary, in the clinic, at the funeral, in the tomb Roman bodies interacting with Greek and Egyptian bodies, Christian bodies with pre-Christian bodies, my body, your body, with ancient bodies.”

In Exposed, Caroline Vout explores how the ancient Greeks and Romans understood their own bodies as well as those of they deemed as ”others” – foreigners, slaves, disabled people and so on. The emphasis is on the bodily experience and how people consturcted their understanding of as complex a phenomenon as the body and the bodied experience. She explores this theme from many point of views, such as human body in contrast to divine bodies and animals, the dead body, resurrected body of Christianity, athletics, the concept of a soul and sexual acts and desire.

Vout’s book is a very interesting deep-dive into the idea and concept of the body. Her writing is very easy-to-follow, so you don’t have to know much beforehand to enjoy this book. This is a topic I have researched quite a bit – and I am a gender/sexuality historian so I have, in general, thought a lot about human bodies and everything related to it during my studies – so I already knew a lot of what Vout talked about, but I still naturally learned a lot and my understanding of Greek and Roman theories, ideas, laws and thoughts of the body deepened a lot. I think this book would be a good place to start your journey into understanding the history of gender, sexuality, sex and the body in the ancient world.

One of the themes that struck me most in the book was how contemporary so many of the debates the ancient felt. They were arguing about the same things as we are today, it’s just that their point of view might have been a bit different: for example, their reluctance towards abortion (the first abortion law was made in 211 AD) was not so much due to the life of the foetus but the father’s right to have legitimate heirs. Augustus made laws regarding people’s right to marry and propcreate, echoing today’s discussions about bodily autonomy and the state’s right to interfere with what is considered private. In antiquity, too, the regular people of Greece and Rome showcased their anger towards their rulers by graffiti-ing or tearing down statues (statues of, say, emperors were extensions of their bodies, representing their power wherever they were placed). People still today fetishize beauty and youth, treat women’s bodies as men’s property and deem the bodies of people they consider outcasts as less than human. Ancient discussions about what ”barbarian” bodies were like reminded me so much of racist discourse today. Marginalized groups of people were also blamed or used as scapegoats when huge disasters, like illnesses, plagued cities and states: Athens blamed Sparta for their huge plague near the end of the 400s BCE, just like Jewish people have been, throughout history, thought of as the guilty party, spreaders of disease, and like the Chinese were blamed for Covid-19. People who were considered ”ugly” like Aesop and Socrates also used their ugliness as a way to stand up to the ruling government and society, just like people today whose bodies are marginalized or demonized – fat people, disabled people and trans people for example – refuse to hide their bodies, whose bodies are, just by existing, forms of resistance against the norm. Ancients toyed with the idea of artificial life and intelligence (myths of Daedalus and Hephaestus, as well as stories of characters like Talos), clearly intrigued, just like we are, by the idea of creating life, playing god and stretching the concept of ”human”. These are just a few examples that showcase how, even if the world and society has changed drastically, there is a shared humanity that links us to these people thousands of years ago. Just like it is today and has always been, the ancients understood their body in the context of their culture, religion, social norms, laws, landscape and personal experiences.

As a historian that focuses, mostly, on homosexuality and queerness in the past, the sections regarding queerness – both in terms of sexuality and gender – were the most interesting to me. Vout does a great job explaining how homosexuality was, while common in the ancient world and not stigmatized the way it is today, still something that was governed by societal norms and ideas of ”propriety”. They might not have been written in law, but there were clear rules as to who could bed who (this was also true for heterosexual relationships) and even if Romans inherited a lot from Greece, this was not something they simply included in their own culture. Romans were, in general, in terms of gender and sexuality much stricter than Greeks – Vout even says that, in Rome, ”masculinity was always in crisis” – and so their norms regarding same-sex relationships was a lot harsher. In Greece the biggest no-no was being the passive partner in sex, but in Rome you weren’t allowed to, for example, have sex with other citizen men or boys (Greek pederasty was something they frowned upon). Male nudity was also something to be governed more strictly. The Romans were, for lack of a better word, a bit prudish, even more hellbent on achieving a mythical perfect masculinity. This idea of a perfect man was of course built by defining that which is imperfect or dangerous: to the Ancients it was effeminacy, cowardice, weakness, non-citizenship and foreigness. Men who enjoyed sex with men in a way not appropriate for their status or class were, just like many gay men today, deemed as no better than women. That was a major insult since women were, in both cultures, second-class to men, flawed in their body and mentally incapable of taking care of their own affairs – as Vout puts it, women’s bodies were inherently decadent. Even worse than being a woman was being a slave, as slave’s bodies were not seen as bodies at all: they were not human. To be owned was to be demeaned. Ironically neither Romans nor Greeks had any problems owning people (their cultures were build by slavery); it was just enslavement of people like them that horrified them as a possibility. Treatment of slaves reminds us how tied politics, class and status was to how your body was viewed and if it deserved respect or not (slaves were at the bottom, while the Emperor's body was Rome itself and to harm the Emperor was to harm Rome, and vice versa).

One of Vout’s key goals in the book is to get the reader to realize that the ancient world was not how we easily see it as based on the most famous artwork left to us. Greece was not a parade of beautiful, perfectly shaped men and gorgeous women clad in stunning dresses. To think so is to buy into their obsession with beauty and perfection and to ignore the vast majority of people who lived there who were just normal. Those bodies are not real: they are ideals. Realizing this does not make them any less beautiful and enticing, but helps make the ancient world feel less idealistic and pure. It makes me so mad how these statues and pictures have been, throughout history, used as symbols of alt-right movements, racist science and white supremacy, and so on, because it reeks of purposeful denial of the diversity that is apparent in Greek art, if you just look for it. There were statues of disabled people, old people, toothless people, fat people and gender nonconforming people. By looking for them, the gilded, marble idea of perfect Greece crumbles, as it should. The ancients were, to use our modern words, a racist and sexist bunch, and we have inherited many an unfortunate habit from them, such as the idea that a person’s appearance is a reflection of their moral goodness (an idea which leads very easily to racism), but we should learn to look past it and not inforce their ideas when looking at their depictions of bodies.

The final chapters bring Christianity to the forefront. As Rome goes from polytheistic to monotheist religion and becomes something so widldy different from the pagan culture, ruled by capricious gods, it used to be, it is only natural that the idea of what a body is, should be and is after death, changes drastically. One of the phrases that stuck with me the most was Vout referring to how Christianity perceives the human body as ”the mortification of the flesh”. There had been rules and norms regarding body and what people should do with them in Antiquity before, of course there had been, but Christians took it to a whole other level. The body became inherently sinful, dirty and wrong, as did any kind of sexual desire and act (even between man and wife). The Christians linked sex with impurity in their own special way, and made the idea of bodily suffering the key aspect of their religion. There had always been philosophers who highlighted ascetism and extreme self-control as the way to prosperity, but it was nothing quite like the stories of Christian saints starving themselves. With Christianity also came the need to redefine what being in a body meant. How could Jesus be both human and god? Was he a sexual being? Was god a bodied being? What did resurrection mean? If a person died as a baby, did they end up, in Heaven, as a baby or as the adult they would’ve been? Was a foetus a human? Did a woman have to leave behind her gender to gain access to Heaven? It was intriguing to compare the Christian way of depicting saints and gods to, for example, the Greek way, as there are stark differences as well as similarities. Just like Dionysos, Jesus can be both a youth and a bearded man, and just like ancient deities, Jesus and God are often depicted through symbolic animals and objects. But depicting Jesus or Virgin Mary as nude or barely clothed was not common, unlike in Ancient Greece where Apollo, Zeus and Poseidon among other male gods constantly had their dicks out. It's an intriguing visual reference to just how differently Christians approached nudity and sexuality.

Vout talks about a conference she was asked to attend where she gave a speech about metamorphosis in Ovid's epic poem Metamorphoses. I loved how she described this innate human need to explore the human body, understand it in relation to gods and animals and plants, to reflect our own insecurities and thoughts on it through storytelling, and try and reach a greater understanding of who we are by looking at what we look like, what others look like and what we could become. As Vout says, people have always been insecure about their bodies, felt fear when something changes (aging, puberty, pregnancy, illness and so on) and so we have always told stories of bodily change. Metamorphoses is a literary landmark and a testament to our eternal curiosity towards the body. Vout also highlights how it should not be ignored that many stories in the book and mythology in general feature stories of men becoming women and vice versa: transgender and non-binary might modern categories but they are not modern phenomena. We have always wanted to stretch the gender binary.

Finally, I just wanna share this lovely quote about Dionysos, my fave god: ”He led mortals a merry dance away from the soul-searching of everyday life, into the wilds and back again, from city to countryside, earth to the underworld, masculine to feminine, Greece and Rome to India. He is a challenge to anyone who has sought solace in seeing the Greek and Roman wolrds as self-contained or supremely rational, a challenge back in antiquity to society’s constraints.” I would like to see someone who believes in the white supremacist and mega-homophobic, sexist and racist organizations who still use mythological figures as a symbols to explain Dionysos, who is everything but a masculine gigachad hetero bro.

My enjoyment of this book was hampered by my anxiety flaring up as I was reading it and it reminding me too much of my studies and own research plans. I also just didn't click with the writing sometimes. It was educational, professional and easy-to-read, but I don't know, it just didn't grab me all the time. Or maybe that was just my anxiety making it hard for me to focus. The point being, this is a great book and a wonderfully intimate depiction of the body in the ancient world, a great place for both beginners and more seasoned experts of the subject.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good overview of Greek and Roman bodies, as illuminated by sculpture and mythology, and characterized by surviving ancient texts. For such as those bodies in power, for whom most of the surviving art was created, it's not a huge challenge. She surveys these artifacts to give us an idea what the images meant in essentially anatomical terms, and how they related to the larger society in which they were created. Health, politics, sex, family, and illusion are all key topics which she covers.

But for hoi polloi or plebs, us ordinary bodies, it is a much greater challenge. She has little to say, other than extrapolating from the upper crust down to the rabble, as many other historians have already done. It's not her fault, of course, as little evidence of anything about the common people in Greece and Rome survives (even less in Egypt, not covered herein, but would have been welcome). I'm still waiting for that story, the undiscovered, transcendent treasure of history, one far more important than the toing and froing of armies, or of the scandalous habits of emperors. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that we'll ever know.

A beautifully produced book with coated paper, full-color illustrations conveniently in line with the text, and a heavyweight solid binding. It's nice to see quality books like this still being made.

[Lucía · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una forma bastante heterodoxa de presentar la cultura clásica que te hace ver cómo eran realmente, imperfectos tal y como nosotros, como seres humanos que eran, no seres superiores más racionales que nadie ni filosóficos

[historic_chronicles · Rating 4 out of 5]

When we consider the Greek or Roman body, one would most likely immediately turn to the idea of perfection itself often depicted in the cool and classical form of a marble statue such as The Apollo Belvedere.

However, the author thinks of Greco-Roman bodies in a completely refreshing and unique perspective. In Exposed, Vout discusses the body in all varieties: some are soft and full of flesh, perhaps even to be deemed "ugly". Others are to be looked upon with awe as they reach their maximum potential through events like the Olympic Games. While at the other end of the spectrum there are those who are seen as the undesirables; the disabled or the slaves.

Vout writes at one point: "For every fifth-century Athenian pot that shows an older man courting a beautiful youth, there is another showing someone throwing up, urinating, shitting" and I think that draws the point across that there is much more to this subject and the author tackles it with an undaunted spirit that echoes across the pages.

Exposed is intricately plotted, incredibly engaging and with meticulous attention to detail which has made this book one of the most interesting reads of this year. The use of parallels between the ancient and contemporary world is excellently captured and emphasises that this is a subject that is still very much relevant to the present day.

Many thanks to @profile.books for sending me a copy of this beautiful book to review.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 3 out of 5]

Se sitúa en un espacio intermedio entre la divulgación superflua y el detallismo audaz, lo que provoca un regusto grisáceo.

Posee momentos de esplendor donde la autora demuestra conocer suficientemente el haz y el envés de lo que está tratando. Las páginas dedicadas a los orígenes míticos del ser humano, a los fundamentos filosóficos de la corporealidad grecorromana o a las evidencias artísticas sobre cuerpos diferentes (enfermos, cadavericos, satíricos...) son de lo mejor conseguido, ofreciendo accesibilidad conceptual.

Pero, conforme avanzaba, todo se me hacía más cliché. Hay tantos ensayos sobre arte y vida en la antigüedad que, si la perspectiva vira hacia lo anecdotico, se corre el riesgo de disolver la cafeína. Y es lo que ocurre. Y, encima, sin aclarar adecuadamente el juego artístico y estético de la verosimilitud ideal escultórica, algo que sí consiguió Carmen Sánchez en "La invención del cuerpo", superior conceptualmente pese a su brevedad.

Así que, finalmente, la originalidad se desvanece y lo que queda es un batiburrillo (bien escrito, no como en el caso del mediocre y falaz "Cunnus" de Patricia Gonzalez) de datos, apuntes y anécdotas que pueden disfrutarse, con más audacia, en otros autores (citados por la autora, mismamente: Mary Beard, Peter Brown...).

En conclusión, disfrutable si se carece de conocimientos previos o se está poco familiarizado con la temática. Cómo introducción general hará las delicias de más de uno y, sin duda, como Caroline Vout no mete la pata en su discurso, no se le puede reprochar tener errores interpretativos (cosa que sí les ocurre a otros ensayos divulgativos, caso de "Cunnus").

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

--- "Nudity was not only about having men run faster and unimpeded, it was an issue of health and safety. And it was a moral issue: it signalled that men had nothing to hide." (Vout: 139)
--- "Playwrights and artists poked fun at his huge capacity -his overindulgence in eating, drinking and sex. When not showing him in action or taking a breather, sculptors also showed him pissing." (Vout: 135)
--- "twenty years down the line, when Titus and Domitian are in power, Nero look-a-likes or impostors pop up to pose a threat, not similar in apperance but also with his skills in lyre-playing and singing" (Vout: 268)

This book deals with the representation of the human body in the Art from the Graeco-Roman period. It also deals with the treatment of the dead body and sick body in classical antiquity. The book has helped me understand and expand my knowledge of classical art more (and sometimes my knowledge of life in ancient Greece and Rome). The book includes many artworks I have never seen before, which is good.

On the negative side, I think the book cites the sources for the majority of ideas and quotations in an inconvenient way. It took me 10 minutes or so to find the reference to Phaedrus's account of Prometheus and passive men.

[Simon Howard]

I found this book to be a slightly odd combination of content about mythological stuff, like the bodies of the Greek gods, and real-world stuff, like the treatment of Roman slaves. This meant that there were some bits of this book which I found very dull (I really couldn’t give two hoots about the sexual relations of mythical gods.) But there were also riveting bits which gave me entirely new insights into life in Roman times. There were more of the latter than the former, and they have transformed my understanding of some historical trends.

More at https://sjhoward.co.uk/ive-been-readi...

[Lucy Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overall but didn't love
The focus was too broad and sprawling at times, and the sudden informality of tone at unexpected moments seemed forced
Didn't quite scratch the itch I wanted it to - but I think that's because I'm much more interested in bodies performed and in performance than in reality

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should have been up my alley but I felt like I was retaining absolutely zero information from it.

[Baleigh Drummond · Rating 2 out of 5]

inaccuracies and randomness idk what she was trying to do. interesting concept but poorly executed

[Seolhe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stars

This is a solid exploration of the body in ancient Greece and Rome, from the idealized body seen in ancient statues to the painful reality of life in the ancient world.
While I wouldn't say I found the writing itself super engaging, this was still a pretty enjoyable read, and I think it's approachable for people who aren't familiar with this area of history. I'm not sure I took much new information from it, but I'm certainly not mad that I read it.

P.S. There's a chapter on early Christianity in this, and I'm once again struck by how even when Christians were genuinely oppressed (and I don't want to downplay that, their treatment in pre-Christian Rome was horrible), they still somehow managed to be so obnoxious about it 🙄