Perseus killed Medusa. The peculiar exception granted the arts from various codes of modesty over the centuries, resulting both in countless Renaissance Classicist and Neoclassical depictions of nude Greek goddesses.
A further paradox : the artist who are supposed to be decadent, by reason of their attempt to maintain continuity with the past, living connection with the art of the past, rather than naïve emulation of it.
Donald Kuspit
How did ancient greeks look like?
Imagination sometimes says more than volumes of sociopolitical analysis.