did not say "reintroduce" but "introduce" (See Cardiner, AAW p. 191).
undertook to strip and ran naked at Olympia, at the fifteenth Olympiad, was
Acanthus the Lacedaemonian.'14
There's a rival tradition told by Pausanias about Orsippos of Megara, "who
won a foot-race at Olympia running naked at a time when sportsmen used to wear
There is 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 athletes girded
themselves during the games. It truly is apparent that the Megarians were making a
counterclaim to Sparta's and needed to show a native of Megara was the
first naked victor. The storyline about Orsippos appears ambiguous and doubtful
since there are several different stories about his performance in the race.
Based on the Homeric scholiasts (on Iliad 23.683) Orsippos not only lost
the race but he tripped, fell, and died when his loincloth came adrift. A different
Narrative mentions Orsippos not as a winner in the race but as a loser because he
became entangled in his short pants.5
Sports. A runner, according to this story, leading the field lost ground and dropped
4. http://nudist-video.net . Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1928) Trans. by Charles
1928) Trans. by E. Gary.
5. Pausanias 1.44.1. (The Penguin Classics. Great Britain, 1971) Trans.
Fontenrose, "The Hero as Athlete," California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968): 93; F. Bohringer, "Cults
D'Athlttes en Grce Classique: Propos Politique, Discours Mythiques,"Revue des Erudes Anciennes 81 (1979):
World (Oxford University Press, 1930), fig. 163. (Courtesy of Oxford University Press).
because his shorts floated freely down to his legs; so the Athenian archon
Hippomenes in order to prevent any return of the accident, enforced, by
law, that all men in the future should work out naked.6
So while nearly all conventional sources impute nudity in sports as early
as the 8th century B.C., Plato and Thucydides considered that it occurred not
long before their own era.
athletes girded themselves during their athletic competitions. These three
citations prompted some scholars to conclude that nudity was not a practice
One of the Mycenaean Greeks, assuming 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 epics were anachronistically introduced by the poet into his epic poems. The Homeric epic poems, it's
been pointed out, reflected fit practices of many eras, including the
poet's.7 It becomes clear that the Homeric athletes girded themselves for the
contact occasions. Sadly the poet didn't say anything about loincloths for
6. lsidoros Orig. Et. 18.172.
7. See Iliad 23. 685; 23. 710; Odyssey 18.76; John Mouratidis, "Greek Sports, Games and Festivals Before
the Eighth Century B.C." (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1982). pp. 193.219, 235-237.
Source of Nudity in Greek Sports
the other games. Do we need to presume that they competed nude in these
events? It is hard to say. One might well suggest that the Homeric references to
loincloths in sport reveal a practice of the poet's own time since the stuff
Signs demonstrates that nudity wasn't unknown in Mycenaean Greece.
It's possible that Ionia, Homer's own birthplace, was impacted by the existing practice in the oriental world. In the time of Herodotos (5th century B .C.), the
Lydians, and barbarians in general, believed that it was a disgrace for a guy 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
Sign of this influence is that the inhabitants of the coast of Asia Minor
borrowed and acquired various elements of asian dress as well as various hair
styles.
and the long-sleeved chiton were adopted by the Phrygians and Ionian Greeks
during the period of Persian rule.8 Moreover the epicurean Ionian garments that
Herodotos often describes were quite characteristic of the oriental world.
Some writers point to Thersites to show 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 naked to the Greek boats. This
punishment must have been a black and humiliating one, but this must have