argument “powerful.”
14. Excavations in Cyprus (London, 1900): p. 9 ;M. I. Davies,
‘Thoughts on the Oresteia Before Aischylos, Bulletin de correspondance hellnique 93 (1969): 220,223 (quotations)
(hereafter mentioned as BCH). For other interpretations of this arena see ibid. pp. 214.223.
H. W. Catling and
A. Millett, “A study in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Graphic Pottery from
Cyprus,” BSA 60 (1965) PI. 58 (2).
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View(Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).
confronted with their arms extended (Fig.7). This scene represents a boxing
Competition perhaps at funeral games. Pairs of faced bare sportsmen that remind
us of the classical boxing scenes form the sole issue of a Mycenaean vase
1
(Fig.8). It is often suggested that the scene depicts faced fighters. 5
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Fresh York shows a procession of chariots
and warriors. The warriors are naked, but each bears a helmet, two spears and a
sword. Archaeologists interpret this scene as funeral games or a procession
accompanying Before I begin writing anything else and before I to the grave. The presence of a tripod in this krater
rather signals the existence of funeral games. M. Laurent gave examples of
tripods on Geometric vases and convincingly suggested that they were prizes in
boxing contests. 16 A Geometric cup from Athens (Fig.9) (now at the
Copenhagen Museum) represents funeral games. On one side there are two
naked men preparing to stab each other with swords.” An Argive Geometric
15. Also see Arne Furumark, The Mycenaean
Pottery: Analysis 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
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 didn’t survive into historical Greece and it is realistic to suppose that it died out along with the hero
of the Geometric period. It’s understood from literary and archaeological sources that armed combats in the kind of a
Fragments of frescoes from Pylos represent duels of men with
H. W. Catling and A. Millett, “A study
in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Graphic Pottery from Cyprus,” BSA 60
(1965) PI. 60( 1). (Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).
Attic Geometric cup from Athens.
in Noel Robertson, ed., The Archaeology of Cyprus (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press,
1975) amount 17. (Courtesy of Noyes Press).
222
Origin of Nudity in Greek Athletics
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 presumed to have a magic
effect (c.f. the apotropaic use of the phallos, gestures against the evil eye, etc.).
Their sportsmen were thought to be shielded somehow by their nudity.21
Crude warriors are sometimes signified nude for either “magic, i.e.
apotropaic goals” or for “psychological shock effect” and “to ward off
Risk.”22 The apotropaic powers attributed to the male sexual organ is a belief
still in existence among some present cultures. In Fresh Guinea the naked
Papuan warrior of today wears a “cod piece” when armed for war; these
Cod pieces are made of straw painted in red or yellow and are undoubtedly not
meant to conceal the dick; on the contrary they are just as vigorously exhibitionistic as the European codpieces of the sixteenth century.23 Marco Polo was
21. Bonfante, Etruscon Clothing, p. 102.
22 See Wilkinson, CIassical Attitudes to Modern Issues, pp. 83, 89; Bonfante, Efruscan Apparel, p. 102. For
references on the “apotropaic” phallus see Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual
(Berkeley, The bravest thing I ever did bare? Well how about one of many bravest….well, in fact it was more impulsive than brave. ). 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
elegance which the Gothic ones had possessed a awesome excrescence grown below the breastplate-the cod piece.