The Greek Face - by R. Peterson

[Gil]

The Greek Face



From the point of view of physical anthropology the ethnic complexity of Greek society during the first millennium B.C. prohibits any attempt at a generalized statement of physical type based upon statistical averages of data derived from the available skeletal material. Substantial caste-like stratification, accompanied by relatively strict principles of caste endogamy separated the Indo-European-derived Eupatrids from the freemen and slave classes among whom the genetic influence of the autochthonous 'Pelasgian' population may have predominated. In addition the persistence of cremation among so very many of the aristocratic families from the time of Homer to well into the Classical period destroyed much of the physical evidence concerning this latter strata. In this article the author expresses the need for a more exhaustive examination of portraits, busts and hermae classified and interpreted in the light of historically verifiable information regarding the social status and ethnic background of the specific individuals commemorated thereby.

There must be very few Indo-Europeanists who have not entertained some degree of curiosity regarding the physical appearance of the peoples whose language, literature, mythology, artifacts and history they study.

As Childe (1926), Palmer (1955) and others have suggested, the undivided proto-Indo-Europeans probably comprised a numerically small population. The Omaha kinship system prognosticated by Friedrich (1966) and Wordick (1970) would have ensured a high degree of genetic homogeneity, as is common in tribal populations. However, although some skeletal remains have survived from the Caucasoid populations which occupied the extensive plains from the Baltic to the Caucasus during the seventh and sixth millennia B.C. — the general area and time period in which the PIE people are believed to have lived — I do not propose in this brief essay to comment on the physical characteristics of any of the several populations that have been tentatively identified as PIE. Instead I wish to confine myself to a lew socio-historical comments regarding the reliability of historical hermae and statues — specifically of Greek origin — as indicators of the physical characteristics of the Indo-European component of classical Greek society.

In any discussion of the physical anthropology of Indo-European speakers we must immediately recognize that whatever genetic unity the PIE speakers may have possessed, the speakers of the subsequent variety of IE languages represented a relatively diverse variety of peoples from a racial or genetic point of view, following the successive waves of IE expansion which carried Indo-European speech to the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal. In the course of some five or six millennia of expansion and conquest, an expanding IE upper caste may undoubtedly have preserved a high degree of genetic continuity (Pearson, 1974), while simply superimposing itself upon the autochthonous populations. Those who brought Indo-European speech into the newly-colonized territories became a ruling warrior nobility, as testified by the connotation 'noble' for arya in India and Persia, ariothez, in Greece (hence our 'aristocracy') and aire among the Celtic peoples. Indeed, the evidence-indicates that to a greater or lesser extent the invading arya, art, or aire maintained strict principles of endogamy in the choice of their official wives, and although in many areas they appear to have made a disproportionately high contribution to the gene pool of the indigenous population through the practice ol keeping large numbers of concubines, they differed from the Uralic and Semitic peoples in their refusal to grant the illegitimate offspring of such marriages the social status of the father. Thus so far as legitimate offspring were concerned, in aristocratic Greek society, as in most early historic I.E. societies, the strict endogamy of the conquering classes was evidenced by the admission that 'we choose our wives like we choose our horses: by the lengths of their pedigrees' — and the high respect in which the Greeks held their horses is well known!

It would thus seem probable that the successive waves of Indo-Europeans who settled the Aegean, commencing in the Helladic period at the start of the 2nd millennium B.C. and concluding with the Dorian invasions of the 11th century B.C., exercised a very substantial genetic influence on the population of that area. However, attempts to make a general statement about changes in the physical anthropology of the Aegean have been handicapped by the fact that the heavily caste-like social stratification imposed by the Indo-European Eupatrid classes prevented the establishment of a single Aegean gene pool and resulted in the perpetuation of a variety of racial sub-types. To complicate the problem the practice of body-burning remained in fashion among the upper castes for a number of centuries, thus destroying the physical remains of the Indo-European elements of the population during such periods.

The fact that the immigrant Indo-Europeans had a clear-cut conception of what they regarded as their own distinctive and characteristic physiognomy — which would have been preserved and even accentuated by close inbreeding — is amply evidenced by Greek literature. Thus in the Odyssey (XII, 222) we undersland that the disguised Athena was described as being 'delicate ol countenance such as are the sons of kings', whereas in the Iliad (II, 216) Thersites, of autochthonous origin, is described as 'ill-formed and warped of head'. As among the Celts, physical defects were regarded with abhorrence by the Greek aristocracy and the practice of infanticide ensured that despite inbreeding any individual physical or mental degeneration, resulting from the recombination of defective recessive genes, was immediately weeded out whenever revealed in the phenotype. The aristocratic 'ideal type' was therefore further promoted by conscious if somewhat severe eugenic measures, and great emphasis was placed upon the maintenance of the breed. Every effort was made to ensure the survival of noble families, and the volunteers who died with Leonidas at Thermopylae were selected from amongst men who had already fathered sons, so that their deaths would not annihilate the noble Spartan lineage to which they belonged. Indeed, as Amphinomus described it, it was 'a dreadful thing to destroy a royal race'.

Several attempts have been made to discuss the physical anthropology of Greece from the point of view ol the available skeletal evidence. Some early references were made by pioneers such as Ripley (1899), Schuchhardt (1926), and J.L. Myres (1930). More recently Coon (1954) and Angel (1944, 1945, 1946 [a] [b]) have added considerable information. In his most recent work on the subject, a detailed analysis of the numerous skeletal remains found in different cemeteries in the excavations at Lerna, Angel (1971) concludes that the immigrant Hellenic or Indo-European population reflected a 'Nordic' type which probably arrived from the Danubian area, and also a related 'Iranic' type. This latter appears to reflect a separate Indo-European invasion from the direction of Anatolia, although Angel assumes that both these related types originated ultimately from the area of the Pontic steppes. However, as a potential supplement to the study of the incomplete skeletal remains, I would like in this article to propose the possible utility of a detailed analysis of the surviving Greek portraits, busts, herms and sculptures of all kinds, classified according to the historically verifiable tribal and family background of the individual portrayed. Such a classification becomes important in view of the generally accepted view that throughout the first millennium B.C., the population of the Aegean remained subdivided into a number of genetic isolates, instead of representing a simple homogenous Mendelian population.

Let us immediately recognize, however, that the use of Greek sculptures as evidence for the physical features of the Hellenic population is fraught with dangers. In the first place most of the surviving busts, herms, statues and other representation of prominent Greek personalities from the Classic era are merely copies of earlier originals, few of which original works remain extant. Secondly, Greek sculptors and artists flattered their models, frequently attempting to idealize their features. Thirdly, artistic techniques have always been subject to local fashions, with the result that a purely artificial emphasis can be placed upon specific physical features quite apart from any conscious intention of the artist to flatter or distort his subject.

Against these observations, we may safely say that a very substantial uniformity of appearance tends to characterize many of the Greek busts, hermae, and portraits purporting to represent the same individual and most artists appear to have attempted a largely true-to-life representation of the original subject when copying original works. The fact that a close resemblance exists between most portraits and busts purporting to represent the same individual, and that this resemblance is sufficient in many cases to permit the identification of the subject, even where the sculpture bears no name and all documentation has been lost, suggests that these representations are reasonably faithful, thus largely negating our first reservation. So far as the second reservation is concerned, although it is apparent that Greek sculptors and artists did to some extent idealize the aristocratic features of the noblemen whom they were portraying any exaggeration in this direction would merely serve to emphasize what were regarded as the characteristics of the traditional aristocratic face, and would merely further emphasize what were regarded as characteristic features of the original Indo-European Hellenic physiognomy.

Finally, the close similarity of appearance which marks the hermae of Greek aristocrats as a class during the Classical Period should not be casually attributed solely to artistic convention the entirely different features revealed in hermae representing the non-aristocratic Socrates destroy such reasoning. As already indicated the membership of a small and consistently inbreeding group of families such as constituted the Greek aristocracy at that time must necessarily have resulted in a high degree of similarity in physical appearance.

Let us now illustrate our argument with a random selection of hermae representing individuals drawn from aristocratic families of ancient lineage and therefore of likely IE immigrant origin.
Hermae of Greek Aristoi

Our first illustration (Fig. 1) is a herm of Alkaios, a member of the Aeolic nobility of Lesbos. Born in 620 B.C., Alkaios' life was typical of that of a Greek aristocrat of his day, a class whose power was threatened by ambitious politicians who sought to play the common freemen against the Eupatrids in order to overthrow the latter and establish themselves as tyrants. The Aeolian migration legends claimed that their forebears hailed from Boeotia, and like other Aeolian nobility, Alkaios claimed descent from Agamemnon who had conquered Lesbos during the Trojan wars. Born in Mytilene, the political capital of Lesbos, Alkaios fought against Athens for the control of Sigaum on the Hellespont, but lost his shield in battle to the Athenians, which shield was subsequently hung as a war trophy in the temple of Athena (Herod., V. 95).

Fig. 1: Alkaios (c. 620-595 B.C.) a member of the Aeolic nobility. Sculptured head shown found at Ephesus. (Courtesy of Kunst-historisches Museum, Vienna)

Alkaios was reputed by Aristotle (Rhet., 1, 9. 20) to have been enamored of Sappho (Figs. 2 & 3), the daughter of Sea-mandronymus, another member of the Lesbian aristocracy, who conscious of the family status, berated her brother, Charaxus, for his involvement with a notorious courtesan, and even chided Alkaios for his 'indelicate advances'. Sappho was herself a lyric poetess of no small status, who removed to Sicily when her family was exiled, but eventually also returned to Lesbos where she became the leader of a small group of women of aristocratic background, who in the custom of Lesbian nobility spent their ample leisure in graceful participation in the arts, especially in the composition and recitation to each other of poetry.

Figs. 2 & 3: Sappho, (c. 612-? B.C.) the Lesbian lyric poetess, of aristocratic descent. The bust portrayed above is in the Galleria Geografica of the Vatican.

Another lyric poet of fame, also of aristocratic descent, was Anacreon (c. 572-487 B.C.), born the son of Skythinos of the Ionian city of Teos (now the Turkish city of Sighalik) around 570 B.C. (Figs. 4 & 5). Despite his family background Anacreon became so enamored with the pleasures of the gay and elegant life then beginning to appear in Greece, that his carefree songs of love and wine made him famous, as did his rejection of the ancient tradition of epic songs and legends praising warfare and heroic deeds. Indeed, Anacreon is quoted as declaring that : 'I do not like the man who sings of strife and tearful war at a banquet when the cups are full' (Athenaios, XI, 463a).

Figs. 4 & 5: Anacreon (c. 572-487 B.C.) a scion of the Ionian nobility. Herm from the Museo Nuovi dei Con-servatori in Rome, and Fig. 5 is from the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence.

By contrast with Anacreon, Heracleitus of Ephesos, (c. 535-475 B.C.), who was of royal blood but is reputed to have renounced the kingship of Ephesos in favor of his younger brother, gained a reputation of being 'lofty minded beyond other men and overweening' (Dios. Caert. IX I). Taking to a life of philosophy, Heracleitus (Fig. 6) stressed the ancient Indo-European concept of a hidden harmony that held the universe together, expressing itself in the interlocking divinity of nature, the secret of which could be revealed by logos or reason.

Fig. 6: Heracleitus (c. 535-475 B.C.) son of Blyson and member of the royal house of Ephesus. Herm from Stanza di Filosofi in the Capitoline Museum Rome

One of the major reasons for the increasing social dislocation in Greece during the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. was the increase in commerce. Many freemen inheriting small family estates found themselves impoverished by inflation, and since the land was the inalienable property of the family, and therefore could not be sold, many heads of freeman families were obliged in place themselves, as individuals, into slavery to their creditor. leaving their heirs to work the land. The untraditional and shameful nature of a situation in which many respected free men were reduced to slavery caused widespread dissent among the populace, and Solon (Fig. 7), son of Eyekeslides, and a kin-man of Persistratos, born in Salamis (in Attica) of noble descent but moderate wealth, resolved to restore the freeman to their original dignity. Although he found it necessary to break many of the more ancient traditions to achieve this goal, Solon the reformer nevertheless remained true to his aristocratic back ground, as reflected in his love of poetry and literature, and his willingness to involve Athens in a war with Megara to recover his own native Salamis.

Fig. 7: Solon (c. 640-559 B.C.), statesman and poet of aristocratic Attic descent. (Courtesy of National Museum, Naples)

Most Greek tyrants of the 7th and 6th century who displaced the older aristocracies to seize dictatorial power for themselves were actually of noble descent, and Periander (627-586 B.C.) the second tyrant of Corinth (Figs. 8 & 9) was similarly a true

Figs. 8 & 9: Periander (c. 627-586B.C.) a Corinthian nobleman who as a tyrant of Corinth increased the already considerable power and prosperity of his native city

Eupatrid by birth, although he dealt harshly with the remainder of the Corinthian aristocracy, playing the growing political consciousness of the artisans and merchants against his fellow aristocrats for his own ends. Yet Periander's rule was urbane and cultured. A patron of the Muses and himself the author of some 2000 verses, he proved to be a successful statesman expanding the power of Corinth considerably, and ordering the erection of numerous beautiful public buildings.
Bias (c. 570-550 B.C.), son of Teutames, of noble Ionian lineage, and a leading statesman of his native city of Lydia, reflects the same characteristically Greek features. Renowned for his sense of justice, his respect for custom, and his moderation as a political leader, Bias (Fig. 10) is reputed to have possessed many of the personal characteristics of his Homeric forebears, declaring that he who could not bear misfortune is truly unfortunate'. Indeed, many similar aphorisms of this kind led him to be honored by future generations of Greek writers as one of the 'Seven Wise Men'.

Fig. 10: Bias (c. 570-550 B.C.) son of Teutames of Priene, of Ionian noble descent. (Courtesy of Galleria Geografica, Vatican)

A noble Spartan visage (Fig. 11) is represented by the head of Pausanias, a member of the Agiad royal family of Sparta, who gained fame as the Greek general who won the battle of Plataea against the Persians in 479 B.C., and subsequently became a regent of Lacedemeon on behalf of his nephew Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who was still a minor when his royal father was killed at the head of the immortals at Thermopylae. Another of the Greek heroes who helped to repulse the Persian invasion was Miltiades (550-488 B.C.). A member of the noble Athenian family of the Philaidae, which claimed descent from Aeacus, Miltiades (Fig. 12) achieved renown as a statesman, and was elected archon of Athens in 524. Marrying the daughter of the King of Thrace, however, he later left Athens to assume the Thracian throne, ruling Thrace with outstanding success, thanks to the loyal assistance of a large 'comitatus' of some 500 warrior 'companions'. Nevertheless Miltiades responded to the call of kinship and returned to his native Athens in 493 B.C. to lead the Greek forces to victory against the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C., only to die from wounds received at the subsequent Battle of Paros.

Fig. 11: Pausanias (c. 510-468 B.C.), the victor of the Battle of Plataea,' and member of the Agiad royal family of Sparta. Herm in Stanza die Filosofi of the Capitoline Museum, Rome


Fig. 12: Miltiades (c. 550-488 B.C.) the victor of Marathon, of aristocratic Atheman descent. An inscribed herm dating from around 450 B.C., in the Museo Nazional in Ravenna.

But possibly the most famous orator, statesman and general in the history of Athens was Pericles (Fig. 13), the victor of the battle of Mykale who was a member of the aristocratic Attic family of the Buzyae on his father's side, and was descended from the renowned Alcmaeonid family on his mother's side. Despite his noble background, which gave him the support of the aristocracy, Pericles was able to command the enthusiasm and loyalty of the Athenian freemen not only through his gift of oratory but also because of his unblemished reputation for personal integrity and honor. Responsible for the building of the Parthenon, the Propylaia and the Odeon, Pericles also had the military foresight to link inland Athens by strong defensive walls to the harbour of Piraeus, as well as giving constant encouragement to all the arts protected by the Muses.

Fig. 13: Pericles (c. 500-429 B.C.), Athenian statesman and general, descended from two of the foremost aristocratic families of Attica. Herm from the British Museum, London

At this point let us turn away from the portraits of statesmen and generals to look at some of the major poets of the Greek world. Although Homer may possibly be a mythical figure, it may be of some interest to see how the Classical Greek sculptors envisaged this legendary figure. Large numbers of busts of Homer were made through several centuries, and all these may be classed into three or four different traditions, most being copies of older works like that described by Pausanias in the fifth century. But although few of the earliest examples have survived, there is still a general likeness which characterizes all of these busts, herms and portraits, and this presumably reflects the Greek concept of the lofty, aristocratic dignity with which Homer and his works were always associated. Our example in Figure 14 is taken from a herm which is believed to have been copied from an ancient original now lost.

Fig. 14: Homer, a copy of an earlier herm from the 5th century B.C. symbolizing the concept of aristocratic feature prevalent in Greece at that time

Two or three centuries after Homer, the Homeric spirit still persisted, and it is hard to say whether Pindar (518-438 B.C.) or Aeschylus (525-450 B.C.) best reflects the ancient traditions and former reverence for the Gods among the poets of the Classical Age. Although no portraits ol Pindar, born in Boetia of aristocratic lineage, survive in good condition, reproductions of Aeschylus are plentiful. Aeschylus (Fig. 15) was also the scion of a Eupatrid or aristocratic family, the son of Euphorion of Eleusis. One of the heroes ol Marathon, Aeschylus' great tragedies reflect the deep reverence that the Greeks still preserved for their ancestral customs and time honored gods even as late as the great Persian invasion, after which, in the non-Doric states at least, rapid changes in social attitudes began to appear as a new prosperity rooted in commerce transferred economic and political power from the landowning aristocracy to the merchant and artisan classes, many of whom were of foreign extraction. Written shortly before this era of rapid change, the plays ol Aeschylus reflect the grandeur and drama of the Indo-European past of military victories, recounted at great length in beautiful song and verse, such as his account of the Greek victory over the Persians at Salamis. Essentially Aeschylus reflects the traditions of the Homeric epic, Norse Sagas and the Indo-Aryan Rig Veda, in his total concentration on great thoughts and heroic deeds.

Fig 15: Aeschylus (c. 525-456 B.C.), the tragic playwright, of Eupatrid Eleusian descent. (Courtesy of National Museum, Naples)

Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.) was the scion of a minor aristocratic landowning family from Salamis, who was also a priest of Phyla. Despite his aristocratic background and his deep love of Athens, Euripides (Fig. 16) was a revolutionary thinker who espoused many Sophist ideas, and advocated greater freedom for the large number of slaves that filled the homes of the well-to-do Athenians of his day, while seeking to deprive free Greek women of the many privileges they had enjoyed in Homeric and pre-Classical t.imes.

Fig. 16: Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.), scion of a Salamis landowning family. (Courtesy of the National Museum, Naples)

Herodotus (c. 484-424 B.C.), represented in Figure 17, the renowned historian and geographer, was born in Halicarnassus a Dorian settlement in Caria, the heir to a noble family, but was obliged to leave Halicarnassus with other aristocrats to escape from the democratization program of the tyrant Lygdamis. Settling in Samos for some time, he then travelled widely in Europe, Asia and Africa, before returning to his native city to help expel Lygdarnis. This done, he settled down to write his nine histories, which when read at the Olympic gathering were so well received by his peers that each volume was honored with the name of one of the Muses, and the young Thucydides, who was present at the reading, was so deeply impressed by Herodotus' masterly work that he was moved to tears.

Fig. 17: Herodotus (c. 486-424 B.C.) renowned historian and geographer, and scion of a noble Carian family. Inscribed herm, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York

Later in life, Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.) himself became a distinguished historian as well as a distinguished general. Born into a noble Attic family on his father's side, and descended from an aristocratic Thracian family through his mother, Thucydides (Fig. 18) inherited substantial landed estates and gold mines in Thrace, but remained an Athenian citizen to become a leader of the aristocratic party.

Fig. 18: Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.), Historian and general of noble Attic blood on his father's side and aristocratic Thracian blood through his mother. From the bust at Holkham Hall, England

Xenophon (c. 430-354 B.C.) was another historian-soldier, who like Thucydides was descended from an ancient Athenian family of the Erchemia deme. Reputed to be modest, fond of horses and hunting, Xenophon (Fig. 19) was a pious believer in the traditional religion, devoting much time to regular sacrifices in honor of both gods and ancestors. As a professional soldier he fought in many wars, and was chosen to lead the famous March of the Ten Thousand, after the massacre of the Greek generals by the Persians. Xenophon then served with the Spartans before retiring to his estate near Olympia, to hunt, entertain his friends and write his histories.

Fig. 19: Xenophon (c. 430-354 B.C.) the member of a minor aristocratic Athenian family. (Courtesy of Prado Museum, Madrid)

Another contemporary of Xenophon, who reflected essentially the same values, was the Athenian, Phokion (c. 401-318 B.C.), an austere general and statesman of aristocratic origin (Fig. 20), who was recognized as an advocate of moderation and respect for the ancient laws, but who became unpopular because of his open support for the aristocratic party of Athens, and his sympathies for the more conservative and aristocratic traditions of Sparta. Accused by his political enemies of complicity with the Spartans, Phokion was eventually sentenced to death, and like Socrates, complied with the judicial decision by drinking hemlock.

Fig. 20: Phokion (c. 401-318 B.C.) Athenian general and statesman of aristocratic origin, noted for his role as a leader of the aristocratic party.

Also a junior contemporary of Xenophon, was Demosthenes (c. 386-322 B.C.), the renowned Athenian orator, descended from a wealthy and aristocratic Attic family of the Paeania deme. As a distinguished Athenian patriot, Demosthenes (Fig. 21) played an important role in stimulating Athenian opposition to the rising power of Macedon. When Athens was finally occupied by the Macedonians in 323 B.C., he took his own life by poison, dying in the temple of Poseidon on the island of Calauria.

Fig. 21: Herm of Demosthenes (c. 386-322 B.C.) distinguished orator and Athenian patriot of the wealthy landowning Attic deme of Paeania. From the Worsley Collection in Brocklesby Park

No collection of portraits of the Greeks would be complete without some reference to the leading philosophers. Of these Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) was perhaps the most highly born, and therefore most likely to have represented the traditionally Greek element in appearance, unlike many of the earlier Sophists and later philosophers who were often of Phoenician or other Asian origin.
Plato (Fig. 22) was descended from noble Athenian families both through his father Aristos, and his mother Periktione, who was actually a descendant of the old royal family of ancient Athens. Despite his attempt to devise a perfect system of social political organization, Plato essentially still thought in terms of small 'tribal' city-states and highly stratified societies, reflecting much more of the older Indo-European tradition than did the Sophists or his mentor Socrates.

Fig. 22: Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.), prominent philosopher and scion of the royal family of Attica

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the pupil of Plato, was of Macedonian, or at least Ionian, rather than Athenian descent. The Macedonians retained the ancient Indo-European culture and possibly also their genetic identity longer than did the Athenians and Aristotle (Fig. 23) therefore, resembles the Greek nobility in appearance. Indeed, his philosophy represented the logical exposition of traditional Indo-European social beliefs even more than did that of Plato, so that his teachings may be regarded as reactionary compared with those of the Sophists, who were in fact challenging traditional Greek values with ideas imported from overseas. Studying under Plato, he married a daughter of the ruling house of Assos in Mysia, and then returned to Macedon to become a tutor to Alexander the Great.

Fig. 23: Aristotle (c. 384-322 B.C.), born in Macedon. Head from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Figures representing Individuals of doubtful or only partial IE Descent.

Possibly the best confirmation of the determination of the sculptures to portray lifelike replicas of their subjects is to be found in the contrast between the foregoing illustrations and those of non-Greeks and of Greeks who were not of aristocratic descent. These latter generally reveal distinctly different features, thus the busts of the philosopher Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.), whose father was an artisan and whose mother was a midwife, sharply contrasts with all the portraits so far illustrated. Described historically as stocky, broad-nosed with flared nostrils, prominent eyeballs and a thick neck, the features of Socrates (Fig. 24) clearly suggest his non-Eupatrid descent, possibly reflecting Pelasgian ancestry. It is perhaps not surprising that his philosophy also reflected a more revolutionary viewpoint than that of his aristocratic pupil Plato, or of the Macedonian-born Aristotle. Indeed Socrates studied under the Sophists who were often of non-Athenian origin, members of the Levantine and other non-Greek merchants permitted to reside in Piraeus but not allowed to live in Athens or to become Athenian citizens — since Athenian citizenship, for freemen and nobles alike, was an inherited privilage, acquired by right of birth into an Attic phratry, and was granted only to those whose fathers were members of a phratry, and whose mothers were of aristocratic or free-born Greek descent.

Fig. 24: Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.), son of an artisan father and a midwife mother, who was an apprenticed stone-cutter and sculptor before becoming a pupil of the Sophists. (Courtesy of Vatican, Sala delle Muse)

Even when one examines the bust of Archilochus, the distinguished lyric poet of the 7th century B.C. whose father was a Parian nobleman but whose mother was a slave, we observe a distinct variation in the facial features, which may possibly be attributed to the genetic influence of his slave mother (see Fig. 25). Similarly the cripple slave Aesop (Fig. 26), who lived in the early sixth century B.C., and who recounted the wonderful animal fables which are of pre-Indo-European, Mediterranean antiquity, is portrayed quite differently. The 'dark-skinned' Zeno (c. 333-264 B.C.), founder of the novel Stoic philosophy, was referred to by Krates as a Phoenician, also reveals in his undoubtedly noble visage evidence of his Semitic ancestry (Fig. 27). The same can be said of the herrn (Fig. 28) of the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (c. 281-208 B.C.), of Cilician origin. The distinctive and seemingly 'true-lo-life' representation of Menander (c. 342-293 B.C.) also testifies to the sculptor's attempts to faithfully portray individual appearances, rather than a standarized concept of Greek beauty.

Fig. 25: Archilochus (7th century B.C.), Ionic lyric poet — the son of a Parian nobleman by a slave concubine (Courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek)


Fig. 26: Aesop (6th century B.C.), a slave reputed to have been brought to Greece from Anatolia. (Portrait on a kyux in the Vatican)


Fig. 27: Zeno (c. 333-264 B.C.), the Hellenized Phoenician founder of Stoic philosophy.


Fig. 28:Chrysippus(c. 281-208 B.C.), Hellenized Stoic philosopher from Cilicia

Menander (Fig. 29), was born into an Athenian freeman family, in an age in which large numbers of slaves and aliens had already been granted citizenship, so that his freeman status in no way implies original Attic descent. Described as 'perfumed & effeminate', Menander pioneered the 'New Comedy' which totally rejected the old Indo-European tradition of heroic and mythological poetry, using novel poetic forms and language, which was criticized by Phrynichos as 'lacking Attic purity'.

Fig. 29: Menander (c. 342-293 B.C.), the founder of the 'New Comedy', who rejected the more traditional heroic, tragic and lyric traditions in favor of lighter comedies with sensuous love plots

But the most obvious evidence of the realism of the Greek sculptures and the accuracy of their later Roman copies is to be found in the head of Memnon, the Ethiopian favorite of the Sophist (Fig. 30), Herodes Atticus, who lived during the period of Roman domination, when the old god-descended aristoi were virtually extinct, and Greece had become a Roman colony, supplying educated slaves as schoolteachers for the more prosperous Roman families. His African features are clearly indicated by the sculptor, standing in sharp contrast to the Greek and Semitic features illustrated in the other hermae identified in this article.









































































Source : The Journal of Indo-European Studies. Volume 2, Number 4. Winter, 1974. 385-406.
Author : R. Peterson
Additional Material : A gallery of the individuals discussed in this article, with some additional photos.




Source (with references)

[Visigodo]

R. Peterson wrote a book in 1985. The title is "THE CLASSICAL WORLD" from where partially this article is taken. In that work he analyses from an anthropological point of view the Greek and the Roman world. Maybe would be interesting to add part of the end work concerning to the Greeks and the preface of the total work he did just to have a clearer vision of the conclusions that the author arrives. For my point of view it is not so important the fact that the Greek and Roman aristocracies had a certain pigmentation or another but the fact that it is very important to understand how these cultures decayed. Partially for the lack of the creation of new lineages and also because the invasion and assimilation of masses of population without Greek neither Roman authentic blood. This must be something very important for us to understand if we want to preserve Europe as the land of the Europeans.

Here is tha last part of the article about the Greeks:

Literary reference to the Greek gods and heroes also provide us with a Picture of the physical appearance of the ancient Greeks. In the Iliad, Homer identifies most of the gods and heroes as blond and light-eyed. To mention just a few, he specifically includes in this category: Achilles (by contrast with Achilles, the Trojan Hector is described as black-haired), Agamede, Aurora, Briseis, Harmonia, Helen, Herakles, Lyksos, Meleager, Mnelaus and Rhadamanthos. Similarly, Pindar and Theocritus both speak of fair-haired gods, while Poseidon, believed by some to have been a pre-Greek deity of the Aegean, is described as having blue eyes and black hair. This period describe the Greek masses as being dark. Even the learned Jewish author Adamantius, (Physiognomonica III, 32) states: “wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we se proper, tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond; the flesh is rather firm, the limbs straight, and the extremities well made. The head is of middling size, the hair somewhat soft, and a little wavy; the face is rectangular, the lips narrow, the nose straight, and the eyes bright, piercing and full of light; for of all nations the Greeks have the fairest eyes”.
Thus Athene, described by Pindar as the “blond blue-eyed goddess”, is probably typical of the Greek concept of noble physiology, and where coloring has survived on terra cotta figurines this also reflects light hair and blue eyes in almost all cases, except those which are intended to represent grotesque caricatures. Thus satyrs, centaurs, comedians and inferior classes are generally shown with coarse ugly features, woolly hair, thick lips and dark coloring, in striking contrast to the “blond Danai” (Pindar).
The aristocracy of Greece not only practiced close inbreeding –at least in so far as marriage and legitimacy were concerned- but they also appreciated the need to breed for quality if they were to be able to maintain their place in the world. Indeed, Thucydides quotes Brasidas as saying (IV, 126) “we are few in the midst of many foes”- the foes being the Helot or slave classes. The aristocracy consequently resorted to infanticide in the case of ill-born and genetically defective children, and as Plutarch tell us, the Spartiats sought to improve the breed not only of dogs and horses but also of men (Lycurgus 16). Xenophon approvingly commented: “it is easy to see that these measures could not but produce a race excelling in build and in strength”. (Lacedaemians I, 10; V.9)
However, continual warfare – in which the slave or Helot classes were not required to participate – weakened the Greek nobility more rapidly than their conscious breeding and eugenic efforts could remedy. As the centuries passed by, the various Greek states, excepting only Sparta, raised slaves to the rank of freedmen to replace the families, which had been destroyed by continuous warfare. In the Peloponnesian war alone, the Athenians lost some 60,000 nobles and freemen, and after the battle of Chaeronea, 20,000 non-citizens were raised to the rank of citizen. Birth control became popular among the Athenians and other of the non-Doric Greek nations, being most commonly practised by the upper strata of Indo-European origin. Even the Spartiat aristocracy experienced a striking decline in numbers, due to the combined effects of the failure of the birth-rate, heavy losses on the battlefields, and the tendency for young Spartans, renowned for their military prowess, to take service with foreign powers as military leaders, instead of remaining at home in their own small and somewhat puritanical, Lacedaemon.
Consequently the Greek scene changed. Sparta, a nation which was able to field 8,000 Spartatiat noble warriors against the Persians, could produce only 2,000 Spartiat adult males after the battle of Leuktra, and by the year 230 only 700 adult male Spartiats survived. In Athens, the rule of the “demos” triumphed- a demos increasingly comprising freed slaves and non-citizens who had acquired citizenship rights, until Polybius complained, in the second century B.C., that this countrymen were “degenerate, pleasure-seeking beggars, without loyalty or belief, and without hope of a better future”. By this time the original Greek aristocracy had become so small in numbers, so submerged demographically among the vast population of immigrant merchants and freed slaved, that the Roman writer Marcus Manilius, was able to classify the population of latter-day Greece among the coloratae gentes of the Western world (Astronomica IV, 719).

"THE CLASSICAL WORLD" BY R. Peterson.
Preface.

There must be very few scholars who have not entertained some degree of curiosity regarding the physical appearance of the peoples whose language, literature, mythology, artefacts and history they study. In the case of the Greeks and Romans, creator of the great classical civilizations of ancient Europe, everyone has a vague impression of their appearance in their mind’s eye, usually consisting of bearded and perhaps helmeted Greeks, and clean-shaven prominent-nosed Roman dressed in either togas or military armor. We have to thank a casual acquaintance with the many busts and statues which survive to us for these mental images.
However, from an anthropological viewpoint, a much closer identification of the Greeks and Romans seems possible. Unfortunately, because both the early Greeks and the ancestors of the early Romans practised cremation, the skeletal evidence available to us from these remote periods is poor. Despite this, it is possible to identify some of the prehistoric associations of the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans in light of linguistic data. With a closer study of the visual evidence provided by death masks, busts and portraits, combined with such skeletal evidence as we have available, we can then fill in the picture fairly thoroughly.
Both the Greeks and the Romans were of European race, originating (if one may ever say that any particular peoples had an “origin” anywhere, since we are all descended ultimately from the earliest forms of life on earth) in the Upper Danubian valley. This important and fertile river runs from the area of the Black Forest and the lands north of the Alps, through Bavaria and Austria, and thence through the Balkans into the Black Sea. The ancestors of both the Greeks and Romans have been traced archeologically to the Middle and Upper Danube valley respectively.
Also of importance in tracking down the antecedents of the Greeks and Romans is the fact that their language are both of Indo-European or Aryan (as it was formerly called) origin. The main Indo-European language groups of Europe are the Germanic, in Northern Europe; the Celtic, in Western Europe, but originally developing in the Upper Danubian and Upper Rhineland areas; the Italic, of which Latin, the language of the Romans, became historically the most important; the Slavic, spoken in Eastern Europe, and today dominating most of the Balkan and Lower Danubian scene; and Greek, which itself had various dialects, that correlated with the successive waves of Greeks who entered the Greek peninsula and the Aegean over a period of around one thousand years of successive migration and invasion. It should be noted that the Macedonians were Greeks, and that the neighbouring Thracians seem also to have been closely related to the Greeks.
Integrating the evidence of historical linguistics and archaeology, and combining this with the incomplete record of physical anthropology, it would seen that the Greeks and Romans were originally a closely related people, with a very similar cultural. Genetic, religious and social heritage. Liker other Indo-Europeans, they were warlike, being governed by a military aristocracy, and showed a predilection for sending off small bands of warriors, or sometimes moving as a complete national or tribal unit, in conquest of neighbouring territories. Once successful in these conquests, they established themselves as a ruling aristocracy over the subjugated peoples, who with the passage of time generally adopted their language.
In any discussion of the physical anthropology of Indo-European speakers we must immediately recognize that whatever genetic unity the PIE speakers may have possessed, the speakers of the subsequent variety of IE languages represented a relatively diverse variety of peoples from a racial or genetic point of view, following the successive waves of IE expansion which carried Indo-European speech to the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal. However, over the various five or six millennia of expansion and conquest, and expanding IE upper cast may undoubtedly have preserved a high degree of genetic continuity, while effectively superimposing itself upon the conquered autochthonous populations. Those who brought Aryan or Indo-European speech into the newly-colonized territories became a ruling warrior nobility, as testified by the connotation “noble” for arya in India and Persia, aristos in Greece (hence our “aristocracy”) and aire among the Celtic peoples. Indeed, the evidence indicated that to a greater or lesser extend the invading arya, ari or aire maintained strict principles of endogamy in the choice of their official wives, and although in many areas they appear to have made a disproportionately high contribution to the gene pool of the indigenous population through the practice of keeping a large number of concubines, they differed from the Uralic and Semitic peoples in their refusal to grant the illegitimate offspring of such marriages the social status of the father. Thus so far as legitimate offspring were concerned, in aristocratic Greek (and Roman) society, the strict endogamy of the conquering classes was evidenced by the Greek admission that “we choose our wives like we choose our horses: by the length of their pedigrees”- and everyone knows the respect in which the Greeks held their horses, bred for the highest qualities! Evidence there is, particularly among the Greeks, of concubines during the time of Homer, and of heterae during the classical period. But the general fact remained that inheritance, rank and title customarily went only to those of legitimate birth, whose pedigree was sound on the female as well as the male side. Amongst the Romans of the Republic, family consciousness was equally strong, and legitimacy even more thoroughly enforced.
Accepting, therefore, the evidence of archaeology and language for an Indo-European, Danubian origin of both the Greeks and Romans, let us now turn to the evidence of the surviving busts, hermae and statues, as well as the literary evidence, to determine more closely the physical appearance, with especial regard to the face, of the Greeks and Romans as represented by the members of their aristocracies.

[Menydh]

I'm right now translating the first of a series of articles written by Ernesto Milà, where you might find an explanation to that inbreeding on grounds not of race but of caste.

It will take me a little. Each article is fairly long for translating.

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

R. Peterson wrote a book in 1985. The title is "THE CLASSICAL WORLD" from where partially this article is taken. In that work he analyses from an anthropological point of view the Greek and the Roman world. Maybe would be interesting to add part of the end work concerning the Greeks and the preface of the total work he did just to have a clearer vision of the conclusions that the author arrives. From my point of view it is not so important the fact that the Greek and Roman aristocracies had a certain pigmentation or another but the fact that it is very important to understand how these cultures decayed. Partially for the lack of the creation of new lineages and also because the invasion and assimilation of masses of population without neither Greek nor Roman authentic blood. This must be something very important for us to understand if we want to preserve Europe as the land of the Europeans.

Here is tha last part of the article about the Greeks:

Literary reference to the Greek gods and heroes also provide us with a Picture of the physical appearance of the ancient Greeks. In the Iliad, Homer identifies most of the gods and heroes as blond and light-eyed. To mention just a few, he specifically includes in this category: Achilles (by contrast with Achilles, the Trojan Hector is described as black-haired), Agamede, Aurora, Briseis, Harmonia, Helen, Herakles, Lyksos, Meleager, Mnelaus and Rhadamanthos. Similarly, Pindar and Theocritus both speak of fair-haired gods, while Poseidon, believed by some to have been a pre-Greek deity of the Aegean, is described as having blue eyes and black hair. This period describe the Greek masses as being dark. Even the learned Jewish author Adamantius, (Physiognomonica III, 32) states: “wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we se proper, tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond; the flesh is rather firm, the limbs straight, and the extremities well made. The head is of middling size, the hair somewhat soft, and a little wavy; the face is rectangular, the lips narrow, the nose straight, and the eyes bright, piercing and full of light; for of all nations the Greeks have the fairest eyes”.
Thus Athene, described by Pindar as the “blond blue-eyed goddess”, is probably typical of the Greek concept of noble physiology, and where coloring has survived on terra cotta figurines this also reflects light hair and blue eyes in almost all cases, except those which are intended to represent grotesque caricatures. Thus satyrs, centaurs, comedians and inferior classes are generally shown with coarse ugly features, woolly hair, thick lips and dark coloring, in striking contrast to the “blond Danai” (Pindar).
The aristocracy of Greece not only practiced close inbreeding –at least in so far as marriage and legitimacy were concerned- but they also appreciated the need to breed for quality if they were to be able to maintain their place in the world. Indeed, Thucydides quotes Brasidas as saying (IV, 126) “we are few in the midst of many foes”- the foes being the Helot or slave classes. The aristocracy consequently resorted to infanticide in the case of ill-born and genetically defective children, and as Plutarch tell us, the Spartiats sought to improve the breed not only of dogs and horses but also of men (Lycurgus 16). Xenophon approvingly commented: “it is easy to see that these measures could not but produce a race excelling in build and in strength”. (Lacedaemians I, 10; V.9)
However, continual warfare – in which the slave or Helot classes were not required to participate – weakened the Greek nobility more rapidly than their conscious breeding and eugenic efforts could remedy. As the centuries passed by, the various Greek states, excepting only Sparta, raised slaves to the rank of freedmen to replace the families, which had been destroyed by continuous warfare. In the Peloponnesian war alone, the Athenians lost some 60,000 nobles and freemen, and after the battle of Chaeronea, 20,000 non-citizens were raised to the rank of citizen. Birth control became popular among the Athenians and other of the non-Doric Greek nations, being most commonly practised by the upper strata of Indo-European origin. Even the Spartiat aristocracy experienced a striking decline in numbers, due to the combined effects of the failure of the birth-rate, heavy losses on the battlefields, and the tendency for young Spartans, renowned for their military prowess, to take service with foreign powers as military leaders, instead of remaining at home in their own small and somewhat puritanical, Lacedaemon.
Consequently the Greek scene changed. Sparta, a nation which was able to field 8,000 Spartatiat noble warriors against the Persians, could produce only 2,000 Spartiat adult males after the battle of Leuktra, and by the year 230 only 700 adult male Spartiats survived. In Athens, the rule of the “demos” triumphed- a demos increasingly comprising freed slaves and non-citizens who had acquired citizenship rights, until Polybius complained, in the second century B.C., that this countrymen were “degenerate, pleasure-seeking beggars, without loyalty or belief, and without hope of a better future”. By this time the original Greek aristocracy had become so small in numbers, so submerged demographically among the vast population of immigrant merchants and freed slaved, that the Roman writer Marcus Manilius, was able to classify the population of latter-day Greece among the coloratae gentes of the Western world (Astronomica IV, 719).

"THE CLASSICAL WORLD" BY R. Peterson.
Preface.

There must be very few scholars who have not entertained some degree of curiosity regarding the physical appearance of the peoples whose language, literature, mythology, artefacts and history they study. In the case of the Greeks and Romans, creator of the great classical civilizations of ancient Europe, everyone has a vague impression of their appearance in their mind’s eye, usually consisting of bearded and perhaps helmeted Greeks, and clean-shaven prominent-nosed Roman dressed in either togas or military armor. We have to thank a casual acquaintance with the many busts and statues which survive to us for these mental images.
However, from an anthropological viewpoint, a much closer identification of the Greeks and Romans seems possible. Unfortunately, because both the early Greeks and the ancestors of the early Romans practised cremation, the skeletal evidence available to us from these remote periods is poor. Despite this, it is possible to identify some of the prehistoric associations of the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans in light of linguistic data. With a closer study of the visual evidence provided by death masks, busts and portraits, combined with such skeletal evidence as we have available, we can then fill in the picture fairly thoroughly.
Both the Greeks and the Romans were of European race, originating (if one may ever say that any particular peoples had an “origin” anywhere, since we are all descended ultimately from the earliest forms of life on earth) in the Upper Danubian valley. This important and fertile river runs from the area of the Black Forest and the lands north of the Alps, through Bavaria and Austria, and thence through the Balkans into the Black Sea. The ancestors of both the Greeks and Romans have been traced archeologically to the Middle and Upper Danube valley respectively.
Also of importance in tracking down the antecedents of the Greeks and Romans is the fact that their language are both of Indo-European or Aryan (as it was formerly called) origin. The main Indo-European language groups of Europe are the Germanic, in Northern Europe; the Celtic, in Western Europe, but originally developing in the Upper Danubian and Upper Rhineland areas; the Italic, of which Latin, the language of the Romans, became historically the most important; the Slavic, spoken in Eastern Europe, and today dominating most of the Balkan and Lower Danubian scene; and Greek, which itself had various dialects, that correlated with the successive waves of Greeks who entered the Greek peninsula and the Aegean over a period of around one thousand years of successive migration and invasion. It should be noted that the Macedonians were Greeks, and that the neighbouring Thracians seem also to have been closely related to the Greeks.
Integrating the evidence of historical linguistics and archaeology, and combining this with the incomplete record of physical anthropology, it would seen that the Greeks and Romans were originally a closely related people, with a very similar cultural. Genetic, religious and social heritage. Liker other Indo-Europeans, they were warlike, being governed by a military aristocracy, and showed a predilection for sending off small bands of warriors, or sometimes moving as a complete national or tribal unit, in conquest of neighbouring territories. Once successful in these conquests, they established themselves as a ruling aristocracy over the subjugated peoples, who with the passage of time generally adopted their language.
In any discussion of the physical anthropology of Indo-European speakers we must immediately recognize that whatever genetic unity the PIE speakers may have possessed, the speakers of the subsequent variety of IE languages represented a relatively diverse variety of peoples from a racial or genetic point of view, following the successive waves of IE expansion which carried Indo-European speech to the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal. However, over the various five or six millennia of expansion and conquest, and expanding IE upper cast may undoubtedly have preserved a high degree of genetic continuity, while effectively superimposing itself upon the conquered autochthonous populations. Those who brought Aryan or Indo-European speech into the newly-colonized territories became a ruling warrior nobility, as testified by the connotation “noble” for arya in India and Persia, aristos in Greece (hence our “aristocracy”) and aire among the Celtic peoples. Indeed, the evidence indicated that to a greater or lesser extend the invading arya, ari or aire maintained strict principles of endogamy in the choice of their official wives, and although in many areas they appear to have made a disproportionately high contribution to the gene pool of the indigenous population through the practice of keeping a large number of concubines, they differed from the Uralic and Semitic peoples in their refusal to grant the illegitimate offspring of such marriages the social status of the father. Thus so far as legitimate offspring were concerned, in aristocratic Greek (and Roman) society, the strict endogamy of the conquering classes was evidenced by the Greek admission that “we choose our wives like we choose our horses: by the length of their pedigrees”- and everyone knows the respect in which the Greeks held their horses, bred for the highest qualities! Evidence there is, particularly among the Greeks, of concubines during the time of Homer, and of heterae during the classical period. But the general fact remained that inheritance, rank and title customarily went only to those of legitimate birth, whose pedigree was sound on the female as well as the male side. Amongst the Romans of the Republic, family consciousness was equally strong, and legitimacy even more thoroughly enforced.
Accepting, therefore, the evidence of archaeology and language for an Indo-European, Danubian origin of both the Greeks and Romans, let us now turn to the evidence of the surviving busts, hermae and statues, as well as the literary evidence, to determine more closely the physical appearance, with especial regard to the face, of the Greeks and Romans as represented by the members of their aristocracies.

Sapho of Lesbos is known to be have been dark according to her own depiction.

The problem with all those essayist who have written about pigmentation in classical litterature is that they had been most biased in the choice of their texts and retained those which seem the most "convenient to them":


None of them mentions the Ode to Dyonissius in the Homeric hims, for example: this poem tells how this God appeared to a group of sailors under the form of a dark haired & dark eyed man and how the sailors as they saw how him, they immediatly recognised in him his divine nature but they believed that he was the incarnation of either Poseidon, Hephaistos or even Zeus...this shows that ancient greek did not systematically represent their gods as light pigmented.

None of these authors does ever quote the comments on physionomics made by Polemon or Pseudo-Aristoteles
...and about the terracota figurines, there are also painted terracota representing gods & heroes with dark pigmentation...not to tell the studies made by Manzelli on the polychromy of ancient greek statues where blond hair was represented by only 2% of all statues known which had preserved traces of prior painting on only one exemple of light eyed statue.

[Menydh]

I have to agree with SoT. Further, allow me to make a few quick comments.

Originally Posted by VG

From my point of view it is not so important the fact that the Greek and Roman aristocracies had a certain pigmentation or another

Agreed. However, after so much speculation from pseudo-scholars attempting to put the bias into one particular direction, this has turned into a debate which is nearly impossible to avoid in nationalist circles. A diversion and a cause for a strong division in the nationalist cause. Stupid as it may sound, it is the harsh reality.

As a side note, one should expect that under certain latitudes the aristocratic classes would be less pigmented than, for example, the farmers who would be working under harsh sun conditions from dawn to dusk.

This is most noticeable on Minoan pottery and frescoes, where men are always depicted as with darker pigmentation than women.

but the fact that it is very important to understand how these cultures decayed.

Indeed. And pointing to a change in the racial composition is failing to see the reality.

Take modern Europe as an example. Mass immigration is a fairly recent phenomenon when talking of periods of history, and Europe has been in decay for longer than the immigration trends started. In fact the mass immigration phenomenon in Europe is the result of a Europe already in frank decay. Thus, decadence precedes racial changes which come as an more or less direct consequence to the former.

Researchers have pointed to a number of reasons for the decay of each Civilization or Empire. These reasons range from economic factors to relaxation in morals and anything in between. No one single of these reasons mark the decadence, but all in conjunction.

For example, one indication of decadence in modern times may perfectly be the lack of vision when creating myths instead of opening the eyes and looking into the reality. Not necessarily a reason for decadence, but a sign of the decadence in itself.

This must be something very important for us to understand if we want to preserve Europe as the land of the Europeans.

European is not a homogenous element, and never has been. How stripping off their past heritage to a people and thereby provoking a feeling of distrust and hostility helps to preserve Europe as the land of the Europeans, and further to divert a much needed attention and resources from the focus of the problem, is something that I still have to understand.

[Señor Malo]

Are those two men somewhat familiar or are just my glasses that need some cleaning?