undertook to strip and ran nude at Olympia, at the fifteenth Olympiad, was
Acanthus the Lacedaemonian.'14
There is a rival tradition told by Pausanias about Orsippos of Megara, "who
won a foot-race at Olympia running naked at a time when athletes used to wear
There's a Hellenistic epitaph about Orsippos that
was inscribed on the sportsman's tomb in Megara saying that he was the first of the
Greeks in Olympia crowned naked and that before him all sportsmen girded
themselves during the games. It truly is obvious that the Megarians were making a
counterclaim to Sparta's and wanted to show a native of Megara was the
first naked victor. The story about Orsippos seems ambiguous and dubious
since there are a number of different stories about his performance in the race.
the race but he tripped, fell, and died when his loincloth came adrift. A distinct
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
Sports. A runner, according to this tale, leading the field lost ground and dropped
4. http://dynel.spicybunny.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=nudist.pro/videos/here-we-go-longer.html . (The Loeb Classical Library. by Charles
1928) Trans.
5. Pausanias 1.44.1. (The Penguin Classics.
Propos Politique, Discours Mythiques,"Revue des Erudes Anciennes 81 (1979):
Attic stamnos of the late 6th century B.C., E. Norman Gardiner Athletics of the Ancient
(Courtesy of Oxford University Press).
because his shorts floated freely down to his legs; so the Athenian archon
Hippomenes in order to prevent any recurrence of the accident, enforced, by
law, that all guys later on should exercise nude.6
So while nearly all conventional sources assign nudity in sport as early
as the 8th century B.C., Plato and Thucydides considered that it happened not
long before their own age.
It appears from two Homeric references to boxing and one to wrestling that
Sportsmen girded themselves during their athletic competitions. These three
citations prompted some scholars to conclude that nudity wasn't a practice
among the Mycenaean Greeks, presuming that Homer described in his epics
Mycenaean sport practices. But there's enough evidence to demonstrate that many of
the games and athletic practices described in Homer's epic poems were anachronistically introduced by the poet into his epics. http://cabanabreeze.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=nudiststeen.com/tube/nudism/mature-nude-beach-voyeur.php , it has
been pointed out, represented athletic practices of many ages, including the
poet's.7 It becomes clear that the Homeric athletes girded themselves for the
contact occasions. Regrettably the poet did not say anything about loincloths for
6. lsidoros Source. Et. 18.172.
7. See Iliad 23. 685; 23.
the Eighth Century B.C." (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1982). pp. 193.219, 235-237.
Origin of Nudity in Greek Sport
the other games. Do http://www.dareen.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=nudismhq.com/contents/26365242/5.html need to presume that they competed naked in these
events? It is hard to say. One might well imply that the Homeric references to
loincloths in sports represent a practice of the poet's own time since the substance
Signs demonstrates that nudity was not unknown in Mycenaean Greece.
It is possible that Ionia, Homer's own birthplace, was determined by the existing practice in the oriental world.
Lydians, and barbarians in general, believed that it was a shame for a man to be
seen nude. This Anatolian attitude towards nudity was apparently shared, to
some extent, by the Greeks who lived in regions under Anatolian sway. An
Indicator of this influence is that the inhabitants of the shore of Asia Minor
borrowed and adopted various components of oriental dress as well as various hair
Designs.
and the long-sleeved chiton were embraced by the Phrygians and Ionian Greeks
during the period of Persian rule.8 Additionally the luxurious Ionian clothes that
Herodotos often describes were rather characteristic of the asian world.
Some authors point to Thersites to reveal that to be seen nude was considered
indecent in the Mycenaean or Homeric times. Thersites was threatened by Odysseus with the public degradation of running nude to the Greek boats. This
punishment must have been a shameful and humiliating one, but this must have