To begin with, the ancient Greeks spent a lot of their time sans clothing. (Those toga / cloak things they wore never covered much anyway.) We have naked workouts in the gymnasiums, plus the Olympics. We have all those nude statues and vases. We even have nude beaches in some parts of the Greek islands today.
The land of Athens and Sparta also deserves recognition for a story we ran on the Bare Platypus yesterday. It seems that the Greeks loaned an entire museum exhibit worth of artifacts celebrating the Olympic games to the nation of Qatar. When Qatar put coverings over the male anatomy of two statues, the Greek government called foul and said that would violate the spirit in which the statues had been created, not to mention interfering with their natural beauty.
Bravo to you, Greece. Your economy may have some challenges, but you have civic pride and a history you refuse to alter for the sake of politics.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that an audience has tried to put clothing on Greek statuary. A statue depicting the mythical figure Poseidon---which was a gift from Greece in 1972 to the City of Sacramento, California---was once draped in things like khaki shorts and t-shirts by some attendees of a convention with lots of families in attendance. Apparently the convention ended before any Greeks learned about the clothing and had time to object.
Read that story here: Poseidon statue coverup
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