 Did you know that the original Greek olympics were done entirely in the nude? Well, it was just guys, and married women were not allowed to watch, or they'd be thrown off Mount Typaeum. But it was a great place to bring your daugthers, in the hope that they might marry a young atlete. And the games were great business for prostitutes.
We know how fundamental nudity was to Greek culture. It really appealed to the exhibitionism and the vanity of the Greeks. Only barbarians were afraid to show their bodies. The nude athletes would parade like peacocks up and down the stadium. Poets would write in a shaky hand these wonderful odes to the bodies of the young men, their skin the color of fired clay.
But other cultures, like the Persians and the Egyptians, looked at these Greek men oiling one another down and writhing in the mud, and found it very strange. They believed it promoted sexual degeneracy.
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