in the field of historical athletic contest. Misled by what seemed to them to document the before fit perizoma, some hypothesized that Thucydides’ remark on
the recent change to nudity referred to its reintroduction in the fifth century B.C. after an interruption of
the ancient tradition.123
There are other examples of Greek potters turning
their focus to the Etruscan market, however;124
and the custom of revealing sportsmen wearing garments,
Instead of appearing entirely nude, is not surprising in Etruria. Although athletes do often appear
Nude, or infibulated, in Etruscan art of the sixth and
fifth centuries B.C. (in everyday life they maybe continued to wear a perizoma), there are a number of
sixth- and fifth century instances of reliefs and wall
paintings, including a group from Chiusi, from the
Tomba Poggio al Moro. Three dimensional examples
are rarer: in sculpture, the nude Greek kouros generally functioned as model.125
of the repertoire of Archaic and Ancient Etruscan art
contrasts powerfully with the Greek. We see athletes
wearing short pants or perizomata, naked, exposed,
male prisoners, female nudity, and the image of the
nursing mom.
A string of sportsmen with their sex organs covered, on
a group of Attic black-figure vases of the end of the
sixth century B.C., has been often noticed in discussions of Greek fit nudity. These vases are
known as the “Perizoma Group,” because of the white
loincloth worn by the bodies of athletes and dancers
the characteristic perizoma about their waists and
hips (fig. 7).122 That such vases were made specifically
strangeness of this detail in a Greek context.126 An
unusual in the dress of the male bodies on the lower
Enroll or of the women on the symposium arena
above.
hired outside in the Greek manner.127 It makes sense, then, to
think that we are coping with pictures specially
Selected to please Etruscan customers who purchased the
vases from Greek potters, and desired their ornamentation
to conform to their own customs.
Another unusual feature of these vases, however, still
requires some explanation. These amounts, whether
athletes or dancers, aren’t youthful, as on Greek vases,
but heavy-set, old bearded men. Why would the
Etruscans favor such amounts? Did they expect experienced performers, rather than talented amateurs? It’s
Difficult to say. We still have much to learn about Etruscan customs and beliefs, also as their cultural and
commercial connections with the Greeks.
Our next case concerns another contrast between the Greek and Etruscan attitude to nudity. In
Etruscan artwork (where, as we’ve seen, Greek “heroic”
nudity was never wholly taken) male nakedness
could still be used for magic apotropaic motives;’28 or
it could signify weakness and susceptibility.
On among the famous wall paintings from the FranTomb in Vulci, now securely dated to the fourth
;ois
Prisoners over the grave of Patroclus. A scene told in
just two lines by Homer in the Iliad, it must have been
the matter of a monumental painting in Italy, for it
monuments of this interval.’29 We see a group of nude,
bound prisoners, vulnerable and helpless, their legs
The
It is
represented in a realistic way (assuming that a phantom
can be represented realistically), that’s to say, he is
Revealed as a corpse, wearing bandages in the areas
where he was wounded.
its pitiable state. At follow is not only a
corpse, but a emphatic soul, returning to demand that
blood be shed to please him. Similar bandages are
worn by the ghost of Agamemnon in the Etruscan
Tomba dell’Orco in Tarquinia (where the hero’s fullsize ghost contrasts with the tiny, screeching shades of
the dead clustering around a sterile, wintry tree),130
and they appear on several Apulian vase paintings.’31 This picture of the soul, still got in the
Cathedral, as well as the Bound, or Dying Slaves.’32
In antiquity the custom of Greek “heroic” nudity
Greece, even as an artistic custom. In Cyprus, and
in Italy, the perizoma (which guys wore in life) was
still signified in the sixth century B.C. Even the
strong man Heracles wears his lion skin as a perizoma
anferneedemuth94 