the Greeks.55 This spiritual stage of nudity we can strive
http://martenlawgroup.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=noefa.com/contents/18297444/1.html of the Classical period and later did
not themselves remember or comprehend this aspect of their
past." Yet a ritual source for the nudity so characteristic of Greek culture explains a fantastic deal that's
otherwise vague."58In fact, as Brelich has noted, it's
Simpler to understand the nudity of athletes at the Olymlater
pic games as initially prescribed than-as
Greek tradition had it-an innovation.59
A recent study by J. Mouratidis on the earliest
stages of Greek fit nudity claims that "nudity in
Greek sports had its origins in prehistoric Greece and
was connected with the warrior-athlete whose training and competition in the games was at the same time
his prep for war."60 These conclusions appear to
me to be right. But I think in moving from this
Crude circumstance the writer underestimates, or ignores entirely, the religious amount of the phenomenon,
just as the Greeks did. We can follow usually-but
not date-some of the periods of the growth of
nudity, from its connection with the "aggression and
apotropaic purposes characteristic of the early phases
of human society,"'' to its survival in the historic
period in Greek athletics.
Other scholars have found the origin of sport in
for the rise of sport or sports has to account in some
way for the associated phenomenon of "athletic nudity," a
Recently a
Great case has been made for a ritual source for Greek
athletics, in connection with early hunting rituals.
The argument which has been made against a religious connection appears to me to lose sight of a period of
Greek culture which is in fact observable, though sometimes dimly, in later times.
sports and religion are so extraordinarily old-fashioned
allows us to trace their existence and character in earlier times.63 There is little doubt that nudity was affected with the spiritual atmosphere of the games. At
the refuge at Olympia, as elsewhere, initiation
rites of youths, fit and artistic contests were
related within the same religious feeling. more was a typical initiation motif. In initiation
rites in ancient Crete, the young man was naked before he got the arms of the warrior and entered into
his manhood.
focused on Greek ideas of faith, of divinity, the holy,
the irrational, ritual, and magic. The weakening of "theold
the comparatively fresh link of anthropologyhad contributedto
an earlier reluctanceon the part of scholars to accept "spiritual"explanations (see Rose, beneath), not too differentfrom
Thucydides' point of view, which as Ernst Badian pointed
Outside, in fact distortedthe image of occasions. (E. Badian, unpublished lecture, Awesome York, 1985; cf. infra ns. 57, 84-87).
The tide has turned. Peter Brown has done much to transform
the situation for late antiquity;for the classicswe owe considerably
the Irrational(Berkeley 1951).
thought they knew was a jumble of fact and fiction.
history derivedfrom prolongedmeditationabout the world
in which Thucydideslived .... "Sansone (supra n. 54) 109:
"The effect of these various and divergent reports is to
prove to us that the early Greeks, who were always caring
of assigning names to the 'inventors' of otherwise unexplained customs,were themselvesunaware of the reason for
the practice."
I amgrateful to EverettWheeler who gave me this reference.
61 Mouratidis (supra n. 60) 321. Mouratidis (223, cf. 32)
Quotations me (EtruscanDress 102) on the nudity of Greek sportsmen as protection against the evil eye. I now believe that
same as, ritual nudity. The nudity of the phallic herm, the
satyr, Priapus,etc., is aggressiveand protectivein a way that
Fit and ritual nudity (which emphasize youth and a
small member) are not. See supra, text.
Sansone (supra n. 54) 3-14.
infra n. 63.
7-9, on
mock combats as a kind of rite, initiatory rites of endurance,and the presenceof "fit"nudity as a featureof
such rituals.
Source of sport as ritualistic activities derived from hunting
("sportis the rite sacrificeof physical energy")cannot account for the phenomenonof nudity in Greekathletics(Sansone 107-15): J. Griffin, "Playingto Win," The Awesome York
Review of Publications, 29 Sept. 1988, 3-5.