Athletes competed naked
The habit began in sport. The historian Thucydides, writing in the late fifth century BCE, says the Spartans were the first to contend naked, stripping in public and rubbing themselves with oil for exercise. Formerly, he adds, even at the Olympic Games the athletes wore belts round their middles, and the practice had stopped only a few years before his time. By the Classical period, then, Greek athletes trained and competed in the nude, at the great religious festivals of Olympia, Delphi and the other sanctuaries.
That made the athlete’s body a public sight, and a prestigious one. The Greeks considered athletes embodiments of all that was best in humanity, so it was natural for them to associate the naked male body with victory, glory and even moral excellence. Statues of naked athletes stood as offerings in the sanctuaries, and the same athletic nudes were used for gods and heroes.
Were the Greeks naked in daily life? No
It is a common misreading of the statues. Greek men in the street wore a chiton and a cloak, the himation, and young men a short cloak for riding. Nudity belonged to the gymnasium and the stadium, and in art it became a code. Compared with the rest of the ancient world, where nakedness usually meant disgrace or defeat, the Greek attitude was unusual, and that is exactly why their statues stand out.
From the kouros to the Classical athlete
The naked young man was the main male statue of the Archaic period. Kouroi, standing youths with the left foot slightly forward, are usually nude, though a few wore painted sandals. They marked graves or stood as gifts in sanctuaries, and the body itself was the message: youth, strength, an ideal. On a grave stele in the Metropolitan Museum, made around 530 BCE for a young man probably called Megakles, he is shown as an athlete with an oil flask, used to clean the body after exercise, hanging from his wrist.
The Classical athlete kept the nudity and changed the pose. In the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, a young victor tying a ribbon round his head after a contest, the weight rests on one leg and the torso answers with a counter-movement. The original bronze probably stood in a sanctuary where games were held, such as Olympia or Delphi. A naked Classical statue of this kind is at the same time an athlete, a votive gift and a lesson in proportion.
Gods and heroes with athletes’ bodies
Because the nude body stood for excellence, sculptors gave it to the gods too. The bronze god recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision, made around 460 BCE and 2.09 metres tall, is a naked, bearded man raising his arm to throw a thunderbolt or a trident; nothing but the missing weapon distinguishes Zeus from Poseidon. Heroes such as Herakles appear the same way. The nudity says “divine” and “heroic” at once, in the visual language of the stadium.
The men who kept their clothes on
Not every male statue is naked, and the exceptions confirm the rule. The Charioteer of Delphi (478-474 BCE) wears a long tunic, the dress of his job. In Athens the National Archaeological Museum has one kouros, found in the bed of the river Ilissos, that is shown clothed, the only one in its collection. And in the Hellenistic age cities honoured their benefactors with statues of men wrapped in the himation: a bronze in the Metropolitan Museum shows a citizen in contrapposto, his right hand raised in a gesture of speech. Honorific statues like this were the highest honour a city could offer, and for a statesman the right costume was the cloak.
Where to see them
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens has the great kouroi, the Artemision bronze and the Ilissos kouros; the Charioteer is in the museum at Delphi. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has the Megakles stele, Roman copies of Polykleitos and the Hellenistic honorific bronze. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- J. Sorabella, “The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008); “Ancient Greek Dress” (2003).
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.6.5 (Perseus Digital Library).
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 11.185a-d, f, g, x; 25.78.56; 2001.443.
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens, “Sculpture Collection”; Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Odysseus: Artemision bronze; Charioteer of Delphi.
