argument "powerful."
14. A. S. Murray, A. H. Smith and H. B. Walters.
(hereafter mentioned as BCH). For other interpretations of this arena 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 http://hearing-aids-richmond-heights-oh.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=voy-zone.com extended (Fig.7). This scene represents a boxing
Competition perhaps at funeral games. Pairs of confronted nude sportsmen that remind
us of the ancient boxing scenes form the sole subject of a Mycenaean vase
1
(Fig.8). It has been suggested that the scene depicts confronted boxers. 5
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows a procession of chariots
and warriors. The warriors are bare, but each bears a helmet, two spears and a
sword.
accompanying the body to the grave. The presence of a tripod in this krater

rather signifies the existence of funeral games. M. Laurent gave examples of
tripods on Geometric vases and convincingly suggested that they were prizes in
boxing contests.
Copenhagen Museum) represents funeral games. On one side there are two
Nude men preparing to stab each other with swords." An Argive Geometric
15. 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.
of Art,"AJA I9 (1915): 389,390. PI. xxiii; S. Benton, "The Development of the Tripod Lebes, "Annual of the British
Gometrique,"BCH 25 (1901): 143-145.
17. The picture reminds us of the single combat between Aias and Diomedes in the funeral games of Patroclos.
This event didn't survive into historical Greece and it is reasonable to presume that it died out along with the hero
of the Geometric period. It's known from literary and archaeological sources that armed combats in the kind of a
game were practiced in Mycenaean Greece. Fragments of frescoes from Pylos represent duels of guys with




H. W. Catling and A. Millett, "A study
in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery from Cyprus," BSA 60
(1965) PI. 60( 1). (Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).

Attic Geometric cup from Athens. Peter P. Kahane," The Cesnola Krater from Kourion,"
1975) amount 17. (Courtesy of Noyes Press).

222

Source of Nudity in Greek Sport

An Argi've Geometric shard.
fig. 10. (Courtesy of Gebr Mann Verlag GMbH).
The Greeks felt so strongly about nudity that it was thought to have a bewitching
Their sportsmen were regarded as shielded in some manner by their nudity.21

Crude warriors are sometimes represented naked for either "magic, i.e.
http://storychefs.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=voy-zone.com 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 nude
Papuan warrior of today wears a "codpiece" when equipped for warfare; these
Cod pieces are made of straw painted in red or yellow and are certainly not
meant to conceal the dick; on the contrary they are just as harshly exhibitionistic as the European codpieces of the sixteenth century.23 Marco Polo was
21. Bonfante, Etruscon Clothing, p. 102.
22 See Wilkinson, CIassical Approaches to Modern Issues, pp. 83, 89; Bonfante, Efruscan Dress, p. 102. For
references on the "apotropaic" phallus see Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual
(Berkeley, 1979). p. 161, 1x3.
23. Tborkil Vanggaard, Phallos: A Symbol and its History in the Mule World (Fresh 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 fresh excrescence developed below the breastplate-the cod piece.