When you see the sculptures on display, you might be forgiven for thinking that the standard dress for men, in ancient Athens especially, was a state of undress. The Greeks, if their art is anything to go by, spent a lot of time starkers. Although we must separate art from life, nevertheless, they enjoyed many more occasions for nudity than any other European civilisation before or since. The reason why they performed athletics in the nude was said to be because, in the early Olympic Games, a runner lost his knickers and as a result also lost the race. The Westmacott Athlete. Roman marble copy of a Greek bronze original. Photo: c British Museum.
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Black figure, red figure
There is a tendency in modern scholarship to interpret naked men, especially when they are warriors, as heroes. In Greek art, these nude figures are assumed to be special in some way. This is because scholars assume that, throughout Greek history, nudity was regarded as something out of the ordinary: regular mortals did not normally appear naked in public aside from the gymnasia or baths , let alone that they would actually fight in the nude. While the foregoing is probably true for the Classical period i. Show Cf. In particular, I would suggest that there were important changes as regards the treatment of male nudity that culminated in the final decades of the sixth century BC.
Naked men in ancient Greek art
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the un-realist use of nudity in classical sculpture to show figures who may be heroes , deities, or semi-divine beings. This convention began in Archaic and Classical Greece and continued in Hellenistic and Roman sculpture. The existence or place of the convention is the subject of scholarly argument. In ancient Greek art , warriors on reliefs and painted vases were often shown as nude in combat, which was not in fact the Greek custom, and in other contexts. Idealized young men but not women were carved in kouros figures, and cult images in the temples of some male deities were nude. Later, portrait statues of the rich, including Roman imperial families, were given idealized nude bodies; by now this included women.
Male nudes are the norm in Greek art, even though historians have stated that ancient Greeks kept their clothes on for the most part. New research suggests that art might have been imitating life more closely than previously thought. Nudity was a costume used by artists to depict various roles of men, ranging from heroicism and status to defeat. Hurwit's newly published research shows that the Greeks did walk around in the buff in some situations. Men strode about free of their togas in the bedroom and at parties called symposia, where they would eat, drink and carouse. Nudity was also common on the athletic fields and at the Olympic games. Because there are so many images of Greek athletes, some lay people have assumed the Greeks were in their birthday suits all the time. Warriors and heroes are often, but not always, represented in the nude. Artists demonstrated the physical prowess men used to defeat their enemies. But, as Hurwit said, if you can go into battle naked, you've got to be pretty good.