an investigation a hard undertaking. It is the purpose of this paper to show that nudity in Greek athletic contest had its origins in ancient Greece and was Associated with the warrior-athlete whose training and competition in the games was at the same time his prep for war. The difference between warriorathlete and athlete is that both were nude but the former wore in particular occasions some parts of his panoply which he discarded as time went on. In http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/t/0/0/brookingsrss/topfeeds/latestfrombrookings/~https://beach-photos.net .C. the armed race (Fig. 1) was introduced at Olympia which can The challengers were nude except for a helmet and greaves, and taken a shield. It's possible that this type of race was practiced in some local contests before its introduction into the Olympic plan. Similar races were held at Nemea and Based on Philostratos were of great antiquity.2 In Athens an attempt was made at the close of the sixth century to introduce loincloths into athletic competitions. This is evident from a little number of black figured Athenian vases (Figs, 2,3) that depict sportsmen wearing loincloths. This effort seemingly failed, and nudity again became the fashion in athletic contest. It is possible that this is what Thucydides and Plato had in mind when they wrote that the intro of nudity in the games had taken place just before their own time. The small number of these vases (520-500 B.C.) * I 'm glad for the useful criticism and comments of anonymous reviewers of this Journal. 1. Also see Kenneth Clark, The Nude:A Study of Ideal Art (London, 1957), pp.21. 162, 163. Commendable help toward understanding a phenomenon within a higher civilization. When, nevertheless, http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/exit.aspx?url=http://nudism.name to locate the origin of the trouble, which is lost in the dark mists of prehistoric time he cannot use the same reasoning (selfcontrol, health and beauty arguments) to explain it. If one does so he must be ready to admit that all races of the world began their existence on earth at the underparts of the the scale with the exception of the Greeks. But the Greeks, like all other human races, commenced their livelihood at the bottom of the scale and worked their way up from savagery to civilization and admittedly retained some survivals of that old state. This paper tries to clarify the condition of the human race, its psychological nature and reasoning, its mental and moral abilities, and its protracted struggle against anxiety. 2. For Philostratos as an inaccurate source see E. L. Bowie, "Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic," Past and Present 46 (1970): 17. For click on the armed-race see Aristophanes Fowl 291; 8, 24.
Red-body Attic Vase. (1903) amount 14. Sports.3 This wasn't an attempt to "reintroduce" but rather to introduce loincloths in the games because prior to these vase renderings there is nothing in Greek art to signify the existence of loincloths in sport. The alleged change from loincloths to nudity is not illustrated in any Greek art. Thucydides wrote that the Spartans "were the first to bare their bodies and, after stripping openly, to anoint themselves with oil when they engaged in athletic exercise." https://www.dhs.gov/redirect?url=http://videonudism.com of Halicarnassos believed that "The first guy who Thucydides' statement?" See E. Norman Cardiner, Sport of the Ancient World (Oxford, 1930), p. 191 (hereafter mentioned as AAW). On loincloths see, e.g., J. C. Mann, "Gymnazo in Thucydides 1.6.5-6," Classical "While the representations of sportsmen on vases had generally portrayed them naked, it may be that an effort to reintroduce loincloths were made in Greece before Thucydides' time (as suggested by E. N. Gardiner [AAW] ad fig. 163 .)". James Arieti, "Nudity in Greek Athletics," [431 11.31 said: "E. Norman Gardiner [AAW, p, 191] suggests, on the basis of a vase belonging to the ending of the sixth century this time. But Gardiner is himself very unsure on this point, raising it merely as a question, and there is no real evidence the loincloth was reintroduced." Both Mann's and Arieti's statements are wrong since Gardiner
|