Unlike some neighbouring peoples, most ancient Greeks did not treat tattoos as beauty or status. Tattooing was more often linked to slavery, punishment and stigma.
Greeks used marks mainly on slaves, prisoners of war and criminals. The mark identified the person and served as social control. A free citizen avoided a permanent mark on the body, because it could be read as shame.
The word “stigma” comes from the Greek practice of marking with a hot iron or ink. The modern sense of the word, social disgrace, grew from that use.
Greeks knew the art. Through contact with Thracians and Scythians they had seen tattoos used as signs of bravery, faith or rank. There were exceptions, but the prevailing ideal was a natural, unmarked body. Tattoos did not become a common form of personal expression.
Branding as punishment
Herodotus records that before Thermopylae in 480 BC, some Greeks went over to the Persians. Greek cities agreed that those who defected under necessity would not be punished, while those who joined the Persians from cowardice or choice would be. Thebans under Leontiades left the Greek side and offered the Persians earth and water. When they were brought before the Persian king, some were killed and most were branded, on the grounds that men who betrayed their own city would later betray Persia. After the Persian defeat, the branded found it hard to return to Thebes.
Plutarch writes that after Athens defeated Samos at sea, Athenian captors branded prisoners with the samaina, the mark of a Samian ship. Later the Samians, under Melissus, defeated the Athenians and branded them on the forehead with an owl. Pericles later reduced Samos.
A runaway slave who was caught could be marked with his master’s symbol, so he would be easier to trace.
One story about Diogenes runs the other way. His slave ran away. Friends caught the man and told Diogenes to tattoo him. Diogenes refused: a slave could live without Diogenes, but Diogenes could not live without his slave.
The ancient Greeks did not avoid tattoos because they had never seen them. They associated them, in the main, with punishment and loss of status.
