argument “convincing.”
14.
‘Thoughts on the Oresteia Before Aischylos, Bulletin de correspondance hellnique 93 (1969): 220,223 (quotations)
(hereafter cited as BCH). For other interpretations of this picture view ibid. pp. 214.223.
A fragment of Mycenaean chariot krater from Enkomi (c. 1300 B.C.). H. W. Catling and
A. Millett, “A study in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Graphic Pottery from
Cyprus,” BSA 60 (1965) PI. 58 (2). (Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).
confronted with their arms extended (Fig.7). This scene represents a boxing
Competition potentially at funeral games. Pairs of confronted nude athletes that remind
us of the classical boxing scenes form the sole subject of a Mycenaean vase
1
(Fig.8). It’s been suggested that the scene depicts confronted fighters. 5
A Geometric krater dated second quarter of the eighth century B.C. now in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reveals a procession of chariots
and warriors. The warriors are nude, but each bears a helmet, two spears and a
sword. Archaeologists interpret this scene as funeral games or a procession
accompanying the body to the tomb. The existence of a tripod in this krater
Instead signals the existence of funeral games. M. Laurent gave examples of
tripods on Geometric vases and convincingly indicated that they were prizes in
boxing competitions. 16 A Geometric cup from Athens (Fig.9) (now at the
Copenhagen Museum) represents funeral games.
naked guys preparing to stab each other with swords.” follow . Also see Arne Furumark, The Mycenaean
Pottery: Evaluation and Categorization (Stockholm, 1941), pp. 437.443-435 who sees in this scene a boxing contest.
16. G. M. A. Richter, “Two Co1ossal Athenian and Geometric or Dipylon Vases in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art,”AJA I9 (1915): 389,390. PI. xxiii; S. Benton, “The Evolution of the Tripodlebes, “Annual of the British
School of Athens 35 (1934.35): 105, 108, 109; (hereafter mentioned as LISA); Marcel Laurent, “Sur un Vase de Style
Gometrique,”BCH 25 (1901): 143-145.
17. The scene reminds us of the single battle between Aias and Diomedes in the funeral games of Patroclos.
This occasion did not survive into historic Greece and it’s realistic to suppose that it died out along with the hero
of the Geometric period. It is understood from literary and archaeological sources that armed combats in the kind of a
game were practiced in Mycenaean Greece. Fragments of frescoes from Pylos signify duels of men with
in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Graphic Pottery from Cyprus,” BSA 60
(1965) PI. 60( 1).
Attic Geometric cup from Athens. Peter P. Kahane,” The Cesnola Krater from Kourion,”
in Noel Robertson, ed., The Archaeology of Cyprus (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press,
1975) amount 17. (Courtesy of Noyes Press).
222
Source of Nudity in Greek Sport
An Argi’ve Geometric shard. Erich Pernice, “Geometrische Vase Aus Athen,”
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archailogischen Instituts, Athenishe Abteilung 17 (1892)
fig. 10. (Courtesy of Gebr Mann Verlag GMbH).
The Greeks felt so strongly about nudity that it was believed to have a magic
effect (c.f. the apotropaic use of the phallos, gestures against the evil eye, etc.).
Their athletes were thought to be shielded in some way by their nudity.21
Crude warriors are occasionally represented bare for either “magic, i.e.
apotropaic goals” or for “psychological shock effect” and “to ward off
still in existence among some present cultures. In Awesome Guinea the naked
Papuan warrior of today wears a “codpiece” when armed for war; these
Cod pieces are made of straw painted in red or yellow and are definitely not
meant to hide the penis; on the contrary they are just as harshly exhibitionistic as the European cod pieces of the sixteenth century.23 Marco Polo was
21. Bonfante, Etruscon Dress, p. 102.
22 Find Wilkinson, CIassical Attitudes to Modern Issues, pp. 83, 89; Bonfante, Efruscan Clothing, p. 102. For
references on the “apotropaic” phallus see Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual
(Berkeley, 1979). p. 161, 1×3.
23. Tborkil Vanggaard, Phallos: A Symbol and its History in the Mule World (New York, 1972), p. 166. On
the European cod-piece of the sixteenth century the writer says: “While the suits of armour lost the slight
Sophistication which the Gothic ones had possessed a brand new excrescence developed below the breastplate-the codpiece.
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