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

THE HuMaAN FIGURE

while they made the married women remain at home.

Besides, what has been said will only hold good for the Doric stock, of whose freer conception of such things we have already spoken at some length ; among the somewhat pedantic inhabitants of Attica gitls may certainly have been forbidden to look on at the competitive exercises of young men.

The Dorians, and especially Sparta, were freer from prejudice in this respect. When Plato demands (Laws, vii, 804) that young men and young women should carry on gymnastic exercises without discrimination as between the sexes, and indeed, as was a matter of course at that time, with naked bodies, we recognize in this the Spartan point of view ; but we can also understand why the pedantic narrow-mindedness, which certainly at that time existed though it did not hold sway, felt that his proposals were unseemly. Nevertheless, his demand was carried out among the non-Dorian states, at least by the inhabitants of the island of Chios, where, according to the express testimony of Athenzus (xiii, 566¢), no person took offence if he happened to be present at the running and racing contests of naked boys and girls in the gymnasia.

Of Sparta we know perfectly well that the girls there carried on gymmastic exercises as earnestly as did the young men; but whether on these occasions they were completely naked or were only lightly clad has been discussed in detail by learned men of both ancient and modern times. The question cannot, however, be decided with absolute certainty, since the word gymmos (as remarked before) means both “ naked” and also “ only clad in the chiton ”, and, moreover, it does not seem of such importance that it is worth while to waste much time over it. In any case it is certain that the Spartan girls, although not completely naked, yet at all events carried on their bodily exercises so lightly

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