Blonde Alexander?

[jorgios]

Ok.. i know this subject has been getting a lot of talk on this forum as of late.. but i hear alot that Alexander was supposedly Blonde(though the Pompeii Mosaic shows him as a medium brunette?) So my question is.. in what sources is Alexander described as being blonde.. i know some ancient Greek color terms are rather ambiguous, especially when it comes to hair color it seems.. so can anyone provide some passages on this? It would be much appreciated!thanks!

[susan]

The connection is that Alexander was often likened to a lion and so he was given a lion's colouring. The Alexander Romance describes his hair as being like a lion and his movements as swift and violent as a lion's. Now, what colour would you call a lion - not blonde, not dark, not red - but probably mid-brown with golden highlights, fair to ruddy skin.Susan

[maciek]

Ha the best description is in Plutarch where You can even read about his smell from the mouth... Of course his appearance is also there...Maciek M

[jan]

I have read that Macedonians as a race were blue-eyed blondes.

[jorgios]

Perhaps you read this from Nazi Archelogists! This was the official Nazi version of mediterranean history, that brunettes did not exist in the mediterranean during antiquity and in affect were actually actually ruled by a nordic racial class.. some bizarre stuff. In any case, even the modern swedes are far from being a blonde-haired blue eyed race!In any case, i am sure that it would have caused Alexander and his "blonde-haired,blue eyed" and "ruddy" Macedonians much trouble crossing the Makran desert with such a ruddy-nordic complexion! Unless of course he had some primitive version of sunblock that i am unaware of...Regards,

[jan]

Hey Jorge,Don;t take it so hard. According to my source, and he is English, I am certain, the entire race of which Alexander is a part are blue-eyed blondes.I am a green eyed brunette! Naturally! I have used clairol to blonde or redden my hair too in the past, but now I am letting it be natural. I noticed that the movie that Karen is listing has Alexander's haircolor that of a current Greek who has not lightened his hair for the role.Probably everyone misunderstands Hitler too! I believe his belief in an aryan race had nothing to do with hair color but simply genetics.Even the Chinese believe in genetics and attempt purity in racial family lines. There is nothing wrong with the normal natural means of limiting your family to your birthright.Alexander did cause his own Macedonians grief when he so easily married into the Persian line. All families are notoriously jealous to protect their own bloodlines. It is a lot like the first commandment: I am a jealous god!Best wishes,Jan

[maciek]

Ancient writers didn't know nothing about nazism and they wrote about white color of Greeks skin. Plutarch writes even that Aleksander had white skin with even little tinge at pink.Maciek

[jorgios]

"White color of Greeks skin?" Which writers wrote about the "white color of Greeks skin"? and dont most Greeks have "white skin" anyways? Your post perplexes me. Please give me some info on:a) What is white skin?b) Which authors talk about "white skin" of Greeks? From what i can tell of ancient Greek art the mediterranean type seems to have dominated, i could be wrong however.

[jorgios]

I have found an excellent page with some Hellensitc and Roman Era potraits of Greeks in Egypt. Given the nature of Greek rule and settlment in Egypt, it is probable and likely that they are of Macedonian extraction. From these portraits you can see the wide variety of characterisitcs that made up the ancient Greeks/Macedonians, blondeness and blue eyes does not seem, from this artistic evidence; to have been very common, but fairly rare, as it is in modern Greece and Macedonia.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ ... ohs-3.html

[maciek]

O so what is mediterranean type in Your opinion?? dark man and black eyes? hey this is because of Turkish domination in that region for few centuries. Ancient texts shows that it was quite different in ancient. I will give info where in Plutarch's book You can find it but at evening, I don't have this book in my work. Also mosaics from Pella shows people with light hairs and white skin - maybe it is not so easy to watch details but seeing it mediterranean type seams not as it is today...
Maciek

[yiannis]

Actually it's a very common misconception that ancient Greeks/Macedonians were blonde/blue eyes etc.
Ancient writers were facing blondes as something special and a blond woman in ancient Greece was considered exceptional (Aphrodite, Helen were considered to be). Aeschylus was writing about women dying their hair blonde and was even giving the recipe for it. Apparently the results weren't always successful but don't you think that if brunettes were rare then they would be regarded as exceptional instead of blondes?
In all of Greek painting/vases the hair is depicted dark and the same goes for Macedonian art. Look at the Vergina findings.
Of course it's easy to say "modern Greeks say this because they don't want to admit that they changed through intermarriage over the ages" but this is hardly the case. Of course we changed! But we're not talking about this now but on what the ancients looked like. And they looked dark.Regards,
Yiannis

[jorgios]

Turkish domination of Italy? So THATS why Italians are so dark? Did you take a look at those Greek and Roman portraits from the Hellenistic era? If you did we would not be having this conversation right now.And since when are Turks "dark"? The original Turks were a East-Asian Mogolian tribe that migrated to Anatolia and were gradually assimilated racially by the Mediterranean and Alpine racial types, leaving only their language. Were Hittites and Lydians also Nordic?..I challenge you to a scavenger hunt to find blondes in Greek, Macedonian, and Roman art for evidence of blondes! heh.It is funny that you mention the Pella Mosaic... it seems rather absent of colors if you ask me, but anglo-saxon nationalists, like Arthur Kemp of South Africa have tried to take it as evidence of "Nordic Hellas". Here is was anthropologist Dienekes Pontikos has to say of the subject.
ignores the fact that mosaic construction is limited by the colors available in nature and that by necessity, the artist must use the limited number of colors available to him to give the illusion of volume and texture with small elements. Hence, in all Greco-Roman mosaics, before the medieval invention of colored glass, we witness a limited palette of colors. Fourth, the mosaic depicts a mythological scene and hardly represents living Macedonians, let alone the "Indo-European invaders" of fifteen hundred years before in a different part of the country. Finally, the Macedonians were Greek, but they do not represent Greeks in general. Even today, it has been noted, e.g., by Coon in The Races of Europe, that Macedonians are lighter than southern Greeks. Arthur Kemp of course has to resort to this sort of game because he knows that the Greeks from the archaic age painted the God Zeus.I suggest you take a look at this link, and please give info to me that you know of that proves the opposite of what Pontikos and Coon say,In Conclusion, i leave you with a quote by the famed anthropologist Carelonton S. Coon on the Greeks:"It is inaccurate to say that the modern Greeks are different physically from the ancient Greeks; such a statement is based on an ignorance of the Greek ethnic character. In classical times the Greeks included many kinds of people living in different places, as they do today. If one refers to the inhabitants of Attica during the sixth century, or to the Spartans of Leonidas, then the changes in these localities have probably not been nearly as great as that betw

[jorgios]

Taking one look at a book of Ancient Greek art proves that the dominant type of Greece and the Mediterranean was the dominant type also in atiquity. I cannot imagine a race of Blonde Hair blue eyes living in the mediterranean, it seems it would not be easy for a race of blonde hair blue eyes to develop physically enough to create a civilization on the scale of any of the ancient Greek civilizations, due to the fact that they would always be fighting off the elements (i.e. the sun).In conclusion, Nordicentricsm(the belief that nordics started civilzation) was prominent amongst the Imperial British to justify their quest for wealth and colonies around the world. This was an idea that Hitler himself recognized, and in return claimed that the model for the Third Reich was in fact the British Empire. The idea of Nordics being present in any substantial amount in the societies of the fertile crescent or the meditteranean(until the use of germanic mercenaries in central Europe by the Romans), the idea of Nordics being present is baseless before after or during Age of Alexander, a remedial knowledge of Greek art shows this.

[jorgios]

Sorry, forgot to post this link:http://www.geocities.com/dienekesp/hellenes.htmlThis is an excellent analysis of the racial type of the Ancient Greeks as evident in art and literature, it also is a classic debunking of "Nordicentrism".Regards as always,
Jorge.

[Nicator]

Hello Yiannis,
My own relatives are all dark haired and dark eyed. Therefore, I was taken aback a bit when I went to Greece and saw so many blonde haired blue eyed Greeks running around. It just sort of totally crushed my earlier conceptions of what the Greeks looked like. I am personally dark brown haired and blue eyed (but I am as mixed up racially as an American can be, oweing only 25% of my lineage to the Greeks).
later Nicator