Fall of a City

It’s more complex. The types of terms and concepts of color in Ancient Greek can be problematic. They’re hard even for experts to grasp and few if anyone completely understands. Most people try to point to translations that Achilles has “blonde hair” but... that’s not actually what the original text says. It’s more nuanced and isn’t necessarily literal.

Of course we don’t know 100% what Ancient Greeks looked like- but it’s unlikely they looked liked Brad Pitt or Eric Bana. Look at Greece. Look where it is. Look at the modern issues with refugees. People commonly spread through the region from what we would think of as the Middle East and Africa. It sits in a land bridge and its neighbor is modern day Turkey- what do Turkish people look like?

A black Zeus. Surely too much? Well... do you uh... do you know anything about Greek myth? Ever uh... maybe even read one? The Gods of Olympus- they show up as swans, bulls, old people, beautiful people, monsters, blah blah. Do you know what Zeus looks like?

He’s a lightening bolt. A literal bolt of lightening. No head or arms etc. is he a black lightening bolt? Dunnoh. On my knowledge of lightening I’d say he probably looks a little bluish.

The gods of Greek myth can’t show their true forms to mortals. That’s why they are always disguised. This is pretty standard stuff. Christianity largely holds that the “true face” or “true voice” of gods or even angels would drive a human insane or destroy us instantly with their power. In Greek myth- someone DID see Zeus in his true form and looking at him made her burst into flames.

So Zeus isn’t human my sillies. He’s always in disguise. Why a black guy? Why not? Is that less believable or less worthy a form than a fucking bird that gets a lady pregnant?

People complain complain complain when we “change race in history” but “race” in history wasn’t what it is today. We have almost no idea what people REALLY looked like thousands of years ago- and nowhere does Homer ever say anyone is “white,” and the works of antiquity generally do not specify anything that we could do more than infer to mean a person “looked white.” In Korea Jesus largely looks Korean. In Europe he looks European. When we imagine history we try to apply what we know about the modern world and we tend to imagine it in those terms- we tend to make the people look like us.

There have been- across the world through history- many times and cultures where it was seen as more beautiful to be lighter. A large part of this (predating major western colonialism) was simply that lighter people spent less time in the sun- they were wealthier through most of history. But that complicates it more because when we look at historical writings and art- where fiction and non fiction weren’t separated- we also don’t know to what degree these things were fabricated or embellished to fit an idealism or to crate certain reactions towards the subject through association and context.

Likewise- many works have been modified and appropriated over the ages and fact can get muddled as it is changes to suit each age.

Think that’s not true? Imagine if our society ended right now. Archeologists and anthropologists discover scraps of the top fictions of our age. World wide the evidence will largely suggest that most of the world at this time was white. Most movies have white stars. That’s a by the number fact. Most of the top movies in the world of all times have white stars. Most of the population of the world is “not white.” Looking at a snapshot of this time period our fiction suggests that more people are white than they actually are.