Althouse: "A full-lipped, cheek-chiselled man in Ancient Greece knew... that his beauty was a blessing... and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection."

January 9, 2015

"A full-lipped, cheek-chiselled man in Ancient Greece knew... that his beauty was a blessing... and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection."

"For the Greeks a beautiful body was considered direct evidence of a beautiful mind. They even had a word for it - kaloskagathos - which meant being gorgeous to look at, and hence being a good person."

19 comments:

Richard McEnroe said...: Chris Hemsworth 2016!; 1/9/15, 7:39 PM
Richard McEnroe said...: He'll give you the shirt off his back!; 1/9/15, 7:41 PM
rhhardin said...: Bob and Ray Most Beautiful Face Winner.

Stay tuned for the four leaf clover farm following after a short interview.; 1/9/15, 7:45 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Wait a minute!
You mean that I also have an inner perfection?; 1/9/15, 8:29 PM
ddh said...: And so the citizens of Athens had few qualms about having Socrates drink the hemlock.; 1/9/15, 8:33 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Damn few head of Congressfolk would survive that test...; 1/9/15, 8:36 PM
chickelit said...: Jim Morrison had inner perfection?; 1/9/15, 9:48 PM
YoungHegelian said...: They even had a word for it - kaloskagathos

I know it's a newspaper article & not a scholarly work, but it would have been nice if she could have named a text where that term is used. I can't find that word in the mother-of-all-lexicons sized Liddell & Scott (known affectionately among students of Greek as the "Great Scott"). The word just looks weird to me with that "(K)appa" in the middle of it. "Kalos" is "beautiful" & "agathos" is "good", but "kalos" has that sense of an attractive moral beauty such as that of natural nobility. But why that damn kappa in the middle?

The only thing I can think of is kalos kai agathos (noble & good), but that isn't one word. I sense some legs being pulled here.; 1/9/15, 10:00 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Still talking about Mitt?; 1/9/15, 11:17 PM
madAsHell said...: Men are predators.
They don't consider themselves.; 1/9/15, 11:55 PM
George Grady said...: Young Hegelian:

It is "kagos kai agathos". Only the kappa is there because the "ai" is lost in crasis. It's three words, though, not one. This is from the OED under crasis:

2. Ancient Greek Grammar. The combination of the vowels of two syllables, esp. at the end of one word and beginning of the next, into one long vowel or diphthong; as in κα'γώ for καὶ ἐγώ, τού'νομα for τὸ ὄνομα.

I don't think the article is correctly interpreting it, though. The Greeks admired people who were both beautiful and good, but were well aware someone could be one without the other.; 1/10/15, 12:06 AM
virgil xenophon said...: "Handsome is as handsome does."; 1/10/15, 12:26 AM
campy said...: What did they say about a sharp pants crease?; 1/10/15, 6:20 AM
Sydney said...: If they really thought a beautiful body was direct evidence of a beautiful mind, they must have been disappointed a lot.; 1/10/15, 6:28 AM
Anonymous said...: The comments here never let a crasis go to waste, so I learned something here, which is better than nothing (a high standard).; 1/10/15, 8:22 AM
Dr Weevil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/10/15, 8:56 AM
Dr Weevil said...: 'kaloskagathos' is surprisingly hard to track down in Greek. The new Logeion site is great for Greek and Latin dictionaries, and it lists it under καλοκἄγαθος (without the first sigma). According to LSJ, quoted there, it is found as one word perhaps only in Pollux, a 2nd century sophist and lexicographer ("probably the person satirized by Lucian as a worthless and ignorant person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery": Wikipedia s.v. Julius Pollux).

Usually (says LSJ via Logeion) it is either two words with crasis (καλὸς κἀγαθός) or three words without (καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός). In those forms it is attested in most of the best Greek prose authors: Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch.

However, I don't see that it necessarily has anything at all to do with physical beauty: "orig. denotes a perfect gentleman . . . but later in a moral sense, a perfect character". Throughout the history of Greek, just plan καλός means more than just physically beautiful, it also means "in a moral sense, beautiful, noble, honourable". Is the entire premise of the quoted sentence dubious?; 1/10/15, 8:58 AM
Robert Cook said...: "If they really thought a beautiful body was direct evidence of a beautiful mind, they must have been disappointed a lot."

We still try to tell ourselves that exterior beauty is a marker of the interior personality...and we're still often disappointed.; 1/10/15, 6:21 PM
lgv said...: Modern examples: Stephen Hawking and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oh wait, never mind. Just a reminder, Athens lost to Sparta.; 1/11/15, 5:57 AM