As intellectual and interesting all of our Ancient Greek presentations were, I think my biggest take away from them came from my own presentation: the Greeks did sports naked.
Okay in all seriousness, this is not my biggest takeaway from the assignment but it most definitely was something I didn't expect to learn and I think it's dang funny. Obviously if we really consider the facts of history, clothes haven't always existed, so at some point or another humans did everything naked. However, this clearly isn't the same situation. Ancient Greece had a developed enough society that wearing clothes was the norm. Therefore, doing all sport competitions completely in the nude, is a component to there culture that's quite odd and frankly I dont understand. Maybe it's out of respect for the gods in which the sporting events were devoted to, or maybe they thought the freedom from clothing enhanced their athletic ability, either way: it seems really bizarre. In conclusion, let's just say I am very happy those ways of conducting sporting events are over.
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I, as Anabella did, came to St. Martin's from Kehoe France. I took Mrs. Dempsey's class as well at Kehoe, and I remember a significant story she told us while we were studying Ancient Greek culture. She told us that the Greeks did play competitive sports nude, but originally, they weren't nude, and they wore togas. Competitive sports in Greece, specifically in the Olympics, were restricted to men as were many aspects of their culture as Sophia, Farah, and Samuel covered in their presentation last week. She continued her story to explain that at one sporting event, a woman was disguising herself as a male in order to coach her son in athletics. As the story goes, the Greek woman ran to her son in order to congratulate him after succeeding in an event, and in running, her toga came down, revealing her upper chest, specifically her breasts, revealing her identity as a woman. After that occurrence, no Greek man wanted to risk a woman participating in their sporting events. Therefore, they made a new regulation, requiring everyone participating in competitive sports to be nude so that they could ensure each participants' identity as male. This, in addition to being a comical, interesting story, goes to show the misogyny present in Greek culture, regardless of whether or not the story may be a myth.
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