However this may be, the European admiration for blondes dates back to early classic times.  Gods and men in Homer would appear to be frequently described as fair.[156] Venus is nearly always blonde, as was Milton’s Eve.  Lucian refers to women who dye their hair.  The Greek sculptors gilded the hair of their statues, and the figurines in many cases show very fair hair.[157] The Roman custom of dyeing the hair light, as Renier has shown, was not due to the desire to be like the fair Germans, and when Rome fell it would appear that the custom of dyeing the hair persisted, and never died out; it is mentioned by Anselm, who died at the beginning of the twelfth century.[158]

In the poetry of the people in Italy brunettes, as we should expect, receive much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred.  When we turn to the painters and poets of Italy, and the aesthetic writers on beauty from the Renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is unqualified, though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for blue eyes.  Angelico and most of the pre-Raphaelite artists usually painted their women with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown with the artists of the Renaissance period.  Firenzuola, in his admirable dialogue on feminine beauty, says that a woman’s hair should be like gold or honey or the rays of the sun.  Luigini also, in his Libro della bella Donna, says that hair must be golden.  So also thought Petrarch and Ariosto.  There is, however, no corresponding predilection among these writers for blue eyes.  Firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though not black.  Luigini said that they must be bright and black.  Niphus had previously said that the eyes should be “black like those of Venus” and the skin ivory, even a little brown.  He mentions that Avicenna had praised the mixed, or gray eye.

In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we have a record.  “Even before the thirteenth century,” remarks Houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern France during mediaeval times, “and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost exclusively used."[159] He mentions that in the Acta Sanctorum it is stated that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow.  In the Chanson de Roland and all the French mediaeval poems the eyes are invariably vairs.  This epithet is somewhat vague.  It comes from varius, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term iris to describe the pupillary membrane.[160] Vair would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality.