THE CLASSICAL IRADITION ANTHONY GRAFTON GLENN W. MOST SALVATORE SETTIS Editors The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England iOIO NUDITY picted in a vividly erotic way, as the murder of Hellenism from Caesar's Gallic Wars. Meanwhile, narrative theory, and Reason by a mob of wild Christians, many of them long concerned with epic and novel, is only beginning to monks—the end of antiquity, embodied. To similar ef- work out the rules and conventions of stories told on- fect, Gore Vìdal's Julian (1964) portrays a virtuous pa- screen, and the relation of the ephemeral flickering image gan struggling tragically against bigoted and hypocritical to the eternai epic. Christian leaders in the generation after Constantine. BiBL.: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Bern 1946). Mikhail M. Since the zoth century, as totalitarianisnis of various Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel" (1941), in The Dialogic Imagina- kinds have thrcatened democratic poìities, the Roman tion, ed. and trans. Michael Holquist (Austin 1981) 3—40. Mar• novel has tended to he concerned with politicai change in garet A. Doody, The True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick the century after the death of Julius Caesar, the graduai 1996). Georg Lukàcs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna replacement of republican institutions wirh imperiai mili- Bostock (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). D.R. tary tyranny. Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March (1948) views with an ironie eye the social and sexual chaos that Nudity preceded the anarchy of 44 BCE, much as Robert Graves's /, Claudius and Claudius the God (1934-1935) observe Representation of the nude human body on the model of the destruction of residuai republican ways and values Greek statuary. Since the Middle Ages the nude statue has from the perspective of the most improbable of the early been considered a distinctive mark of classical antiquity, emperors. The attraction of that era may also have to do and rightly so: beginning in archaic Greece, artists, pur- with the availability of historians like Tacitus and Sueto- chasers, and viewers believed that showing the body in nius on whom to draw fot detail. full was suited to the celebration of divinity and the com- Historical novels set in ancient Greece have tended to memoration of individuai human beings. But the meaning be less presentist than novels about Rome, perhaps be- of "ideal nudity" is stili debated, and there is a division cause there was no unifìed nation-state onto which one between those who think it directly reflects the role of the could project contemporary polìtics. The best-known nude body in Greek culture and those who see it substan- have instead retoid in prose rhe legends that the Greeks tially as an artistic device. had originally woven into epic and poetic drama: Robert The Greeks practiced nudity spccificaìiy in athletic Graves's Homer's Daughter (1955} adapts the story of the competitions—which for their part pertained to rhe reU- Odyssey to a female protagonist, and his Hercules, My gious sphere—and in gymnasìa (from gymnos, "nude"), Shipmate (1944) recounts the Argonautica of ApoUonius institutions common to very many poleis. At the center of of Rhodes. André Gide's last novel was Thesée (1946), a the gymnasium—a space devoted to athletic and educa• rendering of the myths about Theseus. Mary Renault is tional activity, and to social and, in particular, homoerotic perhaps the historical novelist most celebrated fot render• relations—was the precisely groomed and trained male ing the land and people of ancient Greece in various peri- body. The relationship that Winckelmann many times ods from the archaic era of the Theseus legend {The King identifìed between gymnastic activity and the nudity of Must Die, 1958) through the aftermath of Alexander's statuary is thus anything but baseless. He did not see in conquests [Puneral Games, 1981). The love lives of her the latter a mere illustration of the life of the gymnasia, protagonists, always in search of a stable sexual identìty, but rather believed that the admiring familiarity with the mirrored Renault's own polymorphous relationships. The nude male body was the foundation of a purely artistic notion that those who wrote about Rome were often expression. It was along these lines that Canova defended writing about their nations while those who wrote about his decision to depict Napoleon nude, claiming that "like Greece were writing about themselves is supported by the the poets, we, too, have our language." first novel to be set in ancient Greece, Christoph Wieland's A passage in Pliny {Naturai History 34.17-18) shows Agathon (1766-1767), a thinly veiled spiritual autobiog- that "heroic nudity" was received by the world of Roman raphy that influenced the young Goethe, art as a fundamentally Greek element: "In old days the Today, with some striking exceptions, the literary his• statues dedicated were simply cIad in the toga. Also, na• torical novel, seldom prized throughout its history, does ked figures holding spears, made from models of Greek not flourish in England and America (though it continues young men from gymnasiums—what are calied figures of to survive on the European Continent), and the media Achilles—-became popular. The Greek practicc is to leave that convey to the masses the glory of Greece, the gran- the figure entirely nude, whereas Roman and military deur of Rome, and countless other fantasies as well are statuary adds a breastplate" (trans. H. Rackham). The the cinema and television. Wolfgang Petersen's Troy and case of Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, depicted as a prisoner, Oliver Stone's Alexander (both films Z004) have given nude and with his hands behind his back (Velleius Pater- contemporary viewers a taste of Greek legend and history, culus 2.1; Pliny, Naturai History 34.18), reminds us, how• in however distorted a form; Michael Apted's television ever, that in the Roman world not ali cases of artistic nu• series Rome (2005), supported by entire teams of classical dity imply the reception of Greek models. specialists, has represented the chaotic era of the First Tri- Such is particularly true with the advent of Christi- umvirate and the Civil Wars from the plebeian perspec• anity, which brought about a total redefinition of the tive of two soldiers whose names were drawn directly body (and of its nudity). The Scriptures, in various situ- 643 •S'JSMU'WJ-"-!- : wpj^-»— NUDITY ations and personages, drape meanings previously given in fact, nude figures probably acted in and of themselves to nudity with a new sense: innocence and guik (Adam as references to classical antiquity in the visual memory of and Ève before and after the Fall), shame (Noah), obei- medieval man (Himmcimann 1985), in a process that also sance (Job), chastity (Susannah), humihation (Jesus on extends to literary space. Boccaccio, who certainly knew the cross). Therefore, images of the baptismal nudity of ancient iconography (e.g.. Amor), attributed nudity to the men (or women: Chapel of St. Isidore in San Marco, Ven• Muses, who in ancient art were usually dressed. This "hi- ice), and of Jesus himself, shouid not be considered per eroglyphic" interpretation of the nude, in itself a mark of se a reflection of classical "heroic" nudity (even though classical antiquity, continued through to the Renaissance, Winckelmann in his Gedanken connects the two). The for example in Signorelli's Sacra famiglia and Michetan- same goes for other figures in Christian history: Saint Je• gelo's Tondo Doni (both Uffìzi, Florence). rome, who proclaims to want to foHow "the naked Cross As it was in Byzantine art, personification was used fre- naked" (e.g., the wooden statue of Bertoldo di Giovanni, quently in the art of the medieval West. In this conrext Faenza), or Saint Francis, who divests himself of his cloth- nudity could be said to act as a signal for the distinctive- ing and inherited goods. Even in scenes that depict the ness of certain images, an idea typical in classica! thought. resurrections of bodies, nudity derives more from the dis- Thus, personifications of landscape elements are nude or cussion on the state of the risen that we fìnd in Augustine seminude: the Jordan in the 5th-century Battesimo di {Enarrationes in Psalmos 51.14) or in Peter Chrysologus Cristo (Battistero Neoniano, Ravenna); the Earth and the {Sermons 72). Therefore, there exists in Christian thought Sea, or naturai forces like the Winds, Night, and Day, the an aulonomous reflection on the sense of nudity, as can Seasons, and the Four Elements; and astrologica! images, be seen in Petrus Berchorius' quadripartite distinction of A naked man standing in a frontal position appcars in nuditas naturalis (state of Adam), temporalis (voluntary certain depictions of the Microcosm (e.g., Glossarium Sa- poverty), virtualis (innocence achieved through religjous lomonis, ca. i 165, Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, Munich). practice), and criminalis (lechery and vanity). Some of these personifications disappeared, whereas oth- Despite the cultural revolution effected by Christianity, ers survived in the Renaissance, side by side with creations the Middle Ages did not wipe out "heroic" nudity and that perhaps recast ancient models, like Time, Chance, even used it polemically against paganism: "idols," against and Fortune. Stili others lent themselves to the depiction which the Old Teslament had already raged, were now by of fully modem values, as in Delacroix's Liberty Leading definition naked. In fact, a miniature in the Vita et passio the People (1830). sancti Kiìliani (roth cent-, Niedersachsische Landesbib- A special case is that of Truth. Whereas in the ancient liotek, Hannover), uses an idol, a masculine figure stand• world Aletheia-Veritàs was nearly absent, its iconographi- ing naked on a column, to describe the religious practice cal developments from the 15th century onward are owed of the ancients.