A draft of an essay-in-progress about heroic beauty

Abstract

I am putting together here a draft of some thoughts I have had lately about heroic beauty as expressed in the visual arts of ancient Greek material culture. My aim is to turn these thoughts, informal as they are for now, into a formal essay that I am preparing at the request of two dear colleagues who are organizing an art exhibit titled “Heroic Kállos.” I am attracted to their use of the ancient Greek noun kállos = κάλλος, meaning ‘beauty’, but my thoughts now turn to a Modern Greek adjective as well, oréo– = ὡραῖο-, meaning ‘beautiful’. I propose here to reconstruct an earlier meaning of this word in ancient Greek, and I will connect that meaning with the very idea of heroic beauty, male or female. Further, I will argue that the goddess Hera, endowed with her own personal beauty, was a model for picturing this idea.