undertook to strip and ran naked at Olympia, at the fifteenth Olympiad, was
Acanthus the Lacedaemonian.’14
There’s a competing convention told by Pausanias about Orsippos of Megara, “who
won a foot-race at Olympia running nude at a time when athletes used to wear
loincloths in the old style.” There is a Hellenistic epitaph about Orsippos that
was inscribed on the athlete’s tomb in Megara saying that he was the first of the
Greeks in Olympia crowned nude and that before him all athletes girded
themselves during the games. It truly is clear that the Megarians were making a
counterclaim to Sparta’s and desired to demonstrate a native of Megara was the
first nude victor. The narrative about Orsippos appears ambiguous and doubtful
since there are several different stories about his performance in the race.
Based on the Homeric scholiasts (on Iliad 23.683) Orsippos not only lost
the race but he tripped, fell, and died when his loincloth came adrift. A different
Narrative mentions Orsippos not as a winner in the race but as a loser because he
became entangled in his shorts.5
Another tradition points to the Athenians as the inventors of nudity in
athletics. A runner, according to this tale, leading the field lost ground and fell
4. Thucydides 1.5.6. ( http://beach-photos.net . Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1928) Trans. by Charles
Foster Smith; Dionysios of Halicarnassos 7.72.3 (The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass., and London,
1928) Trans. by E. Gary.
5. Pausanias 1.44.1. (The Penguin Classics. Great Britain, 1971) Trans. by Peter Levi; 1.G 7.52; Joseph
Fontenrose, “The Hero as Athlete,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968): 93; F. Bohringer, “Cults
D’Athlttes en Grce Classique: Propos Politique, Discours Mythiques,”Revue des Erudes Anciennes 81 (1979):
Loft stamnos of the late 6th century B.C., E. Norman Gardiner Athletics of the Early
World (Oxford University Press, 1930), fig. 163. (Courtesy of Oxford University Press).
because his short pants floated freely down to his legs; so the Athenian archon
Hippomenes in order to prevent any return of the injury, applied, by
law, that all men in the future should work out nude.6
So while most conventional sources assign nudity in athletics as early
as the 8th century B.C., Plato and Thucydides believed that it happened not
long before their own era.
It appears from two Homeric references to boxing and one to wrestling that
athletes girded themselves during their athletic competitions. These three
citations prompted some scholars to conclude that nudity wasn’t a practice
among the Mycenaean Greeks, assuming that Homer described in his epics
Mycenaean sport practices. But there is enough evidence to demonstrate that many of
the games and same sex on the beach described in Homer’s epic poems were anachronistically introduced by the poet into his epics. The Homeric epic poems, it has
been pointed out, represented fit practices of many periods, including the
poet’s.7 It becomes clear that the Homeric athletes girded themselves for the
contact occasions. Unfortunately the poet didn’t say anything about loincloths for
6. lsidoros Orig. Et. 18.172.
7. See Iliad 23. 685; 23. 710; Odyssey 18.76; John Mouratidis, “Greek Sports, Games and Festivals Before
the Eighth Century B.C.” (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1982). pp. 193.219, 235-237.
Source of Nudity in Greek Athletics
the other games. Do we need to assume that they contended nude in these
events? It really is hard to say. One might well suggest the Homeric references to
loincloths in sports reveal a practice of the poet’s own time since the stuff
Signs shows that nudity was not unknown in Mycenaean Greece.
It is possible that Ionia, Homer’s own birthplace, was impacted by the existing practice in the oriental world. In the time of Herodotos (5th century B .C.), the
Lydians, and barbarians in general, considered that it was a shame for a man to be
seen naked. This Anatolian attitude towards nudity was apparently shared, to
some extent, by the Greeks who lived in places under Anatolian influence. An
Sign of this influence is that the inhabitants of the coast of Asia Minor
borrowed and acquired various elements of oriental dress in addition to various hair
Designs. Furthermore, the Persian pointed hat and shoes with effeminate connotations
and the long-sleeved chiton were embraced by the Phrygians and Ionian Greeks
during the period of Persian rule.8 Additionally the lavish Ionian garments that
Herodotos regularly describes were rather characteristic of the oriental world.
Some authors point to Thersites to demonstrate that to be seen naked was considered
indecent in the Mycenaean or Homeric times. Thersites was threatened by Odysseus with the public degradation of running nude to the Greek ships. This
punishment must have been a shameful and humiliating one, but this must have
steperinor1973 