nastic exercises, naked, among the
men, and sometimes with one another; for that it is not accounted
shameful for them to be seen naked.... Nor is it reckoned among
the Tyrrhenians at all disgraceful either to do or suffer
anything in the open air, or to be seen while it is going on; for
it is quite the custom of their country, and they are so far from
thinking it disgraceful that they even say, when the master of
the house is indulging his appetite, and anyone asks for him,
that he is doing so and so, using the coarsest possible words....
And they are very beautiful, as is natural for people to be who
live delicately, and who take care of their persons." (Athenaeus,
_Deipnosophists_, Yonge's translation, vol. iii, p. 829.)

Dennis throws doubt on the foregoing statement of Athenaeus
regarding the Tyrrhenians or Etruscans, and points out that the
representations of women in Etruscan tombs shows them as clothed,
even the breast being rarely uncovered. Nudity, he remarks, was a
Greek, not an Etruscan, characteristic. "To the nudity of the
Spartan women I need but refer; the Thessalian women are
described by Persaeus dancing at banquets naked, or with a very
scanty covering (_apud_ Athenaeus, xiii, c. 86). The maidens of
Chios wrestled naked with the youths in the gymnasium, which
Athenaeus (xiii, 20) pronounces to be 'a beautiful sight.' And at
the marriage feast of Caranus, the Macedonian women tumblers
performed naked before the guests (Athenaeus, iv, 3)." (G. Dennis,
_Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, 1883, vol. i, p. 321.)

In Rome, "when there was at first much less freedom in this
matter than in Greece, the bath became common to both sexes, and
though each had its basin and hot room apart, they could see each
other, meet, speak, form intrigues, arrange meetings, and
multiply adulteries. At first, the baths were so dark that men
and women could wash side by side, without recognizing each other
except by the voice; but soon the light of day was allowed to
enter from every side. 'In the bath of Scipio,' said Seneca,
'there were narrow ventholes, rather than windows, hardly
admitting enough light to outrage modesty; but nowadays, baths
are called caves if they do not receive the sun's rays through
large windows.' ... Hadrian severely prohibited this mingling of
men and wo