What Exactly Is The Olympic Tradition?

Nakedness and women

'Sow naked, plough naked, harvest naked',

the poet Hesiod (a contemporary of Homer) advises.

He might have added 'compete in the Games naked', for that is usually understood to be the
standard practice among the ancient Greeks.

Some dispute this, for although the visual evidence for it - the painted decorations on vases -
generally shows athletes performing naked, all sorts of other people (eg soldiers departing for
war, which they would presumably have done clothed) are also shown unclad.

Also, some vases do show runners and boxers wearing loin-cloths, and Thucydides says that
athletes stopped wearing such garments only shortly before his time. Another argument is that
it must have been impractical to compete naked. On balance, however, it is generally thought
probable that male athletes were naked when competing at the Games.

'Women did not participate at the main Olympic festival.'

Women did not participate at the main Olympic festival. They had their own Games, in honour
of Hera, where the sole event was a run of five-sixths of the length of the stadium - which
would have preserved in male opinion the inferior status of women. Whether women could even
watch the festival is disputed.

Unmarried virgins, not soiled by sex or motherhood and thus maintaining the religious purity
of the occasion, probably could. Festivals (and, for example, funerals) were among the limited
occasions when women, especially virgins, or parthenoi, had a public role.

At the Games unmarried girls, besides helping with the running of the festival, may have taken
the opportunity to find a fit future husband.

As Pindar wrote, about a victor in the Greek colony of Cyrene -

'When they saw you many times victorious in the Games of Athene,

each of the maidens was speechless as they prayed you might be her husband or son.'