Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Pleasure and Leisure 287
Mythological scene depicting Athena visiting Hephaistos,
at work in his bronze foundry.
Because the proportions of many korai are not noticeably different
from those of kouroi (with thick necks, broad shoulders, powerful
thighs), they have been wittily described as “kouroi in drag.” One
of the reasons for their lack of naturalism is the fact that the naked
female body was not, so to speak, available for anatomical study.
Only in the second half of the fourth century b.c.e. did the female
nude become a socially acceptable subject in statuary. Even then,
women are usually shown coyly covering the genital area with a
hand or piece of drapery. A celebrated example is Praxiteles’ sculpture
of Aphrodite taking a bath, which was described by the Roman
writer Pliny as “the finest statue in the whole world.” Praxiteles
actually carved two statues of Aphrodite, one clothed and the other
naked. He then asked the inhabitants of the island of Kos which they
preferred. They chose the clothed figure on the grounds that it was
more chaste. The naked version of the goddess was subsequently
purchased by the people of Knidos, a city that lies opposite Kos on
the coast. Such, incidentally, was its erotic power that a man who
was accidentally locked up with it overnight inside a temple is said
to have indecently assaulted it. Centuries later, when the Knidians