How common is fair hair and skin in Greeks?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m asking because I keep running into descriptions of various historical Greek personages where they’re described with light-colored (blonde, red) hair and very pale skin. Most of the Mediterranean-type people I’ve seen are dark-haired and dark-eyed. But from a description from the historian Michael Psellos’ Chronographia:

The Empress Zoë was “naturally more plump, although she was not strikingly tall. Her eyes were large, set wide apart, with imposing eyebrows. Her nose was inclined to be aquiline, without being altogether so. She had golden hair, and her whole body was radiant with the whiteness of her skin.”

Emperor Constantine IX was “ruddy as the sun, but all his breast, and his lower parts down to his feet, together with their corresponding back parts, she coloured the purest white all over, with exquisite accuracy. When he was in his prime, before his limbs lost their virility, anyone who cared to look at him closely would surely have likened his head to the sun in its glory, so radiant was it, and his hair to the rays of the sun, while in the rest of his body he would have seen the purest and most translucent crystal.”

Psellos was, btw, a contemporary of these people and met them personally. So I trust that he was remembering them accurately. So is fair coloring common in Greeks?

2

When I was in Greece I saw that while most people had dark hair and olive-y skin, a small portion of the population (can’t give you a real figure) was blonde, and most of them didn’t look dyed, though of course only their hairdressers know for sure. Difficult to say on the skin part–everyone I saw obviously spent a lot of time out in the sun, so.

3

Most greeks are darker skinned and with dark/black hair. You see some northern European types but I suspect they are recent immigrants. As an aside, some Greek women die their hair blonde. That’s not a good look, with darker skin, IMO.

4

From what I recall of Ancient Egyptian art, fair hair and skin can’t have been all that uncommon in Greeks. The Egyptians portrayed the Greeks as lighter than themselves, while also portraying Kushites as darker than themselves.

5

I’ve never been to Greece, but I’m half-Greek, and most Greeks I know have dark hair and eyes. But not all – I had a college instructor who had reddish-blond hair. It was quite a surprise when he first spoke – you’d have thought he was going to sound like Hank Hill.

I’ve heard that the people living in Greece today bear little if any ethic relation to the people who lived there in ancient times. Perhaps someone who knows more could address this?

6

That’s ethnic, not ethic. :smack: