Reading Response around 500 words(History of Art)

Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art

Larissa Bonfante

American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 93, No. 4. (Oct., 1989), pp. 543-570.

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Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art LARISSA BONF ANTE

Abstract The Greeks saw their custom of athletic male nudity

as something that set them apart from the barbarians, as well as from their own past. A survey of male nudity as a costume in Greece attempts to trace its origin in eighth- century ritual, its gradual transformation from initiation rites to the "civic" nudity of the Classical period, and its significance in various religious, magic, and social con- texts. The character of this institution can be seen more clearly by comparing it with earlier Near Eastern atti- tudes to nakedness, and to the later contemporary "bar- barian" attitudes of the Hebrews, Etruscans, and Gauls, as well as to the contemporary views of female nudity, before its acceptance in the Hellenistic period.*

Among the innovations of the ancient Greeks that

changed our way of seeing the world, one of the most prominent is a certain kind of public nudity-nudity

* An earlier version of the present article was presented at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1980. I am grateful for the support and advice of Homer and Dorothy Thompson, Christian Habicht, S.D. Goitein, W.S. Heck- scher, Seth Benardete, Leo Raditsa, Myles McDonnell, Nancy de Grummond, Judith Swaddling, Ingrid Strem, Brunilde S. Ridgway, Evelyn B. Harrison, R. Ross Hol- loway, Mark Davies, Michael Vickers, Brian Shefton, Hans Jorg Bloesch, and the anonymous AJA reviewers.

In addition to the standard AJA abbreviations, the fol- lowing are used in this article: Boardman, J. Boardman, Athenian Black

Black Figure Vases Figure Vases (London 1974). Boardman, Red J. Boardman, Red Figure Vases:

Figure Vases, The Archaic Period (London Archaic 1975).

Boardman, J. Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Sculpture, Archaic Archaic Period (London 1978).

Boardman, J. Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Sculpture, Classical Classical Period (London 1985).

Bonfante, L. Bonfante, Etruscan Dress (Balti- Etruscan Dress more 1975).

Brendel O.J. Brendel, Etruscan Art (Har-

Burkert, Greek Religion

Dover

Frankfort

Hurwit

mondsworth 1978). W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cam-

bridge, Mass. 1985; originally pub!. Stuttgart 1977).

K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London 1978).

H. Frankfort, The Art and Archi- tecture of the Ancient Orient (Harmondsworth 1956, rev. 1958).

J. Hurwit, The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 7100-480 B.C. (Ithaca 1985).

American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989) 543

as a costume. 1 This is a surprising phenomenon. That we have not been more surprised by it is due to the fact that we follow in their tradition and take the Greeks

as models, forgetting how often their institutions and attitudes made them the exception, and not the rule,

among ancient peoples. The Greeks of the Classical world did not forget. While not, as we shall see, fully understanding the significance of the custom, they

were proud of its singularity. A study of nudity in Greece needs to be undertaken

from the historical point of view. I limit myself, in the present article, to a consideration of the evidence of art

and literature in an attempt to understand what lay behind the words and figures concerning and repre-

senting nudity that have come down to us, and to ex- plain something about the original character of an-

LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly Pritchard, ANE J.B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near

East, abridged (Princeton 1958). Pritchard, ANET J.B. Pritchard ed., Ancient Near

Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton 1955).

Richter, Kouroi G.M.A. Richter, Kouroi 3 (New York 1970).

Robertson M. Robertson, A History of Greek Art (Cambridge 1975).

Thuillier J.-P. Thuillier, Les jeux athtetiques dans la civilisation etrusque (Rome 1985).

1 For nudity in ancient art, see EAA 5 (1963) 576-81, s.v. Nudo (G. Becatti), with previous bibliography. See also J. Heckenbach, De nuditate sacra sacrisque vinculis (Gies- sen 1911); Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 102, 111; Dover; L.P. Wilkinson, Classical Attitudes to Modem Issues (London 1978) III, "Nudism in Deed and Word" (orig. pub!. En- counter 51, August 1978); and E. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus (New York 1985). For "Heroic Nudity," the mod- ern term most frequently used, and often misused, see now N. Himmelmann, Ideate Nacktheit (Opladen 1985); an ear- lier, Italian version appeared as "Nudita ideale," in S. Settis ed., Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana 2 (Turin 1985) 199-278. Himmelmann traces the iconography of the male and female nude in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as the development of "heroic" or "ideal" nudity in the later scholarly tradition. Kenneth Clark's The Nude. A Study in Ideal Form (New York 1956) has made it possible to look beyond this post-Classical convention to a past when nudity's power was in full force. For later interpretations of male and female nudity, see C.M. Havelock, "Plato and Winckelmann: Ideological Bias in the History of Greek Art," Source 5.2 (Winter 1986) 1-6.

544 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

dent nudity and its transformations in Greece. We can at least begin to see the phenomenon of Greek nudity, not as totally isolated, but in the context of the ancient world.

THE QUESTION

Five basic reasons accounting for mankind's use of clothing will be found to be applicable at various stages of our discussion of nudity: 1) as protection against the elements, especially the cold; 2) for social reasons, to distinguish members of a tribe or class; 3) from a sense of shame; 4) for aesthetic reasons, as dec- oration, pleasure, beauty, and to attract the opposite sex; 5) for apotropaic reasons, to turn away the effects of magic, sorcery, the evil eye, and hostile spirits. We shall see that one or more of these considerations can also explain what nudity once meant for the Greeks- and how it changed. 2

Though it does not serve as a protection against the weather (1), nakedness, like clothing or armor, was used to distinguish social groups (2), in life and in art. Clothing, in fact, distinguishes human society, civilized people, from animals and wild beasts, which are naked. Humans wear clothes, animals do not. In a clothed society, however, nakedness is special, and can be used as a "costume." As it developed, Greek nudity came to mark a contrast between Greek and non- Greek, and also between men and women. The latter distinction is connected with the most basic connota- tion of nakedness, the sense of shame, vulnerability and exposure it arouses in person (3), and the related sense of shock provoked by its sight. Clothing is designed to avoid such powerful emotions by covering the body, es- pecially the male genitals, the phallus, and female gen- itals and breast. A "body taboo" against nakedness in public is fairly universal. 3 There originally existed in

2 RE 16.2 (1935) 1541-49, s.v. Nacktheit (F. Pfister); quoted and discussed in C. Seltman, Women in Antiquity (New York 1955) 34-37.

3 S. Freud, Totem and Taboo (New York 1950) 14, 31, and passim. For nakedness, see H.C. Warren, "Social Nud- ism and the Body Taboo," Psychological Review 40 (1933) 160-83; T.O. Beidelman, "Some Nuer Notions of Naked- ness, Nudity, and Sexuality," Africa 38 (1968) 113-31. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London 1966) is especially useful for the connection between taboo and ritual, to be treated later in this paper; for the distinctions between male and female, humans and the wild, and for bodily magic, invested with power and danger.

4 Clark (supra n. 1). 5 See infra ns. 18-19, 28. For the nudity of Ishtar, the

Semitic goddess of love and beauty, queen of heaven, and lnanna, the goddess of the planet Venus, see J.B. Pritchard, Palestinian Figurines in Relation to Certain Goddesses

Classical antiquity, as elsewhere, a garment designed to hide the wearer's sex organ, a loin cloth,perizoma or diazoma, as the Greeks usually called it. The beauty of the naked body ( 4) has often been exalted. Its erotic and aesthetic appeal, as Kenneth Clark has shown, has caused a different word to be used: this aspect of naked- ness is known as "nudity."4

In the ancient Near East Ishtar, 5 and in the West Aphrodite, 6 the goddesses of love, were traditionally naked. The beauty and strength of the naked male body were also praised, and heroes, such as the Mas- ter of Animals, were represented naked, or wearing only a belt. 7 It was the Greeks who brought into our culture the ideal of male nudity as the highest kind of beauty. Greek art and athletics exalted the beauty of the youthful male athlete, whose figure provided the model for the hero or youthful god. The image of the nude young male, the kouros statue of early Greek art (contrasting with the clothed female, the kore), em- bodied the arete or glory of an aristocratic youth, who was kaloskagathos, "beautiful and noble." 8

Because of the powerful emotions of shame, shock, lust, admiration, violation, pity, and disgust aroused by the sight of the naked human body, the most fre- quent associations are with taboo, magic, and ritual (5). When the sexual organ was uncovered, its power was unleashed. Apotropaic and magical nudity, in- volving the exposure of male genitals and female breasts, and the exhibition of the enlarged male phal- lus have been used from early times, and testify to the enduring force of this complex image. As a taboo, it can protect against the evil eye. Like the Gorgon's gaze, it can paralyze or protect. The partial nudity or exposure of a woman's breast or genitals, for example, can signify weakness and powerlessness; but it can also function as powerful magic. 9 In art and in life,

Known through Literature (New Haven 1943), esp. 83-87; M. Mellink, "A Hittite Figure from Nuzi," Vorderasiati- sche Archiiologie. A. Moortgat . .. gewidmet (Berlin 1964) 155-64; and A.-J. 'Amr, "A Nude Female Statue with Astral Emblems," PEQ 117 (1985) 101-11.

6 LIMC II, s.v. Aphrodite (A. Delivorrias) passim. 7 Naked hero wearing a belt, in Near Eastern art: Frank-

fort, pl. 6, cup and base from Tell Agrab. See also stands for bowls or plates to be placed before the gods (26-27, pl. 20b): "In all these cases, where the figures are not statues in the narrow sense, but temple furniture, they are naked, wearing only a triple girdle. We cannot decide whether they depict human or mythological beings. Perhaps these naked girdled figures are another version of the hero of pl. 6, and of the seals of all later ages."

8 Infra ns. 36-39 for the kouros. 9 Aspects of the image of the phallus, the women's breast

or organs, and of the gorgon mask converge; they are pitiful or powerful, vulnerable or magic. See L. Bonfante, "Icono-

1989) NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 545

belief in such magic powers is well attested in many cultures throughout history, and has survived into our own times. Phallic or "priapic" figurines and amulets, as well as obscene gestures, still serve as protection against the evil eye in many parts of the world. When dress is normal, exhibitionist acts of nakedness often have a magical meaning. In the realm of magic, nudity wards off a spell or other harmful form of magic, com- pels love, and gives strength to one's own practice of witchcraft and conjuring. 10 Since, then, in a clothed society nudity was special, monstrous, dangerous, and powerful, 11 complete nakedness was avoided in every- day life. It was saved for special situations or specific ritual ceremonies.

Language, too, preserved traces of this magic power of nakedness. The word, like the fact, had to be avoided, so that its magic power could be preserved. A linguistic taboo thus caused the form of the word for "naked" to change, in all the Indoeuropean languages. Though gymnos, nudus, nackt, etc. were all originally related to each other-so linguists assure us-they were all transformed in varied and unexpected ways, so that their original similarity is practically unrecog- nizable.12 For most parts of the body, there is what Devoto called a "compact" vocabulary: 13 the words for "heart,'' "eye,'' "foot,'' "knee," "nose,'' "tooth,'' "eye- brow" are basically the same in all the Indoeuropean

grafia della madre nell'arte dell'ltalia antica," in A. Rallo ed., Ladonna in Etruria (Rome 1989) and T.H. Price, Kou- rotrophos (Leiden 1978). For the power of the evil eye and the Gorgon, see A. Riess, infra n. 149; and Y. Korshak, Frontal Faces in Attic Vase Painting of the Archaic Period (Chicago 1987), particularly the conclusion, 43-44. Diony- sos is not shown with frontal face because "this is too indec- orous, too insecure a mode for a divinity, even for the god of wine." For Freud's (and the Freudian) view towards Medu- sa's head, see L. Schneider, "Ms. Medusa: Transformations of a Bisexual Image," The Psychoanalytic Study of Society 9 (New York 1981) 105-53. "At ... the level to which Freud addressed himself, she represents the child's equation of sep- aration as castration" (p. 105).

1° For the magic power of the sight of the naked body and the sexual organs, see M. Nilsson, GGR 3 118-20, "Der Phallos"; and R. Payne Knight, A Discourse on the Subject of Priapus (London 1786), repr. as Sexual Symbolism (New York 1966). On erotic art, magic and superstition, see 0.J. Brendel, "The Scope and Temperament of Erotic Art in Greco-Roman Art," in T. Bowie and C. Christenson eds., Studies in Erotic Art (New York 1970) 3-107;). Boardman and E. La Rocca, Eros in Greece (New York 1978) 40-41; 53-56, 65, on nudity in daily life and art; 130-32 on the naked Aphrodite. C. Johns, Sex or Symbol: Erotic Images of Greece and Rome (London 1982) Ch. 3, "The Phallus and the Evil Eye," 61-75; A. Dierichs et al., Erotik in der Kunst der Griechenlands (Ant W 19, 1988). See Dover 105 for the god Priapus, who watches over gardens, threatening intrud- ers with his huge phallus. Infra n. 117.

languages. Differences can be accounted for, even ex- plained, by linguistic "rules." But words for "naked," as well as the names of certain parts of the body- finger, tongue, hand, and hair-are different in the different languages. How can this be explained? Indo- europeans obviously had fingers, tongues, hands, hair, and nakedness; and they must have had names for them. (They did not, as in the case of "lion," for exam- ple, have to adopt the name for the object from another language.) There must have been some other reason at work to account for the absence of a consistent pattern in these words. Such a reason can be found in the powerful connotations of certain parts of the body, and of nakedness. These were such that the word was avoided, and a euphemism, or a distortion substituted. The Greek word alaoia, "shameful things," for sexual organs, like the Latin word pudenda, shows that male nudity was not always accepted. 14

The category of nudity as magic is closely related to several types of nudity we shall be discussing. Reli- gious nudity covers a vast area of meaning. Divine nudity characterizes gods and goddesses. The divine nudity of the goddesses Astarte, Ishtar (regularly shown in frontal nudity), Aphrodite, Venus, and others signifies fertility, fecundity, and power. 15 Rit- ual nudity refers to nudity as a special mode of dress- ing for initiation rituals for boys and girls, for sacred

11 New Catholic Encyclopedia 10 (Washington 1967) 559, s.v. Nudity (A. Closs). E.J. Bickerman, CP41(1946)122: "In a 'clothed' society, where garments are a social obliga- tion, nakedness is an exception, and as such a monstrosity."

12 On linguistic taboo, the basic works are A. Meillet, Lin- guistique historique et linguistique generate (Paris 1926) 281-291; G. Bonfante, in Melanges Bally (Geneva 1939) 195-207; W. Havers, SB Wien 1946, 55, for the taboo of the parts of the body. More recently, see G. Bonfante, "La paro- la 'nudo' e la nudita sacrale fra gl'Indoeuropei," Archivio Glottologico Italiano 66 (1981) 89-92; and "L'interdizione linguistica de! capello," AttiLincei 41 (1987) 57-58. Gym- nos: Griechisches etymologisches Worterbuch I (Heidelberg 1960) 332-33, s.v. yvµvos (H. Frisk); Dictionnaire etymo- logique de la langue grecque II, E-K (Paris 1970) 241-42, s.v. yvµvos (P. Chantraine). See also E.H. Sturtevant, "Gymnos and Nudus," A]P 33 (1912) 324-29; Thuillier 392-93. For nudus, see E. Peruzzi, Origini di Roma (Flo- rence 1970) 77-78: Peruzzi's explanation of the licium as related to nudity seems preferable to one connecting it with the magic of knots and magic, as suggested by P.G. Max- well-Stuart, "Per lancem et licium: A Note," GaR 23 (1976) 1-4.

13 G. Devoto, Origini indoeuropee (Florence 1962) ix, 195, 203 and passim.

14 Chantraine (supra n. 12) 31, Frisk (supra n. 12) 34-35, s.v. aiioµaL. LSJ 35, s.v. alaoL'av. C.T. Lewis and C. Short, Latin Dictionary (New York 1907) 1486, s.v. pudenda. Further references, supra n. 12.

15 Supra n. 5; infra ns. 18-19, 28.

546 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

prostitutes serving at the temple, for a priest sacrific- ing before his god. 16 Clearly dress and undress, na- kedness and nudity, are related in meaning and cir- cumstance.

The Old Testament includes a famous account of the origin of clothing that reveals some of the basic ancient connotations of nakedness and clothes. Ac- cording to Genesis (6.7), Adam and Eve invented a garment to hide the sex organs of men and women- the Greek Septuagint called it a perizoma. They did this to keep from being ashamed of-and/or shocked by-their nakedness after they had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they discovered that they were naked; so they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths." (In the Vulgate: Et aper- ti sunt oculi amborum: cumque cognovissent se esse nudos, consuerunt folia ficus, et fecerunt sibi perizo- mata ... ) 17 Whatever the meaning (or meanings) of nakedness in this passage, the purpose of the perizoma was clearly to avoid appearing naked before each other, as male and female, and before God. It was not for protection; for only afterward (Gen. 3.21) did God give them fur coats to protect them from the cold.

Just as clothing could serve different purposes, so nakedness and nudity could have different meanings. This seems to be shown by the story of Ishtar, the god- dess who in art normally appeared in frontal nudity, in the full pride of her beauty and power. In the story of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld, she is pro- gressively stripped of her jewels and ornaments as she enters each of the seven gates. At the last, the gate- keeper removes her "breechcloth," and the goddess of

16 Already in the Protoliterate period nakedness signified service to the gods. On a vase from Warka, a frieze shows men bringing gifts to the goddess, "naked, as was common then and throughout Early Dynastic times when man ap- proached the gods" (Frankfort 10, pl. 3). For temple prosti- tutes, see Frankfort 194; Hdt. 1.199. For initiation rituals, see A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago 1960; trans. of Les rites de passage, 1908) 65-115; nudity and cos- tumes, 81-84; sacred prostitutes of antiquity, 100. "Van Gennep makes a sharp distinction between religion and magic" (S.T. Kimball, "Introduction," p. ix).

17 Gen. 3-7. J.L. McKenzie, "The Literary Characteris- tics of Genesis 2-3," Theological Studies 15 (1954) 541-72. Cf. Gen. 2.24-35; 2.25: Erat autem uterque nudus, Adam scilicet et uxor eius; et non erubescebant. For the Hebrew text, see Worterbuch biblischer Bilder und Symbole (Mu- nich 1973) 218-20, s.v. Nacktheit (N. Lurker). New Catho- lic Encyclopedia 10 (Washington 1967) 559-60, s.v. Nudity (in the Bible) (F.J. Montalbano).

18 For this passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. by E.A. Speiser, see Pritchard, ANET 105-109; ANE 82-85.

19 The Akkadian is ,fUbli.t balti, "robe of shame," in R. Labat, Manuel d'epigraphie akkadienne 5 (Paris 1976)

fertility appears completely naked, deprived of her di- vinity and dignity. 18 Even she can be stripped and shamed. (The Akkadian phrase for the loincloth is "robe of shame," sometimes euphemistically rendered as "robe of splendor.") 19 There was evidently all the difference in the world, to ancient eyes, between a glo- riously, divinely naked figure wearing jewelry, a crown, a loincloth, even a belt, and one not wearing anything. Being "stark naked" meant poverty, as well as shame.

In the Old Testament nakedness always signifies poverty, shame, slavery, humiliation. In the ancient Near East and elsewhere it is a sign of defeat-naked, bound prisoners were paraded in the king's victory celebration, and are thus represented on innumerable monuments. 20 The slain enemy, regularly stripped of clothes or armor, lies naked. As in a dream of anxiety, nakedness exposes you to fear and shame. But the Greeks were to turn the concept around and to see the beauty and pride of the male human body, without cover or adornment.

Herodotus and Thucydides correctly saw athletic nudity as a custom-much more than a costume!- that separated the Greeks from other people. Herodo- tus, in his well-known story about King Gyges ( 1.10.3 ), comments that "among the Lydians, as among just about all the other barbarians, even for a man to be seen naked brings great shame." The pas- sage in Thucydides (1.5-6) is more complex, and we will deal with part of it later. He, too, emphasizes this basic contrast between Greeks and barbarians; adding the fact that the custom separated the Greeks from their own past as well. It was, indeed, an unprece-

324 (~ubli.t), 297 (balti), "robe of splendor": D. Marcus, A Manual of Akkadian (Latham, Md. 1978) 158. The prede- cessor and prototype of the Semitic myth of "Ishtar's Des- cent to the Nether World" is the Sumerian myth, "Inanna's Descent to the Nether World": here, Inanna is deprived of all her queenly jewels and of a garment translated as "the pala-garment, the garment of ladyship," with which she had previously covered her body. Pritchard, ANET 52-57, esp. 53-55; D. Wolkstein and S.N. Kramer, lnanna. Queen of Heaven and Earth (New York 1983) 59, "the royal robe." Cf. Burkert (infra n. 38) 139, on "the female successively stripped of her clothing and finally hung from a beam," as "evocative of a ritual execution." I thank Ayako Imai for the Gilgamesh reference, and Sharon Keller for the interpreta- tion of the passage, as well as the Akkadian references.

2° For nudity in the Bible, see Lurker and Montalbano, supra n. 17. For bound prisoners, see, among many other monuments, an ivory carving from Megiddo (1350-1150 B.C.), in Pritchard, ANE, fig. 90; and a fragmentary Akka- dian steatite vase in the Louvre (second half of the third mil- lennium) in A. Parrot, The Sumerians (Milan 1968) figs. 229-30. For the corpse of the enemy under the victorious chariot, see Frankfort, pl. 161, relief from Carchemish.

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 547

dented departure from a norm accepted in every other time and tribe. "Formerly, even in the Olympic games, athletes competed with a diazoma, or perizo- ma. A number of other customs show that the Greeks once lived like the barbarians of today." Many other passages could be cited to show that the Greeks be- lieved that the custom of nudity marked a break with their own earlier tradition.

What led to this change? Explanations have for the most part referred to the Classical period, and empha- sized one or another aspect of this custom: the artistic nudity of the kouros, the monumental statue of a standing youth, or the real-life nudity of the athlete.

I would like to try to trace the origin and develop- ment of such an important phenomenon. Of the many questions involved, several must for the moment re- main unanswered; this is a work in progress. The ten- tative nature of some of my suggestions will, I hope, stimulate others to treat this important subject. In try- ing to sort out the different chronological levels of Greek nudity and their significance, I have attempted to do what I did for the Roman triumph, 21 finding, along the way, how differently Greek and Roman sources deal with central features of their cultures: typically, Roman tradition sees continuity, Greek his- torians stress innovation. The result is schematic, but I hope, helpful.

The Greek word for naked, or nude, is gym nos, and shows something new in the ancient world. The word refers to total nudity. In Classical times, a man was not gymnos if he wore a perizoma. In a military con- text gymnos meant "unarmed" (fl. 16.815, etc.), not covered by armor, exposed (Thuc. 3.23, 5.10.71; Xen. Hell. 4.4.12); and "light-armed," as opposed to the heavy-armed hoplite. The gymnon stadion (Pind. Pyth. 11.49) was the race run without armor, in con- trast to the hoplitodromos. By far the most common usage, however, was specifically "exercising in the nude." 22 The word had become something new,just as the Greeks had made something new of the ancient so-

21 L. Bonfante, "Roman Triumphs and Etruscan Kings: The Changing Face of the Triumph," ]RS 60 ( 1970) 49-66.

22 As Sturtevant (supra n. 12) and J.C. Mann ("Gymnazo in Thucydides, 1.6.5-6," CR 24 [ 194 7] 17-78) have clearly shown, yvµvos and nudus meant "completely naked," not "scantily clad," without a chiton, or a mantle. They point out that modern prudery caused a standard dictionary such as LSJ (yvµvos, 3) to translate yvµvos as "wearing a chi- ton,'' and the OCD 2 (s.v. Athletics) to claim that only boxers and wrestlers stripped completely (Sturtevant 324, Mann 178). Many handbooks and commentators have likewise been reluctant to admit that yvµva(w always meant "to ex- ercise completely naked,'' or that the nudity of Spartan women was not relative, but absolute. Cf. Sweet (infra

cial, religious, and magic taboo of nudity in daily life. For while the word for "naked" had universally-in the Bible, for example-been used to mean "poor," "wretched,'' or "miserable," in Classical Greek the word rarely means "poor." When did the change come about?

ARCHAIC PERIOD

In Homer's poems, of around 800 B.C., nakedness implies shame, vulnerability, death, and dishonor. The naked body of the hero must be rescued. Thersi- tes is threatened with being stripped and run naked through the assembly. Odysseus covers himself with leaves before Nausicaa.23 The latter instance, of course, may be due to the specific circumstances. The hero is meeting a young, unmarried woman for the first time, and it would hardly be appropriate for him to appear before her completely naked. Homer pre- sents us, it seems, as so often, with the old and the new, the traditional and the earliest instance of what is to come.

A crucial passage seems to illustrate such a coexis- tence. In the 22nd book of the Iliad, Priam and Hecuba in turn attempt-in vain-to dissuade Hector from going to battle and to certain death. Both appeal to his compassion, and respect, by facing him with the spec- tacle of their nakedness. The sight of one's parents' na- kedness is awesome. 24 Priam paints a picture of his own death and degradation. An old man's death is ugly: "When an old man is dead and down, and the dogs mutilate the grey head and the grey beard and the parts that are shameful (alow), this, for all sad mortali- ty is the sight most pitiful" (fl. 22.74-76). Immediately after this, Hecuba exposes her breast and holds it out for Hector, in entreaty (79-81). This pitiable signifi- cance refers to the traditional sense of nakedness.

What is new is what Priam contrasts with the grisly, shameful, ugly death of an old man: the beauty of the nakedness of a young man. "For a young man all is decorous when he is cut down in battle and torn

n. 69) 44. Chantraine and Frisk (supra n. 12) have also re- marked on the use of gymnikos, along with hippikos and mousikos, in a competitive, agonistic context, typically Greek in contrast to the otherwise normal meaning of "naked" as "poor." Cf. A.E. Raubitschek, "The Agonistic Spirit in Greek Culture," AncW7 (1983) 3-7.

23 Becatti (supra n. 1) 578. Hom., II. 2.260-64. "ra r'alow aµt/JiKaAv7TTH." On the naked body of the hero in the Iliad, see W.T. MacCary, Childlike Achilles (New York 1982) 152-62: nakedness is associated with death and castration: a naked man is like a woman, weak and defenseless. For Nau- sicaa, see Hom. Od. 6.126-29.

24 Compare the story of the drunken Noah, Gen. 9.21-23.

548 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

with the sharp bronze, and lies there, and though dead all that shows about him is beautiful ... " (fl. 22.71-73). The picture is startling at such an early date. It was understandably famous. Echoes of the passage sounded down the centuries, among them Tyrtaios's well-known poem, with its contrast of ugly and beautiful.

For this is shameful, for an older man fallen in battle among the front line fighters to lie before the young men, an older man with his hair white and beard sil- very, breathing his virulent life into the dust, his bloody genitals in his hands and with his skin all bare. This sight is shameful for the eyes to behold and repre- hensible. But in contrast among young men all these things are proper as long as he shines in the bloom of lovely youth manhood. They are admirable for men to see and wonderfully attractive for women while he is alive-and he looks also honorable and beautiful fallen in the front line. 25

There is no sign of any difference between Greeks and barbarians in Homer in terms of language, reli- gion (the Trojans' sacrifice at the temple of Athena), dress, or nudity. In the athletic competitions, the heroes "gird their loins" to prepare for the wrestling match. Ancient authors assumed this meant that they wore the perizoma. Recently others have suggested that they were engaged in belt-wrestling, known from the ancient Near East, where nude male figures wear- ing thick belts were common in early or protohistoric times. 26

Ancient Near Eastern monuments illustrate vari- ous types of nudity, including the motif of a hero wearing a belt, which does not hide his genitals, and boots. 27 Otherwise heroes tended to be clothed, and to

25 Tyrtaios, fr. 7 (11.15-31). 26 Hom., e.g., fl. 23.685; 23.710. Zwvv1nn is often trans-

lated by the general term "gird one's loins," and a (wcrT1JP is a metal belt, a protective piece of armor: see S. Karouzou, ArchDelt 16 (1960) 60-71, for a list of Homeric passages. C. Gordon ("Belt-Wrestling in the Bible World," Hebrew Union College Annual 23 [1950-1951 J 131-36) interprets this passage and fl. 23.710 as meaning that the contestants put on a belt for wrestling (cf. 23.684, boxing). On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (7.72.3) cites the same passages (and Od. 18.66-69, 18.76) as evidence that the Greeks did not compete in the nude in ancient times. In his own time this (wµa would seem to have signified pants or loincloth, since a plain belt would hardly keep the contestant from being naked. See Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 109 n. 4. For Near Eastern belted figures, supra n. 7. Particularly convincing as belt-wrestlers is the group from Tell Agrab (Frankfort 27, pl. 20c). For belt-wrestling, see also Polia- koff (infra n. 54) 31-33.

27 Frankfort 12, pl. 6c: "a naked hero occurs commonly in this period." One of these is "hardly a mere mortal, in spite of the homely details of his rope girdle and mountaineer's

cover their genitals. Total nudity for men could sig- nify service to the god, a ritual "costume."

The nude woman, always shown in front view, was a very common motif that could have different mean- ings at different times. In Near Eastern art goddesses were so represented, chief among them Ishtar (Astarte), whose powerful, naked image was widely distributed, and influential in many places and peri- ods. 28 The most frequent connotation of female nudity in historical times seems to have been service rendered in the temple. 29 For men, however, in the ancient Near East and elsewhere it was a sign of defeat. As in the Old Testament, nakedness signifies poverty, shame, slavery, humiliation. 30

Greek prehistory offers fewer examples of complete nudity. Active younger men and heroes were repre- sented in art wearing the perizoma or short pants 31

throughout the Aegean and the whole Mediterranean, in contrast to older men, dressed in long chitons and mantles. Thus exposed to the sun, they evidently de- veloped the dark suntan with which they were regu- larly shown in contrast to the white skin of the women, who were more covered and went out less into the sun. This traditional iconography appears, for ex- ample, on the fresco of the bull-jumpers from Knossos (ca. 1450 B.C.). A man and two women are perform- ing a bull-jumping exercise. All three are wearing the athletic perizoma. Only the color, white for the wom- en, dark for the man, distinguishes the sexes. 32 This sports costume, the short pants, trunks, or perizoma, had a long life. It is found in later, Classical times, worn by women athletes, as well as by the barbarian neighbors of the Greeks, the Etruscans and Romans. 33

boots ... "; 237, n. 36: "He is not mentioned in literature, and his identification with the hero of the Gilgamesh epic is entirely without foundation."

28 For Ishtar, supra ns. 5, 18-19. Frankfort 12: "Ishtar, in later times, was a goddess of war as well as love."

29 For temple prostitutes, see supra n. 16. 30 Supra ns. 17, 20. 31 Pausanias (1.44) also uses the participle (avijp 7rEp1-

E(wcrµ(vos). "Perizoma" refers as well to later garments, or to Roman equivalents: see Plut. Vit. Rom. 21 (7rEp'i(wµa), Aem. 33, Arr. 4.8.16; Polyb. 66.25.3. Other words used were lha(wcrTpa (Ath. Deipnosophistae 13.607c), or 01a- (wµa (Lucian, Alex. 13). The verbs 7rEp1(wvvvµ1or01a(wv- vvµ1 were also used, meaning "to put on the perizoma." Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 19-21.

32 W. Deonna, Le symbolisme de l'acrobatie antique (Coll- Latomus 9, 1953) esp. 65, "Resume." For the Toreador fresco, see S. Hood, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece (Har- mondsworth 1978) 60, fig. 44.

33 Female athletes: Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 21, with ref- erences. In Greece, women wore the perizoma when per- forming the pyrrhic, or armed dance; see J.C. Poursat, "Les

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 549

Nudity appears in Geometric art, in a different con- text. Long after the Mycenaean age, Geometric artists in Athens reintroduced the human figure in art and developed a different set of conventions for its depic- tion. Most of the male statuettes of Geometric age are nude; some wear a belt but this does not hide their genitals. In vase painting, too, male nude figures ap- pear, in scenes of funerals, war, or processions, where it was not necessarily a depiction of reality. It is diffi- cult to see that such male nudity has any connotation other than that of distinguishing gender. Figures wearing long skirts could be either women or chario- teers, dressed in long robes according to the earlier convention. J.L. Benson has suggested that some ex- amples of a charioteer not wearing a robe, and thus presumably naked, might be attributed to a strong feeling, even at this early date, "for the arete in the unclad state of warriors and athletes." At what stage in Greek history can one safely assume such a feeling to have existed? Perhaps, in Geometric art, as in Ho- mer, it was just beginning to exist, but was not yet fully developed, even for nude male figures repre- sented with pronounced sex organs. 34

Indeed, we seem to see a gradual development to- ward a restriction of nudity in Greek art, or rather a definition of it as heroic, divine, athletic, and youthful for men; and something to be avoided for women. A group composed of a big bronze statuette of a youth from Dreros (more than 2Yz ft high), found together with two smaller female figures, already shows, in the

representations de danse armee dans la ceramique attique," BCH 92 (1968) 550-615, figs. 24, 51-55. Etruscans and Romans: Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 21, 28. See infra n. 119.

34 Robertson 19-21 (Geometric experimentation), 39 (sphyrelata from Dreros). J.L. Benson, Horse, Bird and Man. The Origins of Greek Painting (Amherst 1970) 105-107. Hurwit 98-99: " ... the distinctions are minute: the Dipylon Master's mostly nude figures, male and female, on all seven of the vases attributed to him ... are essentially the same figure." I am grateful for the help of an anonymous A] A reviewer on this point.

35 Robertson 39, 43. J. Boardman, CAH, plates to Vol. III (Cambridge 1984) 210, no. 276.

36 Richter, Kouroi. Robertson 39-47, 76, 112, 143. Board- man, Sculpture, Archaic 20-24, 64-66. B.S. Ridgway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton 1977) 45-83; E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton 1960) 116-45. See R.R. Holloway, A View of Greek Art (New York 1974) 197-200, for the Greek view of artistic images, especially sculpture, as motionless, divine, heroic.

37 For the satyr, see Robertson 126-27. See also C. Berard and C. Bron, "Le jeu du satyre," in La cite des images (Paris 1984) 127-45. On satyrs and satyr plays, E. Simon, "Satyr- plays on Vases in the Time of Aeschylus," in D. Kurtz and B. Sparkes eds., The Eye of Greece. Studies in the Art of Athens (Cambridge 1982) 123-48. Ithyphallic satyrs, as

eighth century B.C., the distinction between nude male kouroi and clothed female korai. It is hard to know to what extent the youth's nudity was already significant: Robertson suggests the group represented Apollo with Leto and Artemis. 35

In the seventh century B.C., there began to appear statues of naked youths, life-size or over, monumental, heroic, divine, votive, or funerary-the kouroi. 36

Egyptian art inspired the size, pose and type of kou- ros, but its nudity was a Greek innovation.

On the other hand, the apotropaic, magical quality of nakedness survived in other nude, or rather, phallic male figures which soon made their appearance in Greek art. Satyrs, animal-like human figures with horses' tails, were represented full of vitality, naked, with exaggerated huge phalli (or phalluses), on black- figured vases of the sixth century B.C. Actors who represented satyrs in the theater in the fifth century wore animal-skin loincloths with a large phallus sewn on. 37 The herms the Athenians encountered daily in the streets of their city, from ca. 540 B.C. on, were not, strictly speaking, nude, since they had no body. Each consisted of a male head sculptured on a pillar, on which was carved an erect phallus, serving as a re- minder of the powerful magic residing in the alerted male member (fig. 1). 38 At the time of the mutilation of the herms, the city of Athens perhaps feared treason as mass castration.

In art, therefore, the nude male figure reigned from the seventh century B.C. on. On the kouros, the sex

well as male and female nudes, appear in Dierichs et al. (supra n. 10).

38 Paralipomena 402. Boardman, Red Figure Vases, Ar- chaic 364. R. Lullies, Die Typen der griechischen Herme (Konigsberg 1931). For herms, see H. Goldman, "The Ori- gin of the Greek Herm," AJA 46 (1942) 58-68; E.B. Harri- son, Agora XI: Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (Princeton 1965) 108-17; Robertson 285-86. H. Wrede, Die antike Herme (Mainz 1986), with review by A. Hermary, Gno- mon 61 (1989) 75-76. For their apotropaic power, see the explanation in W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979) 40-41, who quotes Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 682 on why they averted the evil eye. Burkert also quotes Pollux 7.108 as evidence that the Greeks found them laughable, geloia. The laughter they created is a normal reaction to the power of the sexual object or subject because of embarrassment, shame, magic power, etc.; see also Plato, text, infra n. 85; it is often connected with aggression (see infra n. 61). Frontal face and phallus: supra n. 9. Hermes was also the god of the palaestra, and of wres- tling: a herm presided over the palaestra, and sometimes was enough to set the scene for the viewer (Poliakoff [infra n. 54] 12-13). For herms as symbols of Attic unity and Athenian democracy in the fifth century, see B.M. Lavelle, "Hipparchos' Herms," EchCl 29 (1985) 411-20.

550 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

Fig. 1. Nolan amphora by the Nikon Painter. Herm. Bos- ton, Museum of Fine Arts 68.163. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Landon T. Clay)

was simply uncovered; while the phallus was empha- sized on satyrs and herms, and on the stage. The two types were destined to become quite distinct by Classi-

3 9 I owe this observation to one of A] A 's anonymous reviewers.

40 Boardman, Sculpture, Archaic 69, 87. Infra n. 77. 41 Hurwit 191-202. Ridgway (supra n. 36) believes "the

early kouroi are not generic representations of youths, but portray Apollo himself" (27) . Andrew Stewart instead re- affirms the priority of the generic kouros type over individ- ual manifestations as Apollo, stressing the heroic ambience of the Attic graves, and above all showing their role as sym- bols of aristocratic arete and kalokagathia . A.F. Stewart, "When Is a Kouros Not an Apollo? The Tenea 'Apollo' Re- visited," in M. Del Chiaro and W.R. Biers eds., Corin- thiaca . Studies in Honor of D.A. Amyx (Columbia, Mo.

cal times; any original relation was unrecognized by the enlightened intellectuals of fifth-century Athens. There were to be, in fact, during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., "two concurrent strains of nudity in Greek art: one reflecting a magical or apotropaic func- tion (herms, satyrs, etc.), characterized by the erect phallus; another, developing from athletic nudity, a more empirical interest in the naked, athletic male body (kouroi, athletes and male figures in black- and red-figure vase painting), where the sex organs them- selves are less obtrusive." 39

Nudity was certainly significant for the image of the kouros. Exceptions like the statues of draped youths from Asia Minor, probably influenced by the attitude of the neighbors of the Ionian Greeks, among whom, as we have seen, male nudity was considered shameful ,40 only serve to underline the extent to which, in mainland Greece, the consistent attributes of the kouros were its nakedness, its youth, and, conse- quently, its beauty. But what was the significance of such nudity? The kouros seems to have been in some way "archetypal"; it was used in a variety of contexts. Like the kore, it could stand as a marker over a grave or as a dedication in a sanctuary. 41 A kouros some- times represented Apollo (fig. 2), 42 and was sometimes dedicated for an athletic victory. Given the relation- ship often assumed, no doubt correctly, between the nudity of the kouros figure and athletic nudity, it is somewhat surprising to note that no kouroi were found at Olympia. Kouroi and korai were the "em- blems and embodiment of Archaic Greece's aristo- cracy-its beautiful people"; they were the visible form of their ideals of beauty and nobility, of their heroic arete and kalokagathia. 43 Although I think a connection with athletic nudity existed, I believe it was indirect rather than direct. The kouroi were not, as has been pointed out, primarily athletic. Their various functions were all in some way religious. They were gifts for the gods, or for the dead. In some cases, as mentioned above, they actually did represent a god, Apollo (fig. 2). Brunilde Ridgway has sug-

1986) 54-70. LIMC II (1984) 183-327, s.v. Apollon (W. Lambrinoudakis, P . Bruneau et al.); A.M. d'Onofrio, "Korai e kouroi funerari attici," lstituto Universitario Ori- entate. Annali del Seminario di Studi del Mondo Classico. Archeologia e Storia 4 (1982) 135-70. V. Zinserling, "Zurn Bedeutungsgehalt des archaischen Kuros," Eirene 13 (1975) 13-33 . I owe these references to Andrew Stewart.

42 B.M. CV A Fasc. 5, III, l ,C, pl. 65, 2a: Richter, Kouroi fig. 1 (opp. 16), 430 B.C.

43 Hurwit 197 . Hurwit ( 199) cites Stewart (supra n. 41 ): "As Andrew Stewart has recently argued, _where in Archaic Greece aristocracies declined or fell (to tyrants, for exam- ple), the production of kouroi tended to fall off, too. "

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 551

gested that the broad, leather-backed belt some kouroi wear may have been an attribute of Apollo, and of divinity. According to Andrew Stewart, however, it represented a passing fashion. Other attributes, such as jewelry (the Metropolitan Museum's kouros wears a necklace), boots (Kleobis's and Biton's at Delphi), or fancy hairstyles of various types may have implied another religious association, for which the nudity of the kouroi provided a "costume": the initiations of youths into manhood, and into their proper rank. 44

In Greece, full-fledged initiations are known from Dorian Crete, and from Sparta. Inscriptions bear wit- ness to herds of youths stripping off their clothes (ek- dyomenoi), while the younger boys wore girlish clothes. In Athens the institution of the ephebeia still bears the marks of initiation motifs. 45 The gymnopai- diai of Sparta, which took their name from the nudity of the participants, were the best known initiation rit- uals in antiquity. 46

The kouros type fits the concept of the sacred qual- ity of nudity: its nakedness represented a feature of initiation ritual. It referred to those religious dances and rituals that called for the candidate's nakedness as a special costume or habit. Perhaps the elaborately dressed pattern of the hair also represented part of a ritual costume. 47

Nudity finds its original place as a "costume" in the context of the initiation of youths. An emphasis on youth remains a permanent part of the aesthetic as- pect of male nudity. K.J. Dover has described, in his recent book on Greek homosexuality, how the empha- sis of the ideal of youthful male beauty included the

44 For the belt, see Ridgway (supra n. 36) 54-57; Stewart (supra n. 41) 57-58. Robertson (47; cf. 182) remarks that the colossus dedicated by the Naxians to Apollo on Delos probably represents the god himself: the cult image of the god in his temple on Delos was belted, and the sculpture may have been influenced in this particular by the cult figure. For the boots, see Stewart (supra n. 41) 56: they may characterize farmers or travelers. Stewart, 60, on the nudity, youthfulness and beauty of the kouros, described as "numi- nous, even fetishistic."

45 Burkert, Greek Religion 260-63. A. Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi (Rome 1969) 31, 158, 172, 200 for ritual nudity; 218, 225, 452 for Athenian ephebeia, initiation rites, and the nudity of warriors and athletes in Athens. On the ephebeia as originally an initiatory ritual, see P. Vidal-Naquet, "The Black Hunter and the Origin of the Athenian Ephebeia," and "Recipes for Greek Adolescence," in Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge 1981) 147-85; Le chasseur noir: Formes de pensee et formes de societe dans le monde grec (Paris 1981) 281; revised, in The Black Hunter (Baltimore 1986) 106-56, with "The Tradition of the Athenian Hop- lite," 85-105. B. Sargent, L'homosexualite initiatique dans !'Europe ancienne (Paris 1986) 52-73 (Crete), 74-95 (Sparta), 96-130 (Athens). Richly documented, Sargent's

Fig. 2. Red-figure amphora by the Dwarf Painter. Helen and Menelaos (or Cassandra and Ajax?). British Museum E 336. (Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)

small penis of a younger man. 48 Youth was an essen- tial aspect of the nudity of the kouros. Old men and ugly slaves have longer penises. Herakles' last labor

study seeks the origin of Greek homosexuality in initiation rituals. For ritual nudity, see Sargent 204-205, 248, n. 36; cf. 70-73; T.F. Scanlon, "The Footrace of the Heraia at Olympia," AncW 9 (1984) 207, n. 6; 209 ns. 24-27. For initiation rites and costumes elsewh~re in the ancient world, see M. Torelli, Lavinia e Roma (Rome 1984); and R. Koehl, "The Chieftain Cup and a Minoan Rite of Initia- tion," ]HS 106 (1986) 99-110.

46 Brelich (supra n. 45) 158, 452, on nudity at Sparta. 47 Ridgway (supra n. 36) 60-62, on stylizations of the kou-

ros's hair: were the long locks basically a female hairstyle, adopted by certain kouroi for specific reasons? Or was such abundant hair a sign of a divinity or a hero? The layered hairstyle may have had a special iconographic significance. Of all the attributes and accessories, hats and hairstyles are most often used with symbolic purpose; this would be even truer for naked figures, which have no other socially distin- guishing feature. For the significance of hair in Greek art and culture, see Scanlon (infra n. 94) 211, with full refer- ences. Cf. Brendel 303. For erotic significance of hair, see H.A. Shapiro, "Courtship Scenes in Attic Vase-Painting," AJA 85 (1981) 139.

48 On the preference of Athenian artists of the fifth century B.C. for the physical type of the youth, see Dover 126,

552 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

was to fight against Old Age, which defeats all man- kind. 49 As we have seen, a naked young man was always beautiful, even if dead; a naked old man was ugly, a thing of shame. In contrast to the large, erect phallus of the magic, apotropaic figure, a beautiful young man was characterized by a small penis. For women, too, whether they were represented naked or dressed, in art, literature, and life, depilation and small breasts were part of the ideal of youthful beau- ty. so It was more than an obsession with male nudity: Athenians were infatuated, endlessly fascinated, by the charm of youth. In fact, if the nudity of the ephebe became the "costume" of the citizen in Athens, it was because the Athenians idealized the youthfulness of the 16-year-old ephebe. Until he became a hoplite at 18, he stood for the most resplendent of physical beauty, on the verge of manhood, with only the bloom of hair on his cheeks. s 1

This was the ephemeral moment of beauty Athe- nian artists wanted to capture in their statues of kou- roi. Such an emphasis on youth is closely related to athletic nudity, also to be seen in the ritual, religious context of early Greek nudity, although, as in the case of the Rampin Horseman, older men also appeared naked.

134-35; and Thuillier 403-409. Sweet (infra n. 69) 48 com- ments on this preference in explaining why most Greek ath- letes were represented without infibulation, which may have actually been used more widely than was illustrated: "The ideal of many Attic artists was the prepubescent boy rather than the mature male. Consequently artists commonly "youthen" the figure, to use J.D. Beazley's felicitous phrase (AJA 54 [1950] 321). Hence even mature males were often shown with immature genitals." For the custom of infibu- lation, see infra n. 69.

49 Red-figure Attic vases: Rome, Villa Giulia, 480 B.C., ARV 2 284. Louvre G34, ARV 2 286, 1642, and Dover, fig. R422.

50 Men with large penises were considered ugly (Dover 126-28, and see infra n. 79), as were women with large breasts (infra n. 145). Further evidence for this aesthetic ideal is the custom of female depilation of pubic hair, for which there is a good deal of literary evidence, much of it from the plays of Aristophanes. The subject has recently at- tracted the interest of a number of scholars; most recently, and most thoroughly, M.I. Davies, "Merkins and Modes," Images et societe en Grece ancienne (Lausanne 1984, pub!. 1987) = Cahiers d'archeologie romande 36 ( 1987) 243-48, richly documented, with previous bibliography. See also M. Kilmer, "Genital Phobia and Depilation," ]HS 102 (1982) 104-12; D.M. Bain, in LCM 7.1 (1982) 7-10, and LCM 7.8 (1982) 111.

51 After the beard has grown, the youth is considered to be an adult, and can no longer be an eromenos: Sargent (supra n. 45) 202, quoting Theopompos of Chios; Dover 144 and

Age classes, which exist in primitive societies and even among the primates, were well known in Classi- cal Greece. The separation of athletes or soldiers ac- cording to age groups went back to early times, and was observed at Olympia from the seventh century on at least. The nudity of the athletes, which was so im- portant a part of the tradition of the competitions held every four years at the sanctuary, must have been a part of the initiation rites of youths, in the religious context of the holy place. sz

Greek and Roman authors pay a good deal of atten- tion to the Greek custom of athletic nudity.s 3 Various writers recorded the details of its origin. They agreed it had taken place in the context of the Olympic games, but disagreed about the date and the individual respon- sible for this innovation. s4 According to some, a certain Orsippus of Megara won the footrace at Olympia when he lost his perizoma on the way, finishing the race naked while the others still wore their loincloths. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says it was Acanthus the Lacedaemonian, in the 15th Olympiad (720-716 B.C.), who began the new custom. Thucydides also credits the Lacedaemonians or Spartans with setting the example for a custom eventually universal among the Greeks. ss This religious stage of nudity we can try to reconstruct by way of archaeology and anthropolo-

passim. 52 For age groups, see supra ns. 33, 45, 67, 72, and Rose

(infra n. 56) 19. For women, see Paus. 5.16.2-3. Scanlon (supra n. 45) 77-90; esp. 79-81, on age groups, and girls' and women's nudity and dress; "the footrace at Sparta and Olympia may both be initiatory tests which are a part of the introduction of girls to adulthood" (p. 90).

53 Hdt. 1.10.3; Thuc. 1.6; cf. Pa us. 1.44.1; Dion. of Hal. 7.22.2-3; Isid. Etym. 18.17.2. W.E. Sweet, Sport and Re- creation in Ancient Greece (New York 1987) 124-33, cites and comments on these and other ancient sources.

54 Modern scholars have investigated the phenomenon in the context of the attention paid to ancient sports and ath- letics. RE XIV, 2003-26, s.v. Gymnasium (J. Oehler), is basic. Bibliography in N.B. Crowther, "Studies in Greek Athletics," CW79 (1985) 92. See also J. Juthner, Die athle- tischen Leibesilbungen der Griechen (Vienna 1968) 14, 48, 72, 77, 101, 187, 193; Thuiller 369-412; H.A. Harris, Greek Athletes and Athletics (London 1964); N. Yalouris ed., The Eternal Olympics (New York 1979) 142-51. D.G. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens (Leiden 1987); M. Polia- koff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World (New Haven 1987) 11-13 and passim. See also W. Raschke ed., The Ar- chaeology of the Olympics (Madison 1988) and D. Sansone, Greek Athletics and the Genesis of Sport (Berkeley 1988). For athletes and gymnastic exercises in Athens and Sparta, see the catalogue of the exhibit, 'Athla' ed atleti nella Grecia classica (Rome 1987); J. Swaddling, The Ancient Olympic Games (London 1980).

55 Supra n. 53.

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 553

gy. 56 The Greeks of the Classical period and later did not themselves recall or understand this aspect of their past. 5 7 Yet a ritual origin for the nudity so character- istic of Greek culture explains a great deal that is otherwise obscure. 58 In fact, as Brelich has noted, it is easier to understand the nudity of athletes at the Olym- pic games as originally prescribed than-as later Greek tradition had it-an innovation. 59

A recent study by ]. Mouratidis on the earliest stages of Greek athletic nudity asserts that "nudity in Greek athletics had its roots in prehistoric Greece and was connected with th~ warrior-athlete whose train- ing and competition in the games was at the same time his preparation for war." 60 These conclusions seem to me to be correct. But I think in moving from this primitive context the author underestimates, or ne- glects entirely, the religious level of the phenomenon, just as the Greeks did. We can trace generally-but not date-some of the phases of the development of nudity, from its connection with the "aggression and apotropaic purposes characteristic of the early stages of human society,'' 61 to its survival in the historical period in Greek athletics.

56 Much recent work in archaeology and anthropology has focused on Greek ideas of religion, of divinity, the sacred, the irrational, ritual, and magic. The weakening of "the old link between theology and classics" and the strengthening of the relatively new link of anthropology had contributed to an earlier reluctance on the part of scholars to accept "reli- gious" explanations (see Rose, below), not too different from Thucydides' point of view, which as Ernst Badian pointed out, in fact distorted the picture of events. (E. Badian, un- published lecture, New York, 1985; cf. infra ns. 57, 84-87). The tide has turned. Peter Brown has done much to change the situation for late antiquity; for the classics we owe much to the psychological insights of E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951). See G. Clark, review of P.E. Easterling and J.V. Muir eds., Greek Religion and Society (Cambridge 1985) in LCM 10.7 (1985) 107-108 (whence comes the quotation above). Burkert (supra n. 38) 35-39; surveys the scholarship; and Greek Religion 1-9, 36, 159. On ritual elements (but not nudity), see G. Nagy, "Pindar's Olympian and Aetiology of the Olympic Games," TAPA 116 (1986) 71-88. A case against a ritual, and in fact any religious origin for the Greek games was made by H.J. Rose, in "The Greek Agones," Aberystwyth Studies 3 (1922) 1-24, an important article originally written (ca. 1910) for an encyclopaedia of religion (Nilsson and Wunsch, eds.), but never published because of World War I. It provides a wealth of well-organized evidence; much of this can, how- ever, be used to prove the case for a ritual origin. E.N. Gar- diner, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals (London 1910) independently reached similar conclusions to Rose's. I thank Myles McDonnell, who provided me with a copy of Rose's article.

57 M.I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (New York 197 5) 18: "the classical Greeks knew little about their his- tory before 650 B.C. (or even 550 B.C.), and ... what they

Other scholars have seen the origin of athletics in funeral games, cultic practices, etc. 62 Any explanation for the rise of sport or athletics has to account in some way for the related phenomenon of "athletic nudity," a feature of Greek culture as characteristic and far- reaching as their spirit of competition. Recently a good case has been made for a ritual origin for Greek athletics, in connection with early hunting rituals. The argument which has been made against a reli- gious connection seems to me to lose sight of a phase of Greek culture which is in fact visible, though some- times dimly, in later times. The very fact that both sports and religion are so extraordinarily conservative allows us to trace their existence and character in ear- lier times. 63 There is little doubt that nudity was in- volved with the religious atmosphere of the games. At the sanctuary at Olympia, as elsewhere, initiation rites of youths, athletic and artistic competitions were related within the same religious atmosphere. Ritual nakedness was a typical initiation motif. In initiation rites in ancient Crete, the young man was naked be- fore he took the arms of the warrior and entered into his manhood.

thought they knew was a jumble of fact and fiction. Thucy- dides' introduction contains an interpretation of early Greek history derived from prolonged meditation about the world in which Thucydides lived .... "Sansone (supra n. 54) 109: "The effect of these various and divergent accounts is to prove to us that the ancient Greeks, who were always fond of assigning names to the 'inventors' of otherwise unex- plained customs, were themselves unaware of the reason for the practice."

58 Supra ns. 45-46, 57. 59 Brelich (supra n. 45) 452. 60 J. Mouratidis, "The Origin of Nudity in Greek Athlet-

ics," Journal of Sport History 12 (1985) 213-323. I am grateful to Everett Wheeler who gave me this reference.

61 Mouratidis (supra n. 60) 321. Mouratidis (223, cf. 32) quotes me (Etruscan Dress 102) on the nudity of Greek ath- letes as protection against the evil eye. I now believe that such apotropaic, protective nudity is related to, but not the same as, ritual nudity. The nudity of the phallic herm, the satyr, Priapus, etc., is aggressive and protective in a way that athletic and ritual nudity (which emphasize youth and a small penis) are not. See supra, text.

62 For a survey and classification of such explanations, see Sansone (supra n. 54) 3-14. Add Rose, supra n. 56; Griffin, infra n. 63.

63 See Raschke, "Introduction" (supra n. 54), esp. 7-9, on mock combats as a form of ritual, initiatory rites of en- durance, and the presence of "athletic" nudity as a feature of such rituals. In his review of Raschke and Sansone (supra n. 54), Jasper Griffin points out that Sansone's theory for the origin of sport as ritualistic actions derived from hunting ("sport is the ritual sacrifice of physical energy") cannot ac- count for the phenomenon of nudity in Greek athletics (San- sone 107-15): J. Griffin, "Playing to Win," The New York Review of Books, 29 Sept. 1988, 3-5.

554 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

Pierre Vidal-Naquet's work on the religious and social context of the Athenian ephebeia shows this in- stitution to have originated in early initiation rites characterized by both nudity and change of clothes. 64

Women, too, participated in ritual nakedness in the course of initiations into special cults, for example the Athenian festival in honor of Artemis. Here, too, age groups were distinguished by their costumes: in the foot race, some bared one breast, and wore short dresses; others ran naked. 65 The ritual nakedness of the women, however, did not initiate them into the life of a warrior or a soldier: it prepared them for mar- riage and the private life of child-bearing and a fam- ily, and therefore it did not develop further as a fea- ture of Greek public life and culture. As we shall see, Plato, like other Greeks, was conscious of the connec- tion between nakedness, exercise, and war, and took the logical but bold step of imagining that the women who would be guardians alongside the men must also exercise naked alongside them. 66 It was evidently the Spartan model that most easily came to mind. There it was most important in the agoge or parade of the boys and the spectacle of the gymnopaidia. 67 There, too, the women exercised and exposed themselves as much as the men. So the story grew up that athletic nudity had been invented by the Spartans. 68

The ideal of the kouros was an aristocratic ideal; so was its nudity. The nudity of the athlete was related, but it was complete: no necklace, no boots, no belt. There was, on the other hand, an attribute of athletic nudity which may well have been more common in life than in art. Athletes who participated in competitions and who exercised naked were infibulated; that is,

64 Vidal-Naquet, Le chasseur noir (supra n. 45) 281, bases his study on van Gennep (supra n. 16), whose pioneering study is still the clearest statement of such rites.

65 Scanlon (supra n. 45). Burkert, Greek Religion 263; L. Kahil, "L'Artemis de Brauron: Rites et mystere," AntK 20 ( 1977) 86-98, pis. 18-21. Boardman, Black Figure Vases 182, fig. 317, illustrates a crater from Brauron, one of several showing naked girls dancing, related to local cult.

66 Infra, text and n. 85. 67 Supra n. 45. Vidal-Naquet (supra n. 45). For the origin

of many features of Greek religion and Greek sport in initia- tion ritual, especially nakedness, see. H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Couretes (Lille 1939) 531, 559, 566; Brelich (supra n. 45); Heckenbach (supra n. 1); Sargent (supra n. 45).

68 Spartans: supra ns. 45-46. Women: supra ns. 52, 65, infra ns. 82, 94.

69 W.E. Sweet, "Protection of the Genitals in Greek Ath- letics," AncW 11 (1985) 43-52. Thuillier 155, 291, 394- 401; Keuls (supra n. 1) 68-70, 73, figs. 51, 56. Sweet sur- veys the evidence and possible explanations for the practice, but fails to find any practical reason to account for it. See infra n. 88.

70 J. Delorme, Gymnasion. Etude sur les monuments con-

they tied up their penises with a string, apparently as a protection and precaution. This infibulation was often, but not always-no doubt for aesthetic rea- sons-shown in painting and sculpture. 69

Throughout the sixth century B.C., black-figure Attic vases regularly show athletes competing in the nude, as well as nude gods, heroes, mortals, revelers, etc. Nudity as a costume was fashionable, and was regularly shown on the vases used in the symposium, another phenomenon of Greek culture developed by and for the aristocracy who competed at the festivals, commissioned the artists, and served as hoplites in the army. Like the symposium, athletic nudity was a crea- tion of Archaic Greece brought about by the rise of the hoplites. 70 These men attended the gymnasium, and proudly wore the "costume" that was appropriate for this place. The gymnasium functioned as military in- stitution, public banquet-hall, court, auditorium, country club, and university. 71 This was the context in which the other typically aristocratic feature of Greek society-homosexuality-also flourished. As Oswyn Murray has remarked, "The cult of nakedness and athletic prowess in the gymnasion and palaistra, the sexual exclusiveness of the symposion, and the empha- sis on male courage in a society still largely organized for war must surely be connected with the rise of homosexual love among an aristocracy who invented a new compound to describe themselves, 'The beautiful and the good' (kaloikagathoi-"good" of course in the sense of well-born)." It is no coincidence that so many illustrations of naked youths occur on vases used for the symposium. 72 Athletic nudity had by this time evi-

sacres a !'education en Grece (des origines a !'Empire ro- main) (Paris 1960). Boardman, Black Figure Vases; Dover, passim.

71 Delorme (supra n. 70); Crowther (supra n. 54) 113, who also cites C.A. Forbes, "Expanded Uses of the Greek Gymnasium," CP 40 ( 1945) 32-42.

72 0. Murray, Early Greece (Glasgow 1980) 205-206. "Archaic attitudes to sex were closely related to the social institutions of the aristocracy .... There is little enough evi- dence to trace the transition from the heterosexual society reflected in Homer and in Archilochus; ... Art reflects these preoccupations. . .. The kouros can be understood in terms of a preoccupation with the beauty of the youthful male nude. Another product of this concern are the many Attic black-figure and red-figure cups, primarily from the archaic period, inscribed 'so-and-so is beautiful,' kalos. Most of these names refer to aristocrats; the cups reflect the tastes and interests of the Athenian aristocracy who used them at symposia." Many of Murray's observations agree remarkably well with my own view of the development of Greek male nudity. For example, his view of the symposium as a ritual drinking session, capable of many transforma- tions: "Such transformations are easy to understand in terms

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 555

dently become distinguished from religious nudity. Respectable women, the wives of the athletes and symposiasts, did not participate in this nudity. When the nudity of the ancient initiation rites became in Athens the "uniform" of the ephebe, the future citizen and soldier, and of older men as well, women were not included: the distinction came to be between citizens- especially upper-class citizens-who exercised, and women, who did not.

Recent work on Greek hoplite warfare has ex- plored the type of military training used by the Greek cities. The capacity to serve in the army constituted the fully qualified citizen: the polis derived from the people in arms. 73 But how did Greek soldiers acquire and maintain the skills they needed? We know few details about military training in Sparta, or, in Athens, about the ancient institution of the ephebeia before its regularization in 335 B.C. Gymnastic exer- cises and the Pyrrhic dance must have played an im- portant part as a preparation for war. 74 The Athenian pyrrhic, or armed dance, was performed nude at the Panathenaia and involved choruses from the Athenian tribes. 7 5 The tradition of the warrior athlete who par- ticipated in armed dances and races, still being held in the Classical period, may, as Mouratidis noted, have

of the continuing dominance of the aristocracy in a changing environment." Murray's views in Early Greece have been developed further in an article, "The Symposium as Social Organization," in R. Hagg ed., The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century BC: Tradition and Innovation (Stock- holm 1983) 195-99. See E. Gabba, "La societa ateniese nel 'Vecchio Oligarca'," Athenaeum 66 (1988) 6-10, for the sit- uation in Athens, ca. 440 B.C.

73 "The polis derived from the people in arms; it was essen- tially the state of the citizens. Both facts made the defense of the state the concern of its people. There was no question of compulsory military service; it was the other way around: the capacity to serve constituted the fully qualified citizen": V. Ehrenberg, The Greek State (1960) 80. E.L. Wheeler, "Hoplomachia and Greek Dances in Arms," GRBS 23 (1982) 223-33, summarizes recent work on this subject.

74 R. Ridley, "The Hoplite as Citizen: Athenian Military Institutions in Their Social Context," AntCl 47 (1978) 509-48. P. Ducrey, Guerre et guerriers dans la Grece an- tique (Freiburg, Switzerland 1985) 69-72. For the ephebeia at Athens and the crypteia at Sparta, see P. Vidal-Naquet, in Anna/es 23 (1968) 947-64, and in G. Le Goff and P. Nora eds., Faire de l'histoire III (Paris 197 4) 151-60; see also supra n. 45.

75 Ridley (supra n. 74) 538-48; Wheeler (supra n. 73). For representations of the Pyrrhic dance, see Poursat (supra n. 33). M. Detienne, "La phalange: problemes et contro- verses," in J.-P. Vernant ed., Problemes de la guerre en Grece ancienne (Paris 1968) 123; F. Lissarrague, "Autour du guerrier," in La cite des images (Paris 1984) 35-47. On the dress of the knights (not a "uniform," and rarely nude), see H. Cahn, "Dokimasia," RA 1973, 3-22.

originated in earlier times before being introduced into the Olympic program. 76

The Greeks were proud of their soldiers' physique and of the tan skin that was the result of their exer- cising in the nude. A story about Agesilaos of Sparta illustrates how, to a practiced military eye, nakedness allowed an accurate judgment of a man's physical fit- ness: "He gave instructions ... that the barbarians captured in the raids be exposed for sale naked. So when his soldiers saw them white because they never stripped, and fat and lazy through constant riding in carriages, they believed that the war would be exactly like fighting with women. "77 The contrast between their own bronzed men's bodies and the white, fem- inine flabbiness of the Persians renewed the courage of the Greek troops.

Male figures on Attic painted vases show the mean- ing of physical beauty for athletes, youths, citizens, and soldiers. Most are lithe and slender, though one Attic red-figure vase shows a heavy, paunchy figure, holding boxing thongs, with others at the palaestra (fig. 3): he is a specialized athlete, a boxer. 78 A rare scene of naked men who are ugly turns out to repre- sent slaves who prepare the palaestra, not citizens ex- ercising in the gymnasium (fig. 4), 79 marking the dif-

76 Mouratidis (supra n. 60) 213. Cf. Wheeler, supra n. 73. 77 Xen. Ages. 1.28, cited in H.A. Harris, Greek Athletes

and Athletics (London 1964) 65. I thank Judith Swaddling for this reference. But Ionian Greeks often preferred to rep- resent kouroi covered with a mantle, as on statues from Asia Minor and Samos: Becatti (supra n. 1) 580; Ridgway (supra n. 36) 75-76; Robertson 76. F.H. Pairault-Massa, "Note sur la stele CIE 1,50 (Volterra)," in L'ltalie preromaine et le Rome republicaine. Melanges]. Heurgon (Rome 1976) 749-50. B. Barletta, "The Draped Kouros Type and the Workshop of the Syracusan Youth," A] A 91 ( 1987) 233-46.

78 Clark (supra n. 1) fig. 17; Swaddling (supra n. 54) 63. See also Jiithner (supra n. 54) fig. 6, and W. Kreiker, AM 55 (1930) 169. For gymnasium and palaestra, see S.L. Glass, "The Greek Gymnasium: Some Problems," in Raschke (supra n. 54) 155-73.

79 A. Lezzi-Hafter, in H. Bloesch ed., Greek Vases from the Hirschmann Collection (Zurich 1982) 104-105, no. 39: "Even if they share the athletes' practice of infibulation, the two workers can scarcely be meant to be Athenians, rather, they are slaves, probably from the East. The sprinkler is a tall man with a full beard and hairy belly. The hooked nose and overly large penis do not belong to the Athenian idea of beauty: is he too a foreigner? ... This skyphos gives us a look, probably for the first time, behind the scenes of a sports ground where, in the early light, a group of maintenance men is already at work while the athletes still lie in bed. Ca. 460-450 B.C." (Illustrated in C. Berard, "L'ordre des femmes," in La cite des images [Paris 1984] 89, fig. 126). Yet, at least some of the time, athletes prepared the palaestra themselves: they chopped the ground with pickaxes to pre- pare the sand surfaces, and the pickaxe was one of the iden-

556 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

Fig. 3. Red-figure cup, ca. 480 B.C.: athletes training. British Museum. (Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)

ference between the free man who exercised nude, gymnos, in the gymnasium, and the slave who was naked in the line of work and out of poverty. (The slaves on this vase, like the athletes, are infibulated.) A law forbade slaves to exercise and anoint themselves in the gymnasia like free men (though obviously it did not forbid them to enter in order to do the necessary work for their upkeep). 80 The custom of frequenting the gymnasium was characteristic not only of free men in general, but of upper-class citizens, who exercised as members of the hoplite army. The use of nudity for magical reasons, on the other hand, belonged to a dif- ferent level of reality-and was restricted, as we have seen, to herms, satyrs, and the stage.

CLASSICAL PERIOD

By the Classical period, the custom-or "habit" -of nudity had changed, from a religious to a civic practice. From the ritual nudity of the kouros-set up, from the seventh century B.C. on, as image of Apollo, votive gift, funerary image, offering or servant of the god- and the

tifying signs of the athlete. A story features the sloth of the people of Sybaris, who saw the athletes of Kroton digging up the palaestra and wondered why they did not hire workers to perform such menial tasks (Poliakoff[supra n. 54] 12-13, with fig. 13).

80 Aeschin. In Tim. 138; cited in M. Golden, "Slavery and Homosexuality," Phoenix 38 (1984) 319, who thinks slaves were actually banned from entering the palaestra. For a similar law in Crete, see Arist. Pol. 11.19: Cretans give

ritual nudity of the athlete who competed in the Olympic games, dedicated to the gods, there was a change to the athletic nudity of the citizen-soldier. The transition was, I believe, originally involved with the ritual costume proper for initiation rites.

This passage from a religious to a civic context was not effected all at once; and it reflected one or more situ- ations peculiar to Greece. 81 Nudity now comes to mean something special. No longer does it mean vulnerabil- ity; it means, on the contrary, the readiness to stand up and fight even though one knew one was vulnerable. It has to do with military valor which requires risking one's life, being fully exposed. The women were kept covered because it meant they were protected, not ex- posed to danger. The relation of this manly nudity to the nudity of the gods is also crucial: the gods could be nude because they relied on themselves.

Authors of the Classical period eventually looked back at the custom and offered rationalizing explana- tions for an institution whose meaning had changed from religious and ritual to civic. 82 The Greeks did

slaves the same rights as they have, except that they forbid them from exercising in the gymnasium and bearing arms. Gymnastics and war are mentioned together also as some- thing normally foreign to women: supra, text and n. 85.

8 1 For transformation of earlier institutions and values, see Murray 1980 (supra n. 72) 193. Similar transformation, from religious to civil, took place, e.g., in the theater, or in the polis, with the use of the lot.

82 Rationalizing explanations: Brelich (supra n. 45) 158

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 557

not entirely understand the origin or the development of their nudity. Yet they had to explain it, as a pecu- liarity that illustrated in a visible manner and con- firmed in action the difference between themselves and everyone else, a difference of which they were acutely aware. We have seen that they attributed the origin of athletic nudity to the 15th Olympiad, in the last decades of the eighth century B.C. The earliest monumental kouroi appeared in the seventh century. But the custom spread gradually, and later, into everyday life . Such a gradual development can explain the statement of Thucydides (1.6)-echoed later by Plato (Resp. 5.452a-e)-that athletic nudity had be- come universal in Greece "shortly before his time." These authors were referring to the normalization of nudity in real life, to its civic significance, not to its earliest appearance in religious ritual and art.

Thucydides saw the custom of exercising in the nude in the context of democracy, which had trium-

Fig. 4. Red-figure skyphos by the Zephyros Painter. Prepa- ration of the palaestra. (Courtesy Hirschmann Collection, Zurich)

on nudity at Sparta " ... cosi anche le ragazze spartane, a differenza di quanto avveniva in qualsiasi altro stato della Grecia antica, in certe occasioni comparivano nude in pub- blico, costringendo gli autori non-spartani ai piu vari tenta- tivi di giustificazione" (my emphasis). Cf. Paus. 1.44.1 (At- tica): "I believe he [Orsippus] purposely dropped his girdle, knowing that a man can run more easily naked." See also supra n. 57, infra n. 111.

83 D.G. Kyle, review of D.C. Young, The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics (Chicago 1984) in EchCl 29 (1985) 142: "nude noble and non-noble looked alike on the track"; but see D.C. Young, "Professionalism in Greek Ath- letics," Anc W 7 ( 1983) 51: " . . . but at the finish line there was a difference." S.C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London 1978) 142: "In a comparatively undifferen-

phantly been confirmed at Athens shortly before his time, after the Persian Wars. The introduction of ath- letic nudity into the everyday life of the gymnasium and palaestra was part of a "modern" way of life, freer, simpler, more democratic, according to Thucy- dides. It was the dress, one might almost say the uni- form, of the citizen who exercised in order to maintain himself in readiness for military service. A Greek sol- dier must be in shape: he must be lean and muscular, not portly and prosperous. Civic nudity marked a break with the barbarians-everyone except the Greeks-who announced their status and wealth by wearing luxurious garments that gave an impression of elegance and authority. 83

While Thucydides explains Greek nudity in the context of democracy, Plato explains it as a result of the logical , rational way of thinking of which the Greeks were so proud.84 In a passage in which he ob- viously has the Spartan model in mind, Plato imagines the situation that would arise if women were to have an equal role with men in society.

If, then, we use the women for the same things as the men, they must also be taught the same things. Now music and gymnastic were given to the men. These two arts, and what has to do with war, must be assigned to the women also, and they must be used in the same ways. Perhaps, compared to what is habitual, many of the things now being said would look ridiculous if they were done as is said. The most ridiculous thing (being) the women exercising naked with the men in the pa- laestras, not only the young ones, but even the older ones, too, like the old men in the gymnasium who, when they are wrinkled and not pleasant to the eye, all the same love gymnastic.-By Zeus, he said, that would look ridiculous in the present state of things.- Well, since we've started to speak, we mustn't be afraid of all the jokes-of whatever kind-the wits might make if such a change took place in gymnastic, in music, and not the least, in the bearing of arms and the riding of horses. But since we've begun to speak,

tiated society like that of ancient Greece attention must be paid to a wide variety of evidence, from myths and philo- sophic utopias to anecdotes on the physical appearance, movements, or dress associated with a particular status or role ... ";cf. 219, 262.

84 Cf. Hdt. 1.60, on the less naive, cleverer, more rational spirit of the Greeks in comparison to the barbarians. For this and other observations of Herodotus concerning Greeks and barbarians, see S. Benardete, H erodotean Inquiries (The Hague 1969). The Greeks of the Classical period be- lieved that a number of primitive customs, such as human sacrifice, were shared by Greeks of "prehistoric" times and present-day barbarians: cf. Poliakoff (supra n. 54) 189, n. 3. Cf. infra n. 112 for the Romans.

558 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

we must make our way to the rough part of the law, begging these men ... to be serious; and reminding them that it is not so long ago that it seemed shameful and ridiculous to the Greeks-as it does now to the many among the barbarians-to see men naked; and that when the Cretans originated the gymnasiums, and then the Lacedaemonians, it was possible for the urbane of the time to make a comedy of all that. But, I suppose, when it became clear to those who used these practices that to uncover all such things is better than to hide them, then what is ridiculous to the eyes disap- peared in the light of what's best .... And this showed that he is empty who believes anything is ridiculous other than the sight of the foolish and the bad; or, again, he who looks seriously to any standard of beauty he sets up other than the good .... Then the women guardians must strip, since they'll clothe them- selves in virtue instead of robes, and they must take common part in war and the rest of the city's guarding, and must not do other things .... And the man who laughs at naked women practicing gymnastic for the sake of the best, "plucks from his wisdom an unripe fruit for ridicule" and doesn't know-as it seems-at what he laughs or what he does. For this is surely the fairest thing that is said and will be said-the beneficial is fair and the harmful ugly. 85

Aside from the distinction between men and women in Greek life, and Platonic ideas, the passage touches on a number of important aspects of Greek nudity: its purpose in education (music, athletic exercises, the art of war), as a preparation for military service; laughter as a reaction to something embarrassing and shame- ful-the sight of a naked woman, as earlier the sight of a naked man; the adoption of public male nakedness in everyday life as an innovation; and the explanation of athletic nudity as a useful, rational custom.

Other authors gave a variety of rationalizing expla- nations for the institution. Plutarch sees a social pur- pose in the nakedness of men and women together in the institution of the gymnopaidia at Sparta: Lycur- gus wanted to encourage in the young men the desire to marry as soon as possible. 86

This rationalizing tendency of the Greeks is clearly evident in the "practical" explanations offered for the "introduction" of athletic nudity at Olympia-that it facilitated the athlete's victory. It is also illustrated in a

85 Pl. Resp. 5.452a-e. Transl. A. Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York 1968), adapted.

86 Plut. Vit. Lye. 14.2-15.1. A similarly ethical, philo- sophical, social explanation has been suggested by a modern scholar who sees the nakedness of the ancient Greek athlete as neither useful nor rational, but rather as affording the naked athlete the opportunity to demonstrate his sophrosyne in public, showing that he does not become aroused: A.

passage in Pausanias, in which he attributes the cus- tom of having trainers entering the arena naked to a historical incident. According to this account, a mother who had disguised herself as her son's trainer at Olym- pia became so excited at his victory that she jumped over the fence, and thus exposed herself as a woman. She was not punished, but a law was passed to make sure that henceforward only men were admitted. 87

Modern scholars have in some cases taken such ex- planations serious! y. 8 8 In contrast to ancient explana- tions, most modern interpretations, however, have concentrated on the aesthetic aspect of the phenome- non. This is perhaps natural, since nudity in art is most familiar, having long been considered an expres- sion of the Greek ideal. Since the time of Polykleitos the image of the male nude youth, ideally beautiful, remained, for generations, the favorite theme of Greek artists. Yet we cannot take Greek nudity for granted. One can only explain its origin in Greek culture, and the relationship of athletic nudity with the artistic nu- dity of the kouros, the phallic herm, the satyr, and the actor of Old Comedy, by taking into account the origi- nally religious, ritual, apotropaic reasons for Greek nudity, which lead us back to its ancient status of taboo. At a later point in its history, its significance was understood in a different way. The institution was transformed, and a different set of connotations developed. This is clear from the evidence of ancient authors who deal with this custom, as we have seen, in terms of their own historical context.

Perhaps we can better understand the situation in Greece by looking at those who did not share in this institutionalized nudity: women and barbarians.

WOMEN

For women in Greek art, literature, and life, the taboo against nudity remained in full force, with all its sense of humiliation and vulnerability as well as its magic power.

In art the female nude appears briefly, in the early Archaic period, as a religious fertility motif, following the Near Eastern model of the naked mother goddess. After these early figures the image was used for pa- thetic appeal, for magic or erotic appeal, or for scenes from the life of a courtesan. 89

Arieti, "Nudity in Greek Athletics," CW 68 (1975) 431-36. 87 Paus. 5.7-8. Cf. supra ns. 57, 82. 88 Sweet, supra n. 69. According to a Dutch report, among

the Khokhoi of South Africa, "men cut off one testicle in youth to run faster": C. Schrure, "Historical Archaeology of 17th Century South Africa," Antiquity 62 (1988) 216.

89 Supra ns. 9-10, 16, 18-19, 82. Robertson 390-93. Boardman, Sculpture, Archaic, figs. 19, 23, 26; Sculpture,

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 559

The sense of shame which was so pervasive in the Near East was still found in Homer's account of the punishment of Thersites, as we have seen. The fear of exposure long remained an effective threat for women. At Miletus, a decree was passed to discourage a rash of suicides among the girls of that city: those who killed themselves were threatened with being carried to the grave naked. "The maidens ceased to seek a vol- untary death, deterred by mere shame of so disgrace- ful a burial."90

Literature, as well as art, preserves evidence of the apotropaic significance of female nakedness in Greek as well as Eastern mythology: Baubo makes Demeter laugh by lifting her skirts and exposing her genitals; the women of Xanthos bare themselves before Bel- lerophon. 91 Herodotus understands the importance of the story of Gyges, who looks upon the king's wife naked and thereby must become the king himself. Ar- temis feels diminished by Actaeon; he has seen her na- kedness, and must die. 92

In Classical Greek art, particularly in Attic vase painting, naked women are usually prostitutes. Re- spectable women did not go out much, they did not attend male symposia, and they certainly did not un- dress in public. They were in fact protected from the sun, from men's eyes, and from the evil eye by dresses and mantles that covered them from head to foot.

Exceptions confirm the special character of nudity in women. Women occasionally participated in athlet- ic and ritual nudity. Spartan women danced naked in certain initiation rites, as we know from literature. 93

Girls also took part in a footrace at the festival of Hera at Olympia, as Pausanias tells us; it has recently been suggested that Spartan practice may have influenced

Classical, 238-40; Red Figure Vases , Archaic, figs. 27, 38, 71, 122, 176, 224- 25, 321. Dancing, naked women on a vase from Eretria illustrate a ritual initiation, or cult scene: supra n. 65. I am working on an article dealing with female nudity in ancient art.

90 Gell. 15.10, quoting Plut. De anima 1. 91 For Baubo, see Burkert, Greek Religion 244; Burkert,

H omo Necans, trans. P. Bing (Berkeley 1983) 272, 285; W.K.C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion 2 (London 1952) 136; Nilsson (supra n. 10) 120, 657; G. Charles-Pi- card, "L'episode de Baubo et Jes mysteres d'Eleusis," Revue de l'Histoire des R eligions 95 (1927) 220-55; J. Moreau, "Les guerriers et les femmes impudiques," Melanges H. Gregoire III. Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'His- toire Orientates et Slaves 2 (Brussels 1951) 283-300. Diodo- rus Siculus ( 1.85.3) describes a similar gesture in connection with the cult of the A pis bull at Memphis. For 40 days "only women may look at it; these stand facing it and pulling up their garments show their genitals, but henceforth they are forever prevented from coming into the presence of this god." The gesture of a goddess on a terracotta plaque from

Fig. 5. Black-figure amphora, ca. 540 B.C. Peleus and Ata- lanta wrestling. Munich, Antikensammlung 1547. (Cour- tesy Antikensammlung)

Olympic contests. 94 The physical education of Spartan girls is well attested; they were organized in age groups like the boys. 95 Because Spartan women had a reputa- tion for beauty, and for dressing in a way that exposed their bodies, Attic tragedy and comedy contain innu- merable references to these characteristics, as well as to the immorality they were thought to imply. 96 These are still echoed by Propertius (3.14.1-4), who marvels at the blessings of a girls' gymnasium, where a naked girl can wrestle with the men. Atalanta was shown semi-naked, wearing athletic costume, a perizoma and (often but not always) brassiere, wrestling or standing beside Peleus in sixth- to fourth-century Greek vases and Etruscan mirrors (fig. 5). 97 Bronze mirror handles

Axos showing her baring her belly may be, as Boardman suggests, either a ritual attitude connected with fertility, or apotropaic, warding off evil: Boardman, Sculpture, Archaic, fig. 27. It provides a remarkable illustration of the Baubo figure known from literature.

92 Gyges: Hdt. 1.10. Actaeon: Paus. 9.2.3. 93 Plut. Vit. Lye. 14. Cf. supra ns. 65, 89. 9 4 T.F. Scanlon, "Virgineum Gymnasium. Spartan Fe-

males and Early Greek Athletes," in Raschke ed. (supra n. 54) 185- 216, esp. 186. Cf. supra n. 45.

95 Scanlon (supra n. 45) 187. From Archaic and Classical times: Alcm. Parth. 52, second half of the seventh century B.C.; Pind. fr. 112, first half of the fifth century B.C. to the second century A.C.

96 E.g. Ar. Lys. 76-8 1, for beauty. Scanlon (supra n. 94) 189, with refs.

9 7 E. Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasen (Berlin 1847) 177. Mentioned in L. Roller, "Funeral Games in Greek Art, " AJA 85 (1981) 111 n. 31. For Atalanta and women wres- tlers, see Scanlon (supra n. 94) 185, 193; Bonfante, Etrus- can Dress, fig. 51. For Etruria, L. Bonfante, in N. de Grum-

560 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

from the sixth century B.C., in the form of naked wom- en, or women wearing a perizoma, have been inter- preted in turn as free-born Spartan girls, athletes, en- tertainers, courtesans or Aphrodite herself. Their na-

Fig. 6. Red-figure plate by Paseas. Ajax and Cassandra. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery 1913.169. (Cour- tesy Yale University Art Gallery)

mond ed., Guide to Etruscan Mirrors (Tallahassee 1982) 83, fig. 88; Brendel 364, on Pliny, HN 35.17. LIMC II, 93, s.v Atalante (J. Boardman): "her nudity is a recurrent fea- ture" (in Etruscan art).

98 L.O. Keene Congdon, Caryatid Mirrors in Ancient Greece (Mainz 1981) Cat. 1, with reviews by L. Bonfante, ArchNews 12 (1983) 14-19, and F. Canciani, ArchCl 35 (1983) 322-25. See also Robertson 142-44; LIMC II, 48, s.v. Aphrodite (A. Delivorrias); Scanlon (supra n. 94) 185-216, with references.

99 Red figure hydria, Naples 2422, 500-474 B.C. ARV2 189 no. 74. Robertson 234, pl. 80c. Cassandra's nakedness is vulnerable rather than erotic. Most scholars seem to see the nudity as erotic. Robertson: "We know he [Ajax] tore her away to rape her .... The woman's nakedness, constant in the iconographical tradition, is the only indication of the na- ture of the assault." Cf. Keuls (supra n. 1) 400, fig. 38: "Her complete nudity dramatizes her sexual defenselessness." Chamay and von Bothmer (infra n. 100): "Cassandre est parfois a demi devetue ou meme completement nue, ce qui suggere le viol." I believe, however, that rape was thought of as violent rather than erotic. 100 LIMC I, pp. 339-51, s.v. Aias II (D. Touchefeu), with

additions by S.B. Matheson, "Polygnotus: An Iliupersis Scene at the Getty Museum," Greek Vases in the]. Paul Getty Mu seum 3. Occasional Papers on Antiquities 2 (1986) 101 - 14; esp. 101 - 107. Matheson, fig. 3, illustrates the vase at Yale: the diminutive Cassandra seeking refuge behind the shield of Athena's statue constitutes the earliest red-figure

kedness is certainly special; we are not certain what it was meant to convey. 98

Women appear partially naked in mythological scenes in Greek art in moments of great danger, to indicate their weakness and vulnerability when ex- posed in this manner. Helen bared her breasts before Menelaos, as Clytemnestra before Orestes, and Hecu- ba before Hector. Cassandra, on the Kleophrades Painter's hydria, is shown naked by the statue of Athena in Troy because she is about to be attacked and raped by Ajax. 99 She is defenseless before his vio- lence, vulnerable, small and weak . The statue of Athe- na, in contrast, is armed and menacing. A plate by Paseas in New Haven with a tiny figure of a naked, pitiful Cassandra emphasizes her helplessness by her size (fig. 6). 100 Euripides represented Polyxena as partially naked in the moment preceding her death: "exposing her naked breasts, bare and lovely like a sculptured goddess." The Niobids flee naked and de- fenseless before the arrows of Artemis and Apollo; Iphigenia is naked before those who are about to sac- rifice her. The daughters of Proetus go mad and dis- robe; Maenads uncover their breasts. 101

Female nudity, even when erotic, carries with it this sense of weakness and vulnerability. Greek hetairai, shown naked, or partially naked, were not citizens; they could be beaten or humiliated by the men who hired them.

representation of the subject. There is also a splendid! y naked Cassandra on a kylix by Onesimus recently acquired by the Getty Museum (83.AE62; 84.AE80; 85.AE385; Matheson fig. 4). Such an iconography depends on the persistent black-figure tradition of Cassandra shown as a small figure (a child?), J. Chamay and D. von Bothmer, "Ajax et Cassandre par le Peintre de Princeton," AntK 30 (1987) 59. For Cassandra and Ajax in wall-painting, see F . Buranelli ed., La Tomba Fran c;ois di Vulci (Rome 1987) 102, fig . 15; an unusual feature in the Fran~ois Tomb is the substitution of an image of Aphrodite for the traditional statue of Athena. 101 Eur. Hee. 560-61 (trans. W. Arrowsmith, Euripides III

[New York 1968]). On this passage, see P. Moreno, ArchCl 29 (1977) 449. For Polyxena supplicating, see J. Prag, The Oresteia (London 1986) 65-66, 121. For partial "denuda- tion" of female figures in Classical Greek art, see M . Bieber, Ancient Copies (New York 1977) 59- 60. For the Niobid in the Terme Museum in Rome, see Helbig4 no. 2279; Robert- son 319: "One of the first female nudes in classical sculp- ture." For Iphigeneia: H. Lloyd-Jones, "The Robes of Iphi- geneia," CR n.s. 2 (1952) 132-35: "lphigeneia's robe hangs down, but it does not come off." It does, however, probably uncover her breast, as in many artistic examples of women subjected to violence. Daughters of Proetus: Apollod. 26; E.B. Harrison, "Notes on Daedalic Dress," ]Walt 36 (1977) 45; Boardman (supra n. 35) 268, no. 351. Maenads: Der- veni Crater, in The Search for Alexander. Catalogue (New York 1980) no. 127, color pl. 20.

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 561

Wives, in contrast, were not shown publicly in art, not so much because they did not count, as from a re- spect for the privacy of the marriage still found in many Mediterranean countries. We know (Ar. Lys. 72) that wives did undress for their husbands. 102 A passage in Theopompos' scandal-mongering account of the sexu- al customs of the Etruscans, contrasted with those of the Greeks, illustrates Greek criticism of foreigners' frankness about sexual matters, particularly between husband and wife: "[The Etruscans] actually say, when the master of the house is making love [luppooi- <na(71rai ], and someone inquires for him, that he is un- dergoing so-and-so, openly calling the act by its inde- cent name." 103 In a similar vein, on Attic vases even scenes once thought to represent the privacy of the home (including scenes of wool-working) can be seen to deal with the world of courtesans. 104

A Corinthian vase shows the scene of Ismene who has been caught in adultery by her husband, Ty- deus.105 She is bare-breasted. Her lover, who was in bed with her, attempts to escape. He is represented naked, which is not surprising. What is surprising is the white color, very rare for a man, here used perhaps not only for visual contrast, but to emphasize his na- kedness as "female," rather than male, with connota- tions of eroticism and danger. (Is the artist expressing something like the chorus's snarl at Aegisthus, when he finally makes his appearance at the end of Aeschy- lus's Agamemnon, "so then you, like a woman, waited

102 Though Keuls (supra n. 1) 88, feels that "the great stress on female nudity in men's associations with prostitutes ... at least suggests that for conjugal sex the wife did not dis- robe." The word f3w£'iv is rarely used of a wife: C. Collard, "f3w£'iv and Aristophanes, Lysistrata 934," LCA1 4.7 (Dec. 1979) 213-14; A.H. Sommerstein, "f3w£'iv," LCl'vl 5.2 (Feb. 1980) 47; H.D. Jocelyn, "Attic f3w£'iv and English F ... ," LClH 5.3 (March 1980) 65-67. Ar. Lys. 934 illustrates an unusual circumstance. 103 Theopompos, in Ath. Deipnosophistae 12.517e. The

barbarian Etruscans do not account this a disgrace ( a1u- xp6v). Another Etruscan barbaric custom is that wives and husbands attend banquets together. So did the Romans, as Cornelius Nepos notes, in contrast with the Greeks: "for what Roman would blush to take his wife to a dinner party?" (de exec. due., praefatio, quoted by S. Dixon, The Roman Mother [London 1988] 67). 104 D. Williams, "Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of

Interpretation," in A. Cameron and A. Kurtz eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (London 1983) 92-106; V. Liventhal, "What Goes on among the Women? The Setting of Some Attic Vase Paintings of the Fifth Century B.C.," AnalRom 14 (1985) 37-52. 105 Corinthian amphora in the Louvre, with Tydeus, Is-

mene, and Periklymenos: color pl. in J. Charbonneaux, R. Martin, and F. Villard, Archaic Greek Art (New York 1971) 74, fig. 78. Important figures were often painted

the war out, here in the house, shaming the master's bed with lust ... "?) 106

Gods can afford to be naked, or to look upon naked- ness, without being diminished. 107 In Greek art men participate to some extent in this divine nudity. But naked or partially naked women are defenseless. The contrast is clear on a red-figure vase of the fifth cen- tury B.C. on which we see a desperate woman cling- ing to the statue of an impassive Apollo represented as a nude kouros (fig. 2). 108

The contrast between men and women was most marked in Athens, as we have seen. There is a good reason for this situation. The equality among male cit- izens in the political life of the city, based on their equality on the battlefield in the hoplite phalanx, wi- dened the distance between public and private life, and consequently between the worlds of men and women. 109 In public life, and in an art which was public by its very nature, the distinction between the appearance of men and women was emphasized, and, in particular, the significance of the sight of their naked bodies. Male citizens were distinguished by their costume from women, who participated neither in battle nor in the assembly. A naked woman was a slave, for hire, or about to be violated. It is a frequent- ly noted fact that, while male nudity in art dates back to Archaic times, respectable female nudity normally does not appear until much later; not until the Hellen- istic period, in fact, and then only for Aphrodite, ac-

white: J.H. Oakley, "A Calyx-Krater in Virginia by the Nikias Painter with the Birth of Erichthonios," AntK 30 (1987) 126.

106 Aesch. Ag. 1625-26; trans. R. Lattimore, in The Com- plete Greek Tragedies. Aeschylus (New York 1953) 88.

107 E.B. Harrison, "Apollo's Cloak," in Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology. A Tribute to P.H. von Blanckenhagen (Locust Valley, N.Y. 1979) 91: "we may see Apollo's reve- lation of his nude body as a gift of prophetic knowledge .... A Muse, being divine, can learn and live .... " The Muse can see and remain alive: Cassandra must die. For the vase, Robertson 161, fig. 89c. On Greek literary references to the motionless dignity of a divine or heroic statue, "a decoration and an honor for a god or a tomb," and temples, offerings and statuary as "things proper to eternity rather than to mortality," see Holloway (supra n. 36) 197-201. 108 Supra n. 42. For the statue of Athena, see l'viatheson,

supra n. 100: here we see the contrast between the dressed and naked female figure.

109 "The idea that citizens should be equal and similar in the political contexts of the city as they were on the battle- field in the hoplite phalanx thus led to a progressive harden- ing of the boundary between public and private life." Hum- phreys (supra n. 83) 260; cf. 219. Cf. Vidal-Naquet, supra n. 74. Keuls (supra n. 1) 67-68, on the contrast between men and women.

562 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

cepted by Ionian Greeks already familiar with the naked mother goddess worshipped by their Eastern neighbors. 110

BARBARIANS

Among barbarians nudity as a costume also existed, but in different contexts. That of the Gauls is docu- mented by references of Classical authors. That of the Etruscans can be seen in their arts, which allow us to look at the reaction of a barbarian, i.e. non-Greek, people to the Greek conventions regarding nudity. This Greek innovation was accepted by contemporary Etruscans, as by later Romans, as one of the signs of "civilization." It was never adopted in daily life, how- ever, only in art, and even then reluctantly. The atti- tude to nudity outside Greece was quite different from that of the Greeks, and it reminds us, once more, what a very peculiar and unique convention it was. The Greeks were correct in remarking that the barbarians of their own time shared the earlier Greek attitude: they still thought being naked was a sign of shame and humiliation. For Hebrews, Etruscans, and Romans, nudity preserved its ancient significance of magical shame. Greek male nudity was adopted by them, if at all, as an artistic convention, rarely if ever in daily life.

110 Robertson 44, 58-59, 204-205, 390-93, 452, 493, 548-57. Between the eighth and fourth centuries B.C. images of naked females in Greek art can be explained by Eastern influence: J .N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece (London 1977) 130-32; Robertson 44. Robertson pl. 8d, 44, 58-59: the naked goddess, borrowed from the Orient, ap- pears on the Dipylon ivories in Athens, and occasional other examples from the seventh century; "in the sixth and fifth she virtually disappears from Greece to be reborn there in the fourth. Naked women reappear from time to time in the minor arts of the intervening period, but not goddesses." For the Dipylon ivories, he suggests, the date must be around 700 B.C., rather than 750 B.C. (Hurwit). For a nude female figure (Aphrodite?) on a vase from Lemnos, see Bonfante, Etruscan Dress, fig. 163. 111 Strab. 4.4.2.: "The whole race which is now called both

'Gallic' and 'Galatic' is war-mad, and both high-spirited and quick for battle, although otherwise simple and not ill- mannered." Cf. Polyb. 2.28.7: "The lnsubres and Boii were clothed in their breeches and light cloaks; but the Gaesetae from vanity and bravado threw these garments away, and fell in front of the army naked, with nothing but their arms; believing that, as the ground was in part encumbered with brambles, which might possibly catch in their clothes and impede the use of their weapons, they would be more effec- tive in this state." F.W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius (Oxford 1957) 1, 205, with references.

112 T.G.E. Powell, The Celts (London 1958) 68, 108. For representations of naked Gauls in Italy, see, e.g., I Galli e l'Italia (Rome 1978) 196-203 (Civitalba); Brendel 376, fig. 292 (Felsina); M. Harari, in Celli ed Etruschi nell'Jtalia centro-settentrionale (Bologna 1987) 167-70 (Spina). It is

The case of the Gauls is of particular interest for our subject, for they were warriors. Ancient sources emphasize their extraordinarily war-like spirit-they were "war-mad, high-spirited and quick for battle," as Strabo puts it. They fought naked-or at least some of them did. 111 Naked Gallic warriors appear in the Pergamene statuary, in Etruscan art, on Greek and Roman coins, and in ancient Irish legends. 112 The sight of these tall, large barbarians, stark naked except for their golden torques, terrified the Romans. 113

The difference between the Gauls, who fought naked, and the Greeks' athletic nudity is vividly illus- trated in a passage in Livy: "Their wounds were plain to see because they fight naked and their bodies are plump and white since they never are naked except in battle; in consequence, there was a greater flow of blood from their excess of flesh, the gashes were more horribly visible, and the stains of the dark blood stood out more conspicuously against the whiteness of their skins." 114 The Romans, who exercise in the Campus Martius (though always with a loincloth, or peri- zoma), are surprised at the white skin of these north- erners, who do not expose themselves to the sun. In this the Gauls differed, not only from the Greeks, but from the Romans as well. They did not normally

difficult in some cases to tell whether the Gauls' nudity in art reflected their adoption of the Greek Classical model, or their own local custom: B.S. Ridgway, Roman Copies of Greek Sculpture. The Problem of the Originals (Ann Arbor 1984) 104, 108, n. 49. In Roman eyes, the nudity of the Gauls was a barbaric custom, though less monstrous than the beheading of their enemies, whom they offered up as human sacrifices. 113 Polyb. 3.114.4 (Battle of Cannae, 2 August 216 B.C.):

"The companies coming alternatively, the naked Celts, and the Iberians with their short linen tunics bordered with pur- ple stripe, the whole appearance of the line was strange and terrifying." See also 2.29.8: "Not less terrifying was the ap- pearance and rapid movement of the naked warriors in the van, which indicated men in the prime of their strength and beauty; while all the warriors in the front ranks were richly adorned with gold necklaces and bracelets. These sights cer- tainly dismayed the Romans; still the hope they gave of a profitable victory redoubled their eagerness for the battle." Yet their nakedness, after the first shock effect, made them vulnerable: 2.30.3.: "to the naked men in the front ranks this unexpected mode of attack [the volleys of pita hurled by the Romans in front of the legions] caused great distress and discomfiture. For the Gallic shields not being big enough to cover the man, the larger the naked body the more certainty was there of the pilum hitting." Polybius on Roman Impe- rialism, trans. E.S. Schuckburgh (South Bend, Ind.) 173. 91. 114 Livy (38.21.9) used Polybius as a source for these chap-

ters: see H. Nissen, Kritische Untersuchungen ilber die Quelle der uierten und filnften Dekade des Liuius (Berlin 1863) 203-204. I am grateful to Myles McDonnell for these references.

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 563

practice any kind of athletic nudity, either complete (like the Greeks) or partial (like the Romans), in the course of exercising to prepare their bodies for war. The Celts did know of the custom, and in fact im- ported strigils and other toilet articles connected with this Greek institution-but these were placed in wom- en's tombs, not men's ! 115 Theirs was evidently not the "civilized" nudity the Greeks had introduced and much of the world had adopted-at least superficially. When the Gaesetae, and other Gauls-and Ger- mans-undressed for battle, they reacted to a special, dangerous, risky situation. They deliberately removed their pants and mantles and threw them aside, expos- ing themselves for the battle. Polybius attributes the custom to the Gaesetae's '/>tA.ooo[la Kai. f3apuot, "their

·1ove of glory and their courage." Being a Greek, how- ever, Polybius adds a practical reason-they did it to fight more effectively, lest their clothing be caught on the bushes and impede their movements. 116 The cus- tom might also be explained by the Gauls' use of magic. Such a motive would account for the special situation. They were attacking, and exhibited their valor as filled with thefaror, the madness of war, and they threw aside any restraint. They might also have been appealing for a special kind of supra-human as- sistance in a moment of crisis and of testing. 117

Even more strikingly different from the Greeks was the attitude toward nudity of their contemporaries, the Hebrews. Hebrew tradition was fundamentally op- posed to the institution of Greek athletic nudity. Yet

115 V. Kruta, "Les Bolens de Cispadane: Essai de paleoeth- nographie celtique," Etudes celtiques 17 ( 1980) 16: Monte- fortino, Graves 8-10, 15, 20-21bis; Kruta, "Les Senons de l' Adriatique d'apres l'archeologie (prolegomenes)," Etudes celtiques 18 (1981) 15. See also de Grummond ed. (supra n. 97) 172, ns. 52, 58; for strigils found in Praenestine wom- en's tombs and represented on Etruscan and Praenestine mirrors, see 17 5-7 6, fig. 108. Scanlon (supra n. 94) 196, 215 n. 74.

116 Supra n. 111. M. Laurey, "Etudes d'histoire hellenis- tique," REA (1944) 222-23: "les Insubres et les Bolens ont garde braies et saies, les Gaisates combattent nus ... cette nudite n'etait pas habituelle, mais reservee a la bataille" (cf. Livy 38.21.9). See P. Couissin, "La nudite guerriere des Gaulois," Anna/es de la Faculte des Lettres d'Aix 14 (1928- 1929) 65-89. A. Grenier, Les Gaulois (Paris, rev. ed. 1970) 299, on the nude divinity shown on coins, probably repre- senting the furor of war. 11 7 This aspect of the exposed organs usually is connected

with the enlarged phallus, illustrated in Johns (supra n. 10). For the exposure of the genitals of the women, see supra ns. 9, 91. 118 For the Hebrews, see C. Habicht, "2. Makkabaerbuch,"

in Historische und legendarische Erzahlungen. fudische Schriften aus hellenistischer-romischer Zeit 1 (1979) 216-17; H.A. Harris, Greek Athletics and the Jews (Cardiff

there was, as for all peoples living in a Hellenized world, a wide range of reactions, from absolute hostil- ity to relative acceptance. They condemned the insti- tution as a whole: but because philosophical discus- sions took place in the gymnasia, Hellenized Jews at- tended; official doctrine did not bar participation in the palaestra. 118

In Italy, too, we find a "civilized" acceptance re- flected in the art, paralleled by fundamental differ- ences of attitude and realities. There is no doubt that the Romans did not practice athletic nudity. On the exercise ground, in the Campus Martius, they wore a perizoma, a covering called the campestre. Even their ritual, religious nakedness was partial. Cicero's rhe- torical thunder against Antony's costume as a Luper- cal-he ran around dressed in an animal-skin loin- cloth-is legendary. How could a consul appear in such an undignified costume! 119 Recent studies of the geographical, chronological, aesthetic and social limits of Greek heroic nudity in Roman art have yielded in- teresting results. 12° Freestanding sculpture, more closely tied to Greek Classical models than painting or relief, accepted Greek heroic male nudity as well as the Venus types evolved in the Hellenistic period, wholly or partially nude.

Earlier, in contemporary Etruscan art, we see a "barbarian" reaction to the Greek complex of images and ideals: athletic and artistic male nudity accom- panied by the dressed female figure and-eventu- ally-the return of the nude Aphrodite. In fact, much

1976), with the remarks of Crowther (supra n. 54) 128; and the excellent collection of ancient sources in Sweet, (supra n. 69) 49. For Hebrew reaction to the Greek custom of nu- dity and gymnasia, see Poliakoff (supra n. 54) 146: "The Rabbis forbade the nudity and idolatry normally associated with Greek sport: 'They should cover their shame, and should not uncover themselves as the Gentiles uncover themselves'" (jubilees 3:31 ). Yet .a passage in the Mishna shows relatively broad tolerance for Greek athletics (Shab- bat 22:6, with discussion, Poliakoff 146, 188, n. 27). Inscrip- tions show Jewish members of ephebic clubs; in the Dias- pora, Jews engaged in sport: L.H. Feldman, Jewish Social Studies 22 (1960) 224-28. See also D.S. Barrett, "Martial and the Jews," LCM 9 .3 (1984) 42-46. 119 Cic. Phil. 2.34.85. According to Cicero, the shameful

practice of homosexual friendship had its origin in the Greek gymnasia (Tusc. 4.70). See N.B. Crowther, "Nudity and Morality: Athletics in Italy," Cf 76 (1980-1981) 119-23. Thuillier 703; Thuillier, "Denis d'Halicarnasse et lesjeux romains (Ant. Rom. 7.72-73)," MEFRA 87 (197-5) 563-81. 120 Bieber (supra n. 101) 44-45, SO, 63, and passim on "de-

nudation." D.E.E. Kleiner, "Second-Century Mythological Portraiture: Mars and Venus," Latomus 4 (1981) 512-44, esp. 513, 542. R.R.R. Smith, "The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias," ]RS 77 (1987) 88-138.

564 LARISSA BONF ANTE [AJA 93

Fig. 7. Black-figure stamnos, "Perizoma Group," with ath- letes (below), men and women at a banquet (above). Ox- ford, Ashmolean Museum inv. 1965.97. (Courtesy Ashmo- lean Museum)

of the repertoire of Archaic and Classical Etruscan art contrasts strongly with the Greek. We see athletes wearing shorts or perizomata, naked, vulnerable, male prisoners, female nudity, and the image of the nursing mother.

A series of athletes with their sex organs covered, on a group of Attic black-figure vases of the end of the sixth century B.C., has been frequently noted in dis- cussions of Greek athletic nudity. These vases are known as the "Perizoma Group," because of the white loincloth worn by the figures of athletes and dancers or komasts which decorated them. 121 A vase in Ox- ford, for example, shows runners and boxers wearing the characteristic perizoma about their waists and hips (fig. 7). 122 That such vases were made specifically

121 "Perizoma Group": ABV 343-46; T .B.L. Webster, Pot- ter and Patron in Classical Athens (London 1972) 197, 270-72, 292; T. Rasmussen,"Etruscan Shapes in Attic Pot- tery," AntK 28 (1985) 37. 122 M. Vickers, Greek Vases. Ashmolean Museum (Oxford 1978) inv. 1965.97, no. 30, Attic stamnos by the Michigan Painter, ca. 520-500 B.C. H. 17.3 cm. 123 E.g., Mouratidis (supra n. 60) 213-14. Gardiner (supra

n. 56) 191; J.C. Mann (supra n. 22) 77; Arieti (supra n. 86) 431 n. 31; N.B. Crowther, "Athletic Dress and Nudity in Greek Athletics," Eran]b 80 (1982) 167; Sansone (supra n. 54) 108; and F.A. Beck, review of Poliakoff (supra n. 54) in EchCl 32 (1988) 420- 23. 124 For other Attic vases made for the Etruscan market, see

V. Legakis, "Nicosthenic Athletics," Greek Vases in the]. Paul Getty Museum 1 (1983) 41-50; and D.W.J. Gill,

for the Etruscan market is now generally accepted. The presence of these loincloths on athletes repre- sented in Attic art in the sixth century, however, has proved to be a red herring for some scholars working in the field of ancient athletics. Misled by what ap- peared to them to document the earlier athletic peri- zoma, some hypothesized that Thucydides' remark on the recent change to nudity referred to its reintroduc- tion in the fifth century B.C. after an interruption of the ancient tradition. 123

There are other examples of Greek potters turning their attention to the Etruscan market, however; 124

and the custom of showing athletes wearing garments, rather than appearing completely naked, is not sur- prising in Etruria. Although athletes do often appear naked, or infibulated, in Etruscan art of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. (in everyday life they perhaps con- tinued to wear a perizoma), there are a number of sixth- and fifth-century examples of reliefs and wall paintings, such as a group from Chiusi, from the Tomba Poggio al Moro. Three-dimensional examples are rarer: in sculpture, the naked Greek kouros usu- ally served as model. 12 5

The rest of the decoration of the Oxford vase con- firms the impression that it was made for an Etruscan market. On the neck of the vase, we see a symposium scene or party. But rather than an all-male cast, or males with naked or half-naked courtesans, as is usual in Greek representations, here the women are decent- ly dressed. Michael Vickers has drawn attention to the strangeness of this detail in a Greek context. 126 An Etruscan buyer, unlike a Greek, would see nothing unusual in the dress of the male figures on the lower register or of the women on the symposium scene above. The women are shown fully dressed, as re- spectable women, or wives, accompanying their hus- bands in the Etruscan custom, rather than party girls hired out in the Greek way. 1 27 It makes sense, then, to

"Metru Menece," Antiquity 61 (1987) 82-87. Komast cups were a favorite export article of the early sixth century B.C. For a new example showing dancers with large thighs and signs of clothing, see P.J. Connor and H.A.G. Brijder, "A Comast Cup," Greek Vases in the ]. Paul Getty Museum 1 (1983) 1-8. 125 S. Steingraber, Etruscan Painting (New York 1986) fig.

32, pl. 192; cf. pl. 126, belted. Perhaps the clearest illustra- tion of infibulated athletes (two boxers and a javelin throw- er) occurs in the wall painting from the Tomba della Scim- mia, Chiusi, of the early fifth century B.C. Steingraber, pl. 194, fig. 34c; this illustration has often been reproduced (e.g., Sansone [supra n. 54] fig. 23). Bronze statuettes: E. Richardson, Etruscan Votive Bronzes (Mainz 1983) 92. 126 Supra n. 122. 127 L. Bonfante, "Etruscan Couples and Their Aristocratic

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 565

think that we are dealing with pictures specifically chosen to please Etruscan customers who bought the vases from Greek potters, and wanted their decoration to conform to their own customs.

Another strange feature of these vases, however, still requires some explanation. These figures, whether athletes or dancers, are not young, as on Greek vases, but heavy-set, older bearded men. Why would the Etruscans prefer such figures? Did they expect experi- enced performers, rather than talented amateurs? It is hard to say. We still have much to learn about Etrus- can customs and beliefs, as well as their cultural and commercial relations with the Greeks.

Our next example concerns another contrast be- tween the Greek and Etruscan attitude to nudity. In Etruscan art (where, as we have seen, Greek "heroic" nudity was never wholly accepted) male nakedness could still be used for magic apotropaic reasons; 128 or it could represent weakness and vulnerability.

On one of the famous wall paintings from the Fran- c;:ois Tomb in Vulci, now securely dated to the fourth century B.C., is Achilles' Sacrifice of the Trojan Prisoners over the grave of Patroclus. A scene told in just two lines by Homer in the Iliad, it must have been the subject of a monumental painting in Italy, for it recurs on half a dozen Etruscan and South Italian monuments of this period. 129 We see a group of naked, bound prisoners, vulnerable and helpless, their legs cut and bleeding to keep them from escaping. The figure that interests us is the ghost of Patroclus. It is represented in a realistic way (assuming that a ghost can be represented realistically), that is to say, he is shown as a corpse, wearing bandages in the places where he was wounded. The hero's body is shown in its pitiable state. At the same time it is not only a corpse, but a forceful soul, returning to demand that blood be spilled to satisfy him. Similar bandages are

Society," Women's Studies 8 (1981) 157-87; repr. in H. Fo- ley ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York 1981) 323-41. See Rallo (supra n. 9). 128 On the importance of elements intended to protect

against the evil eye in Etruscan art, see R.R. Holloway, "The Bulls in the Tomb of the Bulls at Tarquinia,'' AJA 90 (1986) 447-52; J.-R. Jannot, "De l'agon au geste rituel: l'exemple de la boxe etrusque,'' AntCl 54 (1985) 66-75, who sees the function of boxing scenes in an Etruscan funer- ary context as a protection for the deceased.

129 For the date, see M. Cristofani, in Dia/Arch 1 (1967) 186-219. For the iconography, F. Coarelli, in Dia/Arch n.s. 1/2 (1983) 43-69; J.D. Beazley, Etruscan Vase Painting (Oxford 1947) 8-9, 89-92; F. Buranelli ed., La Tomba Franr;ois di Vulci (Rome 1987) 225-43.

130 Steingraber (supra n. 125) 130. 131 Beazley (supra n. 129) pl. XXXI.2. J. Chamay, "Les

defunts portant bandage," BABesch 52-53 (1977-1978)

worn by the ghost of Agamemnon in the Etruscan Tomba dell'Orco in Tarquinia (where the hero's full- size ghost contrasts with the tiny, screeching shades of the dead clustering around a sterile, wintry tree), 130

and they appear on a number of Apulian vase paint- ings. 131 This image of the soul, still caught in the wounded flesh of the body, may have inspired Michel- angelo's representation of the Pieta in the Florence Cathedral, as well as the Bound, or Dying Slaves. 132

In antiquity the tradition of Greek "heroic" nudity was far from being universally accepted outside of Greece, even as an artistic convention. In Cyprus, and in Italy, the perizoma (which men wore in life) was still represented in the sixth century B.C. Even the strong man Heracles wears his lion skin as a perizoma on Etruscan bronzes and mirrors, rather than on his shoulders, as in Greece. 133 Instead of appearing naked, as in Greece, the Etruscan Apollo wears a rounded mantle or tebenna, the ancestor of the Roman toga. So do a great many Etruscan bronze statuettes, studied by Emeline Richardson as the antecedents of the Roman honorary togatus statue. There are indeed numerous Etruscan statuettes of nude kouroi and naked dancing figures (although these sometimes wear something, a necklace, or shoes, to avoid the complete nudity of their Greek models). 134 Pliny tells us, and the monuments show, that the Etruscans and later Romans preferred figures of warriors, usually wearing armor, rather than naked like the Greeks. 135

When people on the fringes of the Etruscan world learned to render the life-size human figure in order to represent a dead warrior, a hero, they imitated the Greek kouros by way of Etruria. Such a barbarian rendering of a Greek statue is the so-called Hirsch- landen Warrior, found on a grave mound near Stutt- gart in 1962, and now in the Stuttgart Museum. 136

248. 132 L. Bonfante and N. de Grummond, "Michelangelo and

Etruscan Souls," Ana/Rom 17-18 (1988-1989) 99-116. 133 Richardson (supra n. 125) 96, 198, 216, 239-42, and

passim. Bonfante, Etruscan Dress 19-29. 134 E.H. Richardson, "The Etruscan Origins of Early

Roman Sculpture," MAAR 21 (1953) 77-124; Richardson (supra n. 125) 29-30, 92-94, and passim. Bonfante, Etrus- can Dress 48-50.

135 Pliny, HN 34.18: Graeca res nihil velare, at contra Ro- mana ac militaris thoraces addere. Richardson (supra n. 134) 105: "According to Pliny, this was the normal Roman type corresponding to the Greek nude, and it is true that statues of an armed warrior are much commoner in Italy in the Classical and Hellenistic periods than they are in Greece." 136 H. Ztirn, Hallstattforschungen in Nordwurttemberg

(Stuttgart 1970). L. Bonfante, Out of Etruria (Oxford 1981)

566 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

Above, it is flat, like a stele; below, its legs look like the legs of a kouros. It is naked , but armed . Its nudity presents a difficult problem. It may have been inspired by that of the kouroi. On the other hand, it could reflect a local custom: this warrior, like the Gauls, may have actually fought naked. The fully armed Warrior of Capestrano, from Chieti , is distinguished as an important figure by the axe on his left shoul- der-and his huge helmet-but he wears the Etrus- can type of perizoma .1 37 Some years ago, the Capes- trano Warrior reigned as a unique image, difficult to explain in the context of the art of ancient Italy. In the last 20 yea rs other monumental statues of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. have come to light, allowing us to see more clearly how artists in Italy reacted to the innovation of the monumental statues of kouroi. 13 8

The idea of the kouros came from Greece indirectly, by way of Etruscan art , where the kouros is not naked , but is dressed in a perizoma. In this way, the Etrus- cans translated Greek innovations for barbarian, non- Greek cultures.

FEMALE FIGURES

The contrast between mainland Greece and Italy in the Archaic period in the matter of artistic nudity ex- tends to female figures as well as male . In Italy many earlier traditions survived-religious, social, and ritual-occasionally expressed in fresh , unconven- tional artistic forms.

The image of the naked female, banned from Clas- sical Greek art, makes surprising appearances in Etruscan art. Two examples will serve to show how differently this image was perceived . The first is the large-sca le statuette of a naked goddess , found in Or- vieto, in the sanctuary of Cannicella, over 100 years ago, in 1884. Its peculiar features have recently been more closely examined. 1 39 The figure, half life-size, made of Parian marble, and quite clearly of Greek workmanship, was broken, repaired, and reworked in

fig. 69. For the nudity of the Gauls, see supra ns. 111-16. 137 Brendel 100-101; V. Cianfarani , "Culture arcaiche

dell ' Italia medio-adriatica," in Popoli e civilta dell 'ltalia antica 5 (1976) 61-63, 71-92.

138 Bonfante (supra n. 136) 67-68, figs . 68-70. For the sur- prising statue fragments from Monte Prama, in Sardinia, see C. Tronchetti, "Nuragic Statuary from Monte Prama," in M. Balmuth ed. , Studies in Sardinian Archaeology II (Ann Arbor 1986) 41-59; see also the contributions of L. Bonfante and B.S. Ridgway.

antiquity. The head is like that of an Archaic kouros. The arms and their position-Venus pudica-are of course not those of a kouros. A Greek artist in Italy ,

Fig. 8. Etruscan stone sarcophagus from Yuki, ca. 300 B.C. , couple in bed. Boston , Museum of Fine Arts. (Cour- tesy Museum of Fine Arts)

139 Orvieto, Museo Civico no . 11307. End of sixth century B.C. A. Andren, "Marmora Etruriae," in Ant? 7 (1967) 10-24; "II santuario dell a necropoli di Cannicella ad Orvie- to," StEtr 35 (1967) 41-85 . R. Bianchi Bandinelli, "Mar- mora Etruriae," L'arte etrusca (Rome 1982) 292-97 = Dia/Arch 2 (1968) 230-33. A. Pfiffig, Religio Etrusca (Graz 1975) 65-68, 265-66; LIMC II (1984) 47, n. 368, 170, n. 6; M. Cristofani, in Civilta degli Etruschi. Catalogo delta Mostra (Milan 1985) 261-62, no. 10.2 .

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 567

commissioned to make an image of a mother goddess, for which the reigning Greek artistic style provided no model, might well have produced such a strange work as this one, whose odd appearance expresses a tension between Greek artistic tradition on the one hand and native religion and ritual on the other.

Another peculiarly Etruscan monument reflects the way in which the Greek tradition of nudity was im- ported and transformed. Again, we have a surprising occurrence of a naked female figure. Later in date, but still earlier than the Hellenistic period, when the type was accepted in Greek art, we see husband and wife lying naked together in a tender embrace on a sar- cophagus from Vulci in Boston (fig. 8). 140 They lie under the rounded tebenna, which serves as a blanket, a symbol of their marriage. Such an image of a couple does not appear in Greek art. In Etruscan art, too, it is unique: but the pose of husband and wife, united on the kline, is Etruscan. Etruscan, too, is the similarity of their way of dressing-in this case, their nudity. Evidently, the Etruscans did not perceive the contrast between male and female nudity, so characteristic of Greek Classical art. What then did this "costume" sig- nify for those who commissioned the work, or for those who saw it? Was this nudity a sign of the intimacy of the marriage bed? Or did it signify a kind of heroiza- tion of the couple, as ancestors, shown in death dressed in the Greek manner, in a "heroic" nudity considered fitting for the afterworld? We do not know.

Also related to female nudity, or rather exposure, is the frequent image of the nursing or suckling mother, a motif absent from Classical Greek art. Several mon- uments, for example, represent the ritual suckling and adoption of the adult Heracles by Uni (Hera). The myth is unknown in mainland Greek art. On an Etruscan mirror from Volterra, the scene refers to a formal adoption rite. Witnesses stand gravely by. An inscription above the head of the goddess, describing the scene, reads like a legal document: "This picture

140 M.B. Comstock and C.C. Vermeule, Sculpture in Stone (Boston 1976) 244-47, no. 383: "a more or less isolated monument, the culmination of the Greek tradition in Etru- ria before the Hellenistic period" (246). See also Bonfante (supra n. 127) fig. 4. 141 G. Bonfante and L. Bonfante, The Etruscan Language:

An Introduction (Manchester 1983) fig. 20. For other Etruscan mirrors, see G. Sassatelli, CSE, Italia I. Bologna, Museo Civico (Rome 1981) no. 15; and F. Serra Ridgway, in Gli Etruschi di Tarquinia (Modena 1986) 332-33,

shows how Hercules, son of Uni, drank milk." Here a private act becomes a public, ritual act. The mirror dates from the fourth century B.C. Other representa- tions of this myth occur on Apulian vases of the fourth and third centuries B.C. Evidently this was a motif that developed in Italy. 141

Figures of nursing mothers or kourotrophoi either holding children or actually suckling them were popu- lar all over Italy-they appear in Etruscan, South Italian, and Sicilian art, in regions where the concept of a mother goddess who rules over fertility and the birth of children had never ceased to be important. Some of these images have survived, with their awe- some presence: the so-called Mater Matuta from Chiusi, a large stone cinerary urn dating from the fifth century B.C., depicting a woman holding a baby in her lap; a mother nursing two babies from Megara Hyblaea, near Syracuse, in Sicily, from the sixth cen- tury; and a whole series of some 200 "mothers" or kou- rotrophoi from a sanctuary near Capua, in South Italy, holding as many as 14 children. (The latter are only occasionally nursing.) All present the theme of fertility on a monumental scale. Thousands of small, cheap terracotta votive figurines from sanctuaries were also offered as gifts to powerful mother god- desses.142 Written sources and inscriptions give us the names of some of these Italic divinities, for example Uni Astarte, on the gold tablets from Pyrgi. Minerva, too, only incompletely identified with the Greek Athe- na, was a kourotrophos in Italy. 143

Remarkable, in contrast, is the conspicuous absence of the motif of the nursing mother from Classical Greek art. Here, too, a powerful taboo is clearly in- volved. It is otherwise difficult to explain why such a universal gesture as that of a mother nursing her child should be so studiously avoided. Like female nudity, this image enters the repertory of Greek art only in the Hellenistic period together with numerous other genre motifs. Even in the fourth century B.C., as

no. 817, fig. 335. 142 The following is based on three published articles on

mothers in Italy: L. Bonfante, "Dedicated Mothers," in Visible Religion III. Popular Religion (Leiden 1984) 1-17; "Votive Terracotta Statuettes of Mothers and Children," in Iron Age Artefacts in the British Museum (London 1984) 195-203; and Bonfante (supra n. 9). 143 R. Enking, "Minerva Mater," ]di 59 /60 (1944/1945)

111-24; A.N. Zadoks-Josephus Jitta, "Athena and Miner- va: Two Identifications," BABesch 59 (1984) 69-72.

568 LARISSA BONFANTE [AJA 93

Brian Shefton has shown, it is used almost exclusively for figures of Aphrodite with her child, Eros, on painted vases of South Italy or Sicily. There, the Greek colonists had become accustomed to local cus- toms and beliefs. 144

Could the absence of this image from Classical Greek art reflect life? Interesting studies have focused on the issue of breast-feeding by the mother in various cultures and civilizations. 145 Certainly aristocratic- or even "bourgeois" -Greek and Roman ladies rarely nursed their babies-they had wet nurses, often slaves from their own household. The wet nurse is well known from Greek art-for example on Greek funer- ary stelai, where she hands the baby to the seated mother. 146 It is a sign of civilization for a lady to be freed of this embarrassingly physical necessity, all too reminiscent of our lowly animal nature. And indeed Classical Greek art traditionally represents barbari- ans, as well as animals or wild creatures such as cen- taurs nursing their young. 147 The absence of such an important image, however, is not so much due to the fact that ladies did not nurse their own children, or that the image of the wet nurse was too unimportant to be represented, except in a secondary role, in rela- tion to the mother-certainly not in the private act of holding the baby at her breast. The reason is rather to be sought in the attitude to any kind of female expo- sure or nudity, felt to be too private, special, shameful and dangerous , all at the same time.

The image of the female breast was too powerful to be represented lightly in art. Like the phallus, the eye, and the frontal face, the sight of the naked breast has a double role. It is a sign of helplessness; at the same

144 For Classical art, see the excellent list by B. Shefton, in P. Arias and M. Hirmer, A History of Greek Vase Painting (London 1962) 389-90, no. 238. For Hellenistic art, see J. Charbonneaux, "Le mythe humanise dans !'art hellenis- tique," CRAI 23 (1965) 9. For an exception in Greek art, a scene with the wife of Amphiaraos nursing a child on an Attic vase, see LIMC l, 697, no. 27, cf. 25, s.v. Amphiaraos (1. Krauskopf). Polygnotus painted an Iliupersis for the stoa at Delphi: one of the 60-70 figures was of Andromache giv- ing her son the breast (Robertson 248). Greek Anthology 9.589 describes the scene of Hera nursing Herakles, a motif common in Italy, but not in mainland Greece. 145 For nurses in antiquity, see H. Herter, "Amme oder

Saugflasche," in Kleine Schriften (Hildesheim 1975) 620-25. For Greece and Rome, see S. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity (New York 1975); M .R. Lefkowitz and M .B. Fant, Wom- en's Life in Greece and R ome (Baltimore 1982) 164- 66; D . Gourevitch, Le mat d'etre femme (Paris 1984) 233- 58; V. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies. A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh 1986) 1-77. For nurses in Rome,

Fig. 9. Plastic lamp, naked female nursing an infant. Buda- pest, Szepmtiveszeti Museum, inv. T.322. (Courtesy Museum)

S. Treggiari, "Jobs for Women," American journal of An- cient History 1 (1976) 8-89; J.-P. Neraudau, Etre enfant a Rome (Paris 1984) 281-87; K. Bradley, Klio 62 (1980) 321-25; Bradley, in B. Rawson ed., The Fam ily in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Ithaca, N.Y. 1986) 201-29. The image of the nursing mother was avoided in Greece: the kourotrophos exists only in cult (Burkert, Greek Religion 244). Terracotta statuettes of nurses showed them as old and ugly, with large pendulous breasts: see D.B. Thompson, "The Origin ofTanagras," AJA 70 (1966) 56, pl. 17, and R. Higgins, Greek Terracottas (London 1954) 103, pl. 44b. Cf. Ter. E un. 2.3, and Luer. 4.11 68, tumida et mammosa (imi- tating Pl. R esp. 474d, but changing the sex from male to female). 146 F. Johansen, Attic Grave-Reliefs (Copenhagen 1951)

24, 44, fig. 23. A recently discovered stele from northern Greece shows the scene, so far unique in Greece, of a woman nursing a baby: A. Batziou-Efstathiou, "Two New Grave Stelae of Larisa Museum," AAA 1981, 47-54. I am grateful to Brunilde S. Ridgway for the reference. 147 A famous painting of a centaur nursing her young, by

1989] NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN CLASSICAL ART 569

time it has a remarkable magic force. 148 The face of the Gorgon can paralyze, and therefore protect. The evil eye can destroy, or save. It is no coincidence that the herm consists of a frontal face and an erect phal- lus: it was meant to serve an apotropaic function, pro- tecting the city and its citizens. 149 A grotesque statu- ette of a naked woman nursing an infant makes use of the potent image of the naked female breast (fig. 9). 150

CONCLUSIONS

From the seventh through the fourth centuries B.C. nudity was represented in art in both Greece and Italy, but with different meanings. In Greece the an- cient pre-Homeric sense of male nudity was over- turned, while for women, especially in Athens, the old significance of the shame, humiliation, and vulner- ability of exposure and nudity remained unchanged. In Italy, Greek civilization brought with it its "mod- ern" ways, without, however, changing customs and attitudes deeply rooted in the religion and traditions of the peoples living in Etruria and other regions of an- cient Italy. The use of male nudity and female expo- sure among the Gauls shows the survival of ancient customs and taboos in historical times.

The deep and often painful emotions of pleasure, pain, shock, or shame that the sight of the naked body arouses were used by artists in many ways. Nakedness was, and still is, always something special. It can signify divinity, or show human helplessness. Most impressive is the magic of the erect male genitals, which accounts for the survival of the apotropaic image of the phallus into Classical times, on the herm and the satyr and in Old Comedy.

I have tried to illustrate some aspects of the repre- sentation of nakedness, partial and complete, for men and for women, in Greece, and in the barbarian world; to interpret some of the ancient accounts, and to "read" some of the pictures, in the Greek artistic language, as well as in some very queer barbarian dia- lects. There are obviously problems of translation, often involving our own understanding of the naked

the painter Zeuxis, was described by Lucian. Zeuxis: see Robertson 413, 488. Barbarian prisoners on Roman trophies are frequently accompanied by their wives, who are nursing babies. 148 Supra ns. 3, 9-12, 91. S. Freud, A General Introduction

to Psychoanalysis (orig. English pub!. 1920; rev., repr. New York 1964) 160: "The number of things which are repre- sented symbolically in dreams is not great. The human body as a whole, parents, children, brothers and sisters, birth, death, nakedness .... "See also P. Slater, The Glory of Hera (Boston 1971). 149 Supra ns. 9-10, 38. Among recent studies see L. di Stasi,

figure in art. We tend to think of it as mostly erotic. Eros surely moves behind the sight of the naked human body, but its erotic significance is not the only one in art. In fact, when it is only erotic its meaning is least powerful. The Aphrodite of Euripides' Hippoly- tus, with all her awesome power, was fully dressed. In Greece the remarkable innovation of athletic male nudity, which surely originated in a ritual, religious context, developed a special social and civic meaning. It became a costume, a uniform: exercising together in the gymnasia marked men's status as citizens of the polis and as Greeks. On the vases, this is how young men were shown.

Female figures shown naked in public, on the other hand, were usually entertainers. Women represented as exposed were violated, stripped of their clothing, and in dreadful danger, as vulnerable and unprotected before a male attacker as Athenian law conceived them to be in life. Clothing distinguishes men from animals. This distinction is still valid in Classical Greek art for women (though not for men). Polyxena, and Iphigeneia, naked by the altar, are about to be sacrificed like animals.

The view of nakedness among barbarians differs, often contrasting sharply with that of mainland Greece in the Classical period, and allows us to see more clearly, perhaps, just how special the Greek con- cept and custom were. Hebrews and Romans made a variety of adjustments to include-in a limited way- the classical ideal of Greek male nudity and of the gymnasia in their art and in their life. The Gauls' cus- tom of fighting naked was remarked on as "foreign" by the Greeks. In Etruria, and in Italy, female nudity and the image of the nursing mother still mark the power of the mother goddess, as they did in the Medi- terranean before Greek art prevailed.

In Classical antiquity, therefore, the contrast be- tween the clothed and the naked human body was used to express some of the most basic contrasts of the human experience: God and man, human and animal, man and woman, public world and private life, wealth

Mal Occhio: The Underside of Vision (San Francisco 1981 ), with review by A. Burgess, TLS, 4 September 1981, 999; A. Riess, "The Mother's Eye: For Better and for Worse," The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 33 (1978) 381-409; and A. Reiss, "The Power of the Eye in Nature, Nurture, and Culture. A Developmental View of Mutual Gaze," The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 43 ( 1988) 399-421. 15° From the Collection of P. Arndt: acquired 1908. Prove-

nance unknown: probably southern Italy. H. 15.2 cm. Oroszliin, Cat. No. 1930, No. E 104. I am grateful to J.G: Szilagyi for photograph and references.

570 LARISSA BONF ANTE

and poverty, admiration and pity, citizen and slave, civilization and barbarism, spirit and flesh, life and death, power and helplessness. At the same time, the sight of the naked body has a great magic power, which the artist must use and guard carefully. Its meanings change over time, but not its power, which

reminds us-much as we would rather forget-of our own animal nature and our mortality.

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

2 5 WA VERLEY PLACE NEW YORK, NEW YORK I 0003

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3 Some Nuer Notions of Nakedness, Nudity, and Sexuality T. O. Beidelman Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 1968), pp. 113-132. Stable URL:

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12 GUMNOS and Nudus E. H. Sturtevant The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 33, No. 3. (1912), pp. 324-329. Stable URL:

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21 Roman Triumphs and Etruscan Kings: The Changing Face of the Triumph Larissa Bonfante Warren The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 60. (1970), pp. 49-66. Stable URL:

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38 The Origin of the Greek Herm Hetty Goldman American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 46, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1942), pp. 58-68. Stable URL:

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45 The Chieftain Cup and a Minoan Rite of Passage Robert B. Koehl The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 106. (1986), pp. 99-110. Stable URL:

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47 Courtship Scenes in Attic Vase-Painting H. A. Shapiro American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 85, No. 2. (Apr., 1981), pp. 133-143. Stable URL:

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50 Genital Phobia and Depilation Martin Kilmer The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 102. (1982), pp. 104-112. Stable URL:

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71 Expanded Uses of the Greek Gymnasium Clarence A. Forbes Classical Philology, Vol. 40, No. 1. (Jan., 1945), pp. 32-42. Stable URL:

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77 The Draped Kouros Type and the Workshop of the Syracuse Youth Barbara A. Barletta American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 91, No. 2. (Apr., 1987), pp. 233-246. Stable URL:

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80 Slavery and Homosexuality at Athens Mark Golden Phoenix, Vol. 38, No. 4. (Winter, 1984), pp. 308-324. Stable URL:

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97 Funeral Games in Greek Art Lynn E. Roller American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 85, No. 2. (Apr., 1981), pp. 107-119. Stable URL:

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101 The Robes of Iphigeneia Hugh Lloyd-Jones The Classical Review, New Ser., Vol. 2, No. 3/4. (Dec., 1952), pp. 132-135. Stable URL:

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119 Nudity and Morality: Athletics in Italy Nigel B. Crowther The Classical Journal, Vol. 76, No. 2. (Dec., 1980 - Jan., 1981), pp. 119-123. Stable URL:

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120 The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias R. R. R. Smith The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 77. (1987), pp. 88-138. Stable URL:

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128 The Bulls in the "Tomb of the Bulls" at Tarquinia R. Ross Holloway American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 90, No. 4. (Oct., 1986), pp. 447-452. Stable URL:

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145 The Origin of Tanagras Dorothy Burr Thompson American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 70, No. 1. (Jan., 1966), pp. 51-63. Stable URL:

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