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

GYMNASTICS

clad that the moral heroes of our time would not have got out of it without a shock or, more precisely, without sensual excitement ; and it is also more than probable that custom in such matters may have varied more or less from time to time. If the fairly numerous passages of old writers, where information is given on the point, be examined impartially, we can only think that they were completely naked ; and such is the opinion also of Roman authors when they speak of the nuda palestra, the naked wrestling place of Spartan girls, as Propertius, Ovid, and Martial (Prop. iii, 14; Ovid, Heroides, xvi, 149 ; Martial, iv, 55) do, not without a delighted smirk and tacit acquiescence. This explains how the expression ‘‘ to behave in Dorian fashion ”’ became synonymous with “ to strip oneself’, which would also agree if the girls wore in their bodily exercises the light everyday clothing (already described), thanks to which they were not infrequently bantered by the rest of the Greeks as “ thigh-showers ”’. Also the question, whether male spectators were admitted to the exercises of the girls dressed (or more correctly undressed) in such a manner cannot be settled convincingly, since on this point our information appears to be contradictory. When, for instance, Plutarch (Lyc., 15) against Plato (Rep. v, 458—against this Thectetus, 169)) 1 affirms that these exercises of undressed girls took place before the eyes of young men, and with the express addition (an attack on Plato) that there were sexual reasons for this, namely, to encourage young men capable of marrying to do so; this contradicts Plato’s express statement that in the Spartan gymnasia the principle held good—“ Undress and practise gymnastics together, or get away,” which consequently excluded the hanging about of idly gaping spectators which was so offensive to the Romans (Seneca, De brevitate vite, 12, 2). That,

_* According to Stobzeus (Sermones, 44, 41), the exercises of boys and girls were separate ; according to Eurip. (Andromache, 591) in common.