Naked Women In Greece
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The history of nudity involves social attitudes to nakedness of the human body in different cultures in history. The use of clothing to cover the body is one of the changes that mark the end of the Neolithic, and the beginning of civilizations. Nudity (or near-complete nudity) has traditionally been the social norm for both men and women in hunter-gatherer cultures in warm climates, and it is still common among many indigenous peoples. The need to cover the body is associated with human migration out of the tropics into climates where clothes were needed as protection from sun, heat, and dust in the Middle East; or from cold and rain in Europe and Asia. The first use of animal skins and cloth may have been as adornment, along with body modification, body painting, and jewelry, invented first for other purposes, such as magic, decoration, cult, or prestige. The skills used in their making were later found to be practical as well.
In modern societies, complete nudity in public became increasingly rare as nakedness became associated with lower status, but the mild Mediterranean climate allowed for a minimum of clothing, and in a number of ancient cultures, the athletic and/or cultist nudity of men and boys was a natural concept. In ancient Greece, nudity became associated with the perfection of the gods. In ancient Rome, complete nudity could be a public disgrace, though it could be seen at the public baths or in erotic art. In the Western world, with the spread of Christianity, any positive associations with nudity were replaced with concepts of sin and shame. Although rediscovery of Greek ideals in the Renaissance restored the nude to symbolic meaning in art, by the Victorian era, public nakedness was considered obscene. In Asia, public nudity has been viewed as a violation of social propriety rather than sin; embarrassing rather than shameful. However, in Japan, mixed-gender communal bathing was quite normal and commonplace until the Meiji Restoration.
The wearing of clothing is assumed to be a behavioral adaptation, arising from the need for protection from the elements; including the sun (for depigmented human populations) and cold temperatures as humans migrated to colder regions. It is estimated that anatomically modern humans evolved 260,000 to 350,000 years ago.[6] A genetic analysis estimates that clothing lice diverged from head louse ancestors at least by 83,000 and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago, suggesting that the use of clothing likely originated with anatomically modern humans in Africa prior to their migration to colder climates.[7] What is now called clothing may have originated along with other types of adornment, including jewelry, body paint, tattoos, and other body modifications, "dressing" the naked body without concealing it.[8] Body adornment is one of the changes that occurred in the late Paleolithic (40,000 to 60,000 years ago) that indicate that humans had become not only anatomically but culturally and psychologically modern, capable of self-reflection and symbolic interaction.[9]
The widespread habitual use of clothing is one of the changes that mark the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of civilization. Clothing and adornment became part of the symbolic communication that marked a person's membership in their society. Thus nakedness in everyday life meant being at the bottom of the social scale, lacking in dignity and status. However, removing clothes while engaged in work or bathing was commonplace, and deities and heroes might be depicted nude to represent fertility, strength, or purity. Some images were subtly or explicitly erotic, depicting suggestive poses or sexual activity.[11]
In Mesopotamia, most people owned a single item of clothing, usually a linen cloth that was wrapped and tied. Possessing no clothes meant being at the bottom of the social scale, being indebted, or if a slave, not being provided with clothes.[12] In the Uruk period there was recognition of the need for functional and practical nudity while performing many tasks, although the nakedness of workers emphasized the social difference between servants and the elite, who were clothed.[13]
For the average person in ancient Egypt clothing changed little from its beginnings until the Middle Kingdom. Both men and women of the lower classes were commonly bare chested and barefoot, wearing a simple loincloth or skirt around their waist. Slaves might not be provided with clothing.[15] Servants were nude or wore loincloths.[16] Although the genitals of adults were generally covered, nakedness in ancient Egypt was not a violation of any social norm, but more often a convention indicating lack of wealth; those that could afford to do so covered more.[17] Nudity was considered a natural state.[18] Laborers would be naked while performing many tasks, particularly if hot, dirty, or wet; farmers, fishermen, herders, and those working close to fires or ovens.[19][20]
Male nudity was celebrated in ancient Greece to a greater degree than any culture before or since.[23][24] The status of freedom, maleness, privilege, and physical virtues were asserted by discarding everyday clothing for athletic nudity.[25] Nudity became a ritual costume by association of the naked body with the beauty and power of the gods.[26] The female nude emerged as a subject for art in the 5th century BCE, illustrating stories of women bathing both indoors and outdoors. The passive images reflected the unequal status of women in society compared to the athletic and heroic images of naked men.[27] In Sparta during the Classical period, women were also trained in athletics, and while scholars do not agree whether they also competed in the nude, the same word (gymnosis, naked or lightly clothed) was used to describe the practice. It is generally agreed that Spartan women in the classical period were nude only for specific religious and ceremonial purposes.[28] In the Hellenistic period Spartan women trained with men, and participated in more athletic events.[29] However, unlike the later Roman baths, those in Hellenistic Greece were segregated by sex.[30]
Ancient Greece had a particular fascination for aesthetics, which was also reflected in clothing or its absence. Sparta had rigorous codes of training (agoge) and physical exercise was conducted in the nude. Athletes competed naked in public sporting events. Spartan women, as well as men, would sometimes be naked in public processions and festivals. This practice was designed to encourage virtue in men while they were away at war and an appreciation of health in the women.[31] Women and goddesses were normally portrayed clothed in sculpture of the Classical period, with the exception of the nude Aphrodite.
In general, however, concepts of either shame or offense, or the social comfort of the individual, seem to have been deterrents of public nudity in the rest of Greece and the ancient world in the east and west, with exceptions in what is now South America, and in Africa and Australia. Polybius asserts that Celts typically fought naked, "The appearance of these naked warriors was a terrifying spectacle, for they were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life."[32]
In Greek culture, depictions of erotic nudity were considered normal. The Greeks were conscious of the exceptional nature of their nudity, noting that "generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be dishonourable; lovers of youths share the evil repute in which philosophy and naked sports are held, because they are inimical to tyranny;"[33]
Respectable Roman women were portrayed clothed. Partial nudity of goddesses in Roman Imperial art, however, can highlight the breasts as dignified but pleasurable images of nurturing, abundance, and peacefulness.[55][56] The completely nude female body as portrayed in sculpture was thought to embody a universal concept of Venus, whose counterpart Aphrodite is the goddess most often depicted as a nude in Greek art.[57][58] By the 1st century AD, Roman art showed a broad interest in the female nude engaged in varied activities, including sex.
The erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum may depict women performing sex acts either naked or often wearing a strophium (strapless bra) that covers the breasts even when otherwise nude.[59] Latin literature describes prostitutes displaying themselves naked at the entrance to their brothel cubicles, or wearing see-through silk garments.[47]
The display of the female body made it vulnerable; Varro thought the Latin word for "sight, gaze", visus, was etymologically related to vis, "force, power". The connection between visus and vis, he said, also implied the potential for violation, just as Actaeon gazing on the naked Diana violated the goddess.[b][c][61]
One exception to public nudity was the thermae (public baths), though attitudes toward nude bathing also changed over time. In the 2nd century BC, Cato preferred not to bathe in the presence of his son, and Plutarch implies that for Romans of these earlier times it was considered shameful for mature men to expose their bodies to younger males.[62][63][48] Later, however, men and women might even bathe together.[64] Some Hellenized or Romanized Jews resorted to epispasm, a surgical procedure to restore the foreskin "for the sake of decorum".[d][e] In Palestine, Jews were hostile to the Roman baths beyond the issue of nudity.[66]
In much of Asia, traditional dress covers the entire body, similar to Western dress.[67] In stories written in China as early as the 4th Century BCE, nudity is presented as an affront to human dignity, reflecting the belief that "humanness" in Chinese society is not innate, but earned by correct behavior. However, nakedness could also be used by an individual to express contempt for others in their presence. In other stories, the nudity of women, emanating the power of yin, could nullify the yang of aggressive forces.[68] 2b1af7f3a8