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

THE Human FIGURE naked), all clothing was thrown off in bodily

exercises. ‘There is certainly nothing new in this, and it is hence superfluous to confirm this generally known fact by passages from ancient literatures which might be quoted in vast numbers. Also the countless representations in pictorial art, which have scenes from the gymnasium for their subject, especially vase paintings, attest complete nakedness and hardly ever cause any such offence as the humdrum Romans of old times felt at this complete denudation, as is shown by a verse of Ennius, preserved by Cicero (Tusc. Disp., iv, 33, 70): “ Shame has its beginning in public nakedness.”

Yet the Romans went so far that they did not consider it decent for growing boys to bathe with their fathers, or sons-in-law with their fathers-inlaw (Cicero, De Officiis, i, 35, 129). Plutarch (Cato Minor, 20) confirms this, but adds that they had very soon learnt the perception of the naked from the Greeks and then on their part the Greeks introduced the custom of men and women bathing together.

3. GYMNASTICS

If then, to return to our subject, nakedness in the gymnasia might be regarded as a fact well-known to most people, it will perhaps not be superfluous to say a few words on the gymnasia in general, of which many, influenced by the modern meaning of the word, might form a wrong idea. The normal arrangements of a Greek gymmnasion is in the main described as follows by Vitruvius (v, 11) who lived in the time of the Emperor Augustus and has left a valuable work on architecture. The gymnasium (the Latin equivalent) in the first place contains a large peristyle, that is, a space surrounded by columns, in extent about two stadia (1,200 feet), enclosed on three sides by simple colonnades, and towards the south by a double colonnade within

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