Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans white?
Steve Theodore gave an excellent answer. I would add that a Roman (or Greek for that matter) would not really have understood this question in the sense that it's asked.There were certainly Roman citizens with fair skin (the sun-deprived residents of Londinium) and there were Roman citizens from Africa with very dark skin. But modern racial categories can't be applied to antiquity. The closest Roman categories would be place of origin (Spain versus Africa, for example) and citizenship versus non-citizenship, with citizenship being the most important category by far. Citizenship or slavery in ancient Rome didn't correspond to racial categories.If you mean to ask the more specific question of "were Romans of unmixed Latin descent 'white' in the modern sense derived from 19th century Scientific racism" then sure, I guess you'd consider them to be part of the Mediterranean race, but they were "white" in the same sense as Israelites, Egyptians, and North Africans. I am pretty sure that the Latin people's of Italy wouldn't have considered themselves to be more closely related to a "white" group like the Celts than to North Africans. They certainly thought of themselves of being West Asian in origin, Aeneas having come over from Troy.As far as genetics, you could perhaps link the Latin Romans to the Haplogroup R1b descent group, which is pretty European/white as far as it goes, but also has strong clusters in Africa and Asia. You could also link them to the Haplogroup J-P209, which looks a lot more West Asian/East African. Of course, I would argue that genetics isn't really a great resource of racial identity, since race is made up.Calling an Roman or Greek "white" is like calling Cato a libertarian. I sort of see what you're going for, but the term just doesn't fit.
What did the Ancient Romans look like?
I always see in movies that Romans and European Mediterranean peoples looked like Germanic/Celtic peoples. In true cases, I would say that would only happen if a Roman had a child with a Germanic/Celtic person. But I'm referring to most of the people within the Roman Empire. Did they look like modern-day European Mediterranean people? You know, brown-eyed, dark-haired people, etc. Also, when they spoke Latin, what did it sound like?
How did ancient Roman/Greek women dye their hair?
The ancient women did have products such as mixtures of herbal or berry juices blended with oil to temporarily color their hair, but this was not to change the entire color, but rather to blend in or hide the grey. Either that or plucking out the grey as Augustus' daughter did. They did use wigs and hairpieces especially at the times when elaborate hairstyles were fashionable.
How did the ancient greek and romans look like?
The ancient Greeks and Romans were known to have white/olive skin with brown/black hair. The Greeks used to bleach their hair to look lighter, and the Roman women used to bleach their skin or put articial cremes (sorry forgot the name they used) to make their skin look whiter. They had long heads and were naturally shorter than Nordics. The average height for a Roman was 5'6. The Romans and the Greeks used to imagine their Gods and Goddesses as blonde and blue eyed, as that was seen as a rare color in Ancient Greece and Rome. Of course thats not to say there werent any blondes. Aristotle described them as "the perfect race" as they weren't white as Nordics but not dark as Egyptians therefore having the "perfect" complexion. Pretty much they looked Mediterenean/Caucasian and they had that 'Mediterenean look' same like today.
Were the ancient Greeks and Romans all blonde?
No. In fact, it was rare to be blond. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Menelaus (husband of Helen of Troy) in the ancient texts and poetry \ is that he was fair haired. It was unusual, and therefore pointed out all the time. Also, ancient statues were painted (though today the paint is gone so they look like white marble or bronze). There have been reconstructions of the paint colors and the figures were painted with dark hair. See: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cultu... Ancient Roman mosaics depict mainly dark haired people. We also have ancient texts in which blond northern Europeans visited Rome and their blond hair attracted attention as being unusual.
What did the plebeians of ancient Rome wear?
TOGA! TOGA!TOGA! Just playin. Roman men and women, like other Indo-Europeans, originally seem to have worn a large piece of wool, wrapped around themselves. After they met people from Greece and Egypt, around 200 BC, they began to wear linen tunics (like T-shirts) under their wool robes, which was more comfortable. On their feet, both men and women wore leather sandals, or leather boots in cold weather. In their hair, women wore wooden hairsticks or wooden combs, which they could also use to comb their hair. For fancy occasions Roman men always continued to wear their wool robes over their tunics. They called these wool robes togas, and there were a lot of rules about how exactly a man should wear his toga, and who could have a stripe on his toga, and so forth, which helped to show who was rich and powerful and who was poor. Women often wore more than one linen tunic, and a wool scarf or veil over their tunics, which they could pull over their heads if it was raining or cold. Use that information cousin.
Did ancient Romans have soap, and did Roman women shave their underarms and pubic area?
The soap as we know it was used by the Celts. As its most basic soap was fat mixed with ashes. Romans (and Greeks) went to the public bathes. The idea was to sweat so that, as with a sauna, the sweat would get rid of the body's dirt. After this a slave would rub olive oil into the visitor's skin and then scrap it off with a strigil (see link) http://carlos.emory.edu/ODYSSEY/Teachers... Just like the Egyptians and the Greeks before them the Romans did not like pubic hair : young girls began removing it as soon as the first hair appeared. They used tweezers, which they called the volsella (see link). http://www.gsr-roma.com/museo/htm/file%2... They also had a kind of depilatory cream, the philotrum or dropax, the forerunner of the current depilatory creams. Waxing was also a way of depilating; this was done with resin or pitch. There were special slaves to help with depilation, they were called alipilus. Beauty was a smooth hairless body for the women.