Ghost of a flea

Imagine David Beckham naked within an ankle-length dress of gossamer linen designed by Mariano Fortuny, his sinuous contrapposto exaggerated by the clinging cloth, his genital mound and the muscles of his buttocks thrusting against it. I write of Beckham because he is by so many regarded as a sportsman of great physical beauty, setting a benchmark for the ordinary mortal of today, and on view in the British Museum there is, for the moment, an Olympian Beckham of more than two millennia ago, a benchmark of male beauty then. It is a sublime sculpture of such realism and sexuality, such serene pride and magnificence, such grandeur, nobility and even majesty, that I stood in awe of it for minutes, in a milling crowd yet quite alone — and just as well, for in its presence I could not have spoken. It was for me a Stendhal moment.