the Greeks.55 This spiritual period of nudity we can try

to reconstruct by way of archaeology and anthropolo-

gy.56 The Greeks of the Classical period and after did

not themselves remember or comprehend this facet of their

Previous." Yet a ritual origin for the nudity so characteristic of Greek culture describes a great deal that's

otherwise vague."58In fact, as Brelich has noted, it's

easier to comprehend the nudity of athletes at the Olymlater

pic games as initially prescribed than as

Greek tradition had it-an initiation.59

A recent study by J. Mouratidis on the earliest

Periods of Greek athletic nudity maintains that "nudity in

Greek sports had its roots in prehistoric Greece and

was connected with the warrior-athlete whose training and competition in the games was at the exact same time

his training for war."60 These conclusions appear to

me to be right. But I believe in moving from this

Crude circumstance the writer underestimates, or neglects completely, the religious amount of the occurrence,

just as the Greeks did. We can trace typically-but

not date-some of the periods of the growth of

nudity, from its link with the "aggression and

apotropaic purposes characteristic of the early phases

of human society,"'' to its survival in the historical

Span in Greek sport.

Other scholars have seen the source of sport in

funeral games, cultic practices, etc.62 Any explanation

for the rise of sport or athletics has to account in some

Method for the associated phenomenon of "fit nudity," a

Attribute of Greek culture as characteristic and farreaching as their spirit of competition. Lately a

Great case was made for a rite origin for Greek

Sports, in connection with early hunting rituals.

The argument which has been made against a religious connection appears to me to lose sight of a phase of

Greek culture that is in fact observable, though sometimes dimly, in later times. The very fact that both

sports and religion are so amazingly conservative

allows us to trace their existence and character in earlier times.63 There's little uncertainty that nudity was affected with the spiritual atmosphere of the games. At

the refuge at Olympia, as elsewhere, initiation

Rituals of youths, fit and artistic contests were

related within precisely the same spiritual setting. Rite

nakedness was a typical initiation motif. In initiation

Rituals in ancient Crete, the young man was naked before he got the arms of the warrior and entered into

his manhood.

56 Much recent work in archaeologyand anthropologyhas

focused on Greek notions of religion, of divinity, the sacred,

the irrational, rite, and magic. The weakening of "theold

link between theology and classics"and the strengtheningof

the comparatively awesome link of anthropologyhad contributedto

an earlier reluctanceon the part of scholars to accept "spiritual"explanations (see Rose, beneath), not overly differentfrom

Thucydides' point of view, which as Ernst Badian pointed

Outside, in fact distortedthe picture of events. (E. Badian, unpublished lecture, Awesome York, 1985; cf. infra ns. 57, 84-87).

The tide has turned. Peter Brown has done much to change

the situation for late antiquity;for the classicswe owe substantially

to the psychologicalinsights of E.R. Dodds, The Greeksand

the Irrational(Berkeley 1951). See G. Clark, review of P.E.

thought they understood was a jumble of fact and fiction. Thucydides' introductioncontainsan interpretationof early Greek

history derivedfrom prolongedmeditationabout the world

in which Thucydideslived .... "Sansone (supra n. 54) 109:

"The effect of these various and divergent accounts is to

prove to us that the ancient Greeks, who were always fond

of assigning names to the 'inventors' of otherwise unexplained customs,were themselvesunaware of the reason for

the practice."

I amgrateful to EverettWheeler who gave me this reference.

61 Mouratidis (supra n. 60) 321. Mouratidis (223, cf. 32)

quotes https://nudists-video.net/pins/pins-young-nudist-boys-on-beach.php (EtruscanDress 102) on the nudity of Greek sportsmen as protection against the evil eye. I now consider that

such apotropaic,protectivenudity is related to, but not the

same as, ritual nudity. The nudity of the phallic herm, the

satyr, Priapus,etc., is aggressiveand protectivein a way that

athletic and rite nudity (which highlight youth and a

small penis) are not. See supra, text.

62 For a survey and classificationof such explanations,see

Sansone (supra n. 54) 3-14. Add Rose, supra n. 56; Griffin,

infra n. 63.

63See Raschke, "Introduction"(supra n. 54), esp. 7-9, on

mock battle as a form of ritual, initiatory rites of endurance,and the presenceof "athletic"nudity as a featureof

such rituals. In his review of Raschkeand Sansone(supra n.

54), Jasper Griffin points out that Sansone'stheory for the

Source of sport as ritualistic actions derived from hunting

("sportis the rite sacrificeof physical energy")cannot account for the phenomenonof nudity in Greekathletics(Sansone 107-15): J. Griffin, "Playingto Triumph," The New York

Review of Books, https://wildnudists.com/tube/nudism/free-nudist-family-photo.php , 3-5.