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Ancient Greeks attitude tord pale white skin.
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Anglo_Pyramidologist: [QB] Pale white skin among ancient Greek males was a marker of the rich, elite or nobility. It was considered by the darker skinned Mediterranoid population, of the lower classes, to be effeminate. Some sources - In Aristophanes, Clouds 102-104, those of the philosopher class are pale white: ''Bah! They are rogues; I know them. You mean the quacks, the pale-faced wretches, the bare-footed fellows, of whose numbers are the miserable Socrates and Chaerephon.'' Pale skinned men, typically of the ruling classes according to Euripides, Bacchae 451-459, appear effeminate: ''Loose his hands; for now that I have him in the net he is scarce swift enough to elude me. So, sir stranger, thou art not ill-favoured from a woman's point of view, which was thy real object in coming to Thebes; thy hair is long because thou hast never been a wrestler, flowing right down thy cheeks most wantonly; thy skin is white to help thee gain thy end, not tanned by ray of sun, but kept within the shade, as thou goest in quest of love with beauty's bait.'' Plato (Republic, 474e) notes that those with white skin are ''children of the Gods'', meaning the royals and aristocrats who claimed descent from Greek deities, but that those with dark skin were 'manly': “The swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are the children of the Gods divinely fair and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste for sallowness when it accompanies the blooming time of youth”. The Suda O 801 notes: 'Pale men are no use [other] than for shoemaking' Cobblers of course earned their living working indoors and so their skin never became sunburnt. Erasmus, Adagia III vi 28 (Nulla candidorum virorum utilitas = Pale men are of no use) quotes the Greek proverb from Suda O 801. In Menander's Dyskolos, a young rich townsman named Sostratos falls in love with the lower class farmer Knemon's daughter. To win her hand, Sostratos volunteers to till the soil on Knemon's farm and must loose his pale white complexion via sunburning - "The sun was burning me" (ὁ δ' ἥλιος κατέκα'), says Sostratos afterwards (line 535). Later in the play (line 754) Knemon looks at Sostratos and says, "He has been burned. Is he a farmer?" (ἐπικέκαυται μέν. γεωργός ἐστι;). [/QB][/QUOTE]
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