undertook to strip and ran naked at Olympia, at the fifteenth Olympiad, was
Acanthus the Lacedaemonian.'14
There's a competing tradition told by Pausanias about Orsippos of Megara, "who
won a foot race at Olympia running nude at a time when athletes used to wear
There's a Hellenistic epitaph about Orsippos that
was inscribed on the sportsman's grave in Megara saying that he was the first of the
Greeks in Olympia crowned naked and that before him all sportsmen girded
themselves during the games. It's clear that the Megarians were making a
counterclaim to Sparta's and wanted to show that a native of Megara was the
first naked victor. The storyline about Orsippos seems ambiguous and dubious
since there are a number of different stories about his performance in the race.
Based on the Homeric scholiasts (on Iliad 23.683) Orsippos not only lost
the race but he tripped, fell, and expired when his loincloth came adrift. A different
Narrative mentions Orsippos not as a winner in the race but as a loser because he
became entangled in his shorts.5
Sport. A runner, according to this narrative, leading the field lost ground and dropped
4. Thucydides 1.5.6. by Charles
1928) Trans. by E. Gary.
5. Pausanias 1.44.1. ( follow . Great Britain, 1971) Trans. by Peter Levi; 1.G 7.52; Joseph
Fontenrose, "The Hero as Sportsman," California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968): 93; F. Bohringer, "Cults
D'Athlttes en Grce Classique:


Attic stamnos of the late 6th century B.C., E. Norman Gardiner Athletics of the Early
World (Oxford University Press, 1930), fig. 163.

because his short pants floated freely down to his legs; so the Athenian archon
Hippomenes in order to prevent any return of the injury, applied, by
law, that all men in the future should exercise naked.6
Thus while nearly all traditional sources assign nudity in athletics as early
as the 8th century B.C., Plato and Thucydides considered that it happened not
long before their own era.
athletes girded themselves during their athletic competitions. These three
citations prompted some scholars to conclude that nudity wasn't a practice
among the Mycenaean Greeks, supposing that Homer described in his epic poems
Mycenaean sport practices. But there is enough evidence to demonstrate that many of
the games and athletic practices described in Homer's epic poems were anachronistically introduced by the poet into his epic poems. The Homeric epic poems, it's
been pointed out, revealed athletic practices of many ages, including the
poet's.7 It becomes clear that the Homeric athletes girded themselves for the
contact occasions. Sadly the poet didn't say anything about loincloths for
6. lsidoros Source. Et. 18.172.
7. See Iliad 23. 685; 23.
pp. 193.219, 235-237.




Origin of Nudity in Greek Sport
the other games. Do we need to presume that they contended naked in these
Occasions? It really is challenging to say. One might well imply the Homeric references to
loincloths in athletics represent a practice of the poet's own time since the substance
evidence reveals that nudity wasn't unknown in Mycenaean Greece.
It is possible that Ionia, Homer's own birthplace, was impacted by the existing practice in the oriental world.
Lydians, and barbarians in general, believed that it was a disgrace for a guy to be
seen naked. This Anatolian approach towards nudity was seemingly shared, to
some extent, by the Greeks who lived in regions under Anatolian sway. An
Sign of this influence is that the inhabitants of the coast of Asia Minor
borrowed and acquired various components of asian dress in addition to various hair
styles. Furthermore, the Persian pointed hat and shoes with effeminate connotations
and the long-sleeved chiton were embraced by the Phrygians and Ionian Greeks
during the period of Persian rule.8 Moreover the magnificent Ionian clothing that
Herodotos frequently describes were quite characteristic of the asian world.
Some writers point to Thersites to demonstrate that to be seen naked was considered
Thersites was threatened by Odysseus with the public degradation of running naked to the Greek boats. This
punishment must have been a shameful and humiliating one, but this must have