in the field of historical athletic contest. Misled by what seemed to them to document the previously athletic perizoma, some hypothesized that Thucydides' remark on
the ancient tradition.123
There are other cases of Greek potters turning
their attention to the Etruscan market, nonetheless;124
and the custom of revealing sportsmen wearing garments,
rather than appearing entirely naked, isn't 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 possibly continued to wear a perizoma), there are a number of
sixth- and fifth century examples of reliefs and wall
paintings, such as a group from Chiusi, from the
Tomba Poggio al Moro. Three-dimensional examples
are rarer: in sculpture, the naked Greek kouros typically functioned as model.125

of the repertoire of Archaic and Classical Etruscan art
contrasts strongly with the Greek. We see athletes
wearing shorts or perizomata, nude, vulnerable,
male prisoners, female nudity, and the picture of the
nursing mother.
A chain of athletes with their sex organs covered, on
a group of Attic black-figure vases of the end of the
sixth century B.C., has been frequently 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 midsections and
hips (fig. 7).122 That such vases were made specifically




strangeness of this detail in a Greek context.126 An
Uncommon in the dress of the male bodies on the lower
Enroll or of the women on the symposium scene
Previously. The women are shown fully dressed, as decent women, or wives, accompanying their husbands in the Etruscan custom, rather than party girls
hired outside in the Greek manner.127 It makes sense, then, to


Believe that we are coping with graphics expressly
chosen to please Etruscan customers who purchased the
vases from Greek potters, and wanted their decoration
to conform to their own customs.
Another unusual characteristic of these vases, yet, still
requires some explanation. These amounts, whether
athletes or dancers, are not young, as on Greek vases,
but heavy-set, older bearded men. Why would nudists all ages prefer such figures? Did they anticipate seasoned performers, rather than talented hobbyists? It's
Challenging to say. We still have much to learn about Etruscan customs and beliefs, too as their ethnic and
commercial relations with the Greeks.
Our next example concerns another difference between the Greek and Etruscan approach to nudity. In
Etruscan artwork (where, as we've seen, Greek "heroic"
nudity was never wholly accepted) male nakedness
could still be used for magic apotropaic reasons;'28 or
it could represent weakness and susceptibility.
;ois

Merely two lines by Homer in the Iliad, it must have been
the theme of a monumental painting in Italy, for it
recurs on half a dozen Etruscan and South Italian
monuments of this period.'29 We see a group of nude,
Bind prisoners, vulnerable and helpless, their legs
cut and bleeding to keep them from escaping. The
It's
represented practically (assuming that a ghost
can be represented realistically), that is to say, he is
Revealed as a corpse, wearing bandages in the places
where he was wounded.
its pitiable state. At exactly the same time it's not only a
corpse, but a strong spirit, returning to demand that
blood be spilled to suit 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 infertile, wintry tree),130
and they appear on a number of Apulian vase paintings.'31 This picture of the soul, still caught in the
Cathedral, as well as the Boundary, or Expiring Slaves.'32
In antiquity the tradition of Greek "epic" nudity
was far from being universally accepted outside of
Greece, even as an artistic convention. In Cyprus, and
in Italy, the perizoma (which guys wore in life) was
still represented in the sixth century B.C. Even the
Formidable guy Heracles wears his lion skin as a perizoma