Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE Human FIGURE

to prepare their minds for rising to the idea of the most beautiful.”

One might also think, and has often thought, that nakedness gave no offence to the Greeks in any circumstances. But important testimony proves this to be erroneous. Plato says expressly (Repub., v, 452): “ It is not long ago since it was ridiculous amongst the Greeks, as it still is among most of the non-Greeks, for men to allow themselves to be seen naked,” and Herodotus (i, 10) gives the same as the opinion of ‘“ Lydians and other non-Greeks ” ; indeed, he affirms that it was considered “‘a great shame by them”. In confirmation of this view one may refer to the example of Odysseus (Odyssey, vi, 126) who is washed ashore, shipwrecked, and naked in the land of the Phzacians, and, when he hears the laughter of maidens in the neighbourhood, “breaks off from the thick bush a leafy branch with his strong hand to cover his nakedness.” In the national games at Olympia, from about 720 B.C., it was the custom for the runner to appear, not completely naked, but with an apron round his hips, as ‘Thucydides expressly attests in a well-known and much discussed passage (Thuwc. i, 6). Only we must beware of tracing back this partial covering to “moral” reasons ; it is rather the remains of an opinion influenced by the East, as is clear from the passages quoted from Plato and Herodotus. ‘This also follows from the fact that the Greeks freed themselves from the Oriental point of view and from 720 onwards allowed runners and indeed all the other contestants to appear quite naked. Consequently the Greeks, the healthiest and most esthetically perfect people hitherto known to the world, soon felt a covering of the sexual parts, while the body was otherwise uncovered, to be unnatural, and recognized that such a covering only had any meaning if one had ascribed a moral and inferior value to their functions. But just the opposite was indeed the case, so that

88