NUDITY OF VICTOR STATUES. 47 
NUDITY OF VICTOR STATUES. 
Most of the victor statues at Olympia were nude.! In the early 
period all athletes wore the loin-cloth. Cretan frescoes show it was 
the custom in the early Mediterranean world. The athletes of Homer 
girded themselves on entering the games of Patroklos,? and the girdle 
appears in the earliest athletic scenes on vases.* Throughout the historic 
period, however, the Greeks entered their contests in complete nudity, 
and this nudity naturally was carried over into athletic sculpture. 
Pliny’s* statement, Graeca res nthil velare, is, therefore, correct, despite 
another of Philostratos to the effect that at Delphi, at the Isthmus, 
and everywhere except at Olympia, the athlete wore the coarse man- 
tle The beginning of the change from wearing the loin-cloth to 
complete nudity was ascribed to an accident. The Megarian run- 
ner Orsippos in the 15th Ol. (=720 B.C.) dropped his loin-cloth 
while running, either accidentally or because it impeded him.* The 
story was commemorated by an epigram, perhaps by Simonides, 
which was inscribed on his tomb at Megara.’ A copy of this epigram 
in the Megarian dialect, executed in late Roman or Byzantine times, 
when the original had become illegible, was discovered at Megara in 
1769 and shows that its original was the source of Pausanias’ remarks.® 
Philostratos says that athletes contended nude at Olympia, either be- 
cause of the summerheatora mishap which befell the woman Pherenike 
of Rhodes. She accompanied her son, the boy boxer Peisirhodos, 
1Furtw.-Urlichs, Denkmaeler, p. 104. On nudity and athletics, see the article by Furtwaengler, 
Die Bedeutung der Gymnastik in der griech. Kunst, in Saemann’s Monatschr. fuer paedagog. 
Reform., 1905; W. Mueller, Nacktheit und Entbloessung in der alt-ortent. und aelteren griech. 
Kunst, Diss. inaug., Leipsic, 1906. 
2The boxer Euryalos “first put a cincture ({Gua) about him, 
XXIII, 683. See also XXIII, 710; Od., XVIII, 67 and 76. 
3F. g., wrestlers on a black-figured een ohera 16 the Vatican: J. H. ay XXV, 1905, p. 288, fig. 24; 
boxers, runners, and a jumper on a b.-f, stamnos in the Bibliotheque Nanionale at Paris (no. 252): 
Gardiner, p. 418, fig. 142, from de Ridder, Cat. des vases peints, I, p. 160. 
4H, N., XXXIV, 18. 
5Ph., 17. This mantle was called rpi@w»—the ‘‘worn,” hence was thin and coarse; Hermann- 
Bluemner, Griech. Privatalt., p. 175; etc. 
6P., I, 44.1; Eustath., on Iliad, XXIII, 683, p. 1324, 12 f. Dionys. Hal., Antig. Rom., VII, 72, 
says that it was the Spartan Akanthos, who won in a running race, 1. ¢., d6\cxos, in Ol. 16; so also 
Afr.; see P., V, 8.6; Foerster, 17. Orsippos won the stade-race in Ol. 15: Afr.; Eustath., J. c.; 
Dionys., /. c.; Fcerster, 16. But Didymos, schol. on Iliad, XXIII, 683, says that Orsippos won 
in Ol. 32 (=652 B.C.); similarly Etym. magn., p. 242, 5.0. yupvaova; however, Boeckh, Kleine 
Schriften, IV, p. 173, has shown that Ol. 15 is nght. Isidoros, in a confused passage, Orig., 
XVIII, 17.2, says that athletes were early girded and dropped the loin-cloth in consequence of 
a runner getting weary, whence a decree of the time of the archon Hippomenes at Athens (Ol. 
14.2) allowed athletes to contend nude; the same story is told in the Schol. Venet. on the Iliad, 
XXIII, 683; see Foerster, 16. 
74.G., App. 272; Cougny, Anth. Pal., 1890, III (App. nov.), p. 4, no. 24; P., I, 44.1, says that 
his tomb was near that of Koroibos. 
8C.I.G., 1, 1050 (with Boeckh’s commentary on the loin-cloth); C. I. G. G. S., 52; Kaibel, Epigr. 
Gr., ex lapid. conl., 1878, no. 843; Frazer, II, p. 538. The schol. on Thukyd., I, 6, quotes four 
lines of it. The name was spelled Orrippos in the Megarian dialect. 
29 
in his bout with Epeios: Iliad, 
