Will there be more nakedness in EBII?

**QuintusSertorius** · 06-05-2014, 11:45

This might seem a random question, but I've been reading stuff about combat in antiquity, and it wasn't just "barbarians" who fought naked, or nearly-naked. The thing to consider is that in the past, people didn't necessarily have lots of changes of clothes. If you were doing dirty work (like butchering animals), often the easiest thing to do was do it naked, and then wash yourself afterwards, rather than ruin your clothes.

In a battlefield context, dirty clothing could result in dirt being driven into wounds, and so if you didn't have armour you were better off naked. I've also seen suggestions that units like ekdromoi (light) hoplites would fight naked. Also that some of the psiloi might come to a battle without much more than their weapons. Again, being poor, for all the reasons above they're not inclined to ruin what might be their only clothes.

So might we see more models in some of the levy units who are naked/nearly naked?

**Rex Somnorum** · 06-05-2014, 13:39

In that case, Vanilla Rome's levy hoplites were more accurate than originally thought. However, I don't really think there's a way to verify this. Most ancient accounts of battles don't describe clothing worn by the combatants, and most visual depictions tend to display upper class soldiers who would likely be dressed.

**Maeran** · 06-05-2014, 15:32

Are psiloi doing a dirty job? They have no intention of going anywhere near the enemy.

Ekdromoi, I can see your point. But we haven't got much evidence to go off. Artistic representations could be argued as "heroic nudity" and literary evidence is limited.
The best I can do is that the Romans thought it was worth mentioning Gallic nudity at Telamon and Polybius thought it worth passing on to Greek readers.