Except for the picturesque neighborhoods that hug the Acropolis, large swathes of modern Athens are pretty drab. Gay travelers often treat the city like a pitstop on their way to Mykonos. I myself planned to do just that until a storm shut down ferry service for three nights and days.
The delay gave me time to enjoy Athens’ archaeological wonders at leisure. I also stumbled upon a contemporary art scene that still has the anarchic crackle that has been squeezed out of London and New York. And I discovered that Athens is an undersung culinary mecca. It’s hard to get a bad meal and easy to get a great one.
And best of all, I was surrounded by Athenian men. Bearded, hairy-chested, and endowed with a princely self-confidence, they were a delight to the eyes wherever I went. And with raw material like that, I quickly understood why the ancient Athenians made a cult of male beauty, given the raw material at their disposal. To me, Athens may not be the gayest city in Europe, but it gets my vote for the most homoerotic.
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Why all the naked guys?
The origins of the Greek worship of male beauty remain a mystery. They didn’t borrow the practice from their Egyptian and Assyrian neighbors. For those cultures, depictions of male nudity represented disgrace, defeat, or death. And yet, beginning in the late 7th century BC, the Greeks decided to flip the script, making the naked male body symbolize the opposite: pride, victory, and virility.
During its golden age, the temples and public squares of Athens were filled with naked men–gods, heroes, athletes, and nameless young hotties. Men exercised in the buff at their local, open-air gymnasion, an ancient Greek word that literally means “the naked place.” And nearly every Athenian house was adorned with a herm—a little fellow whose exposed willy was meant to ward off evil.
Some historians believe the cult of nudity emerged from the athletic contests held every four years in Olympia, where athletes ran and wrestled in the nude. Others say nudity was a marker of class privilege. A full-body tan seems to have been the Athenian equivalent of a Tom Ford suit. That’s because the elite had the leisure to hang out at the gym all day. Rich boys were called melampygoi (tanned butts), and leukopygos (pale butt) was an insult since it was a sign that you had to do manual labor and therefore cover your rear end with protective clothing.
Scholars suspect that nudity became a military tactic when off-duty soldiers were encouraged to shed their clothes to foster what today would be called unit cohesion (a strategy that certainly would have worked on me). Since Greek city-states were constantly at war, it makes sense that naked young soldiers came to be associated with power and protection and, thus, with the gods themselves.
The Kouroi
Whatever the reasons, life-sized statues of men in the buff—dubbed kouroi (literally, “young men”)—first emerged in the 7th century BC. You can find a mouth-watering collection at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
It remains uncertain who the kouroi represent, except that they were probably related to the worship of Apollo. Clean-shaven and hairless, Apollo was the official twink of Mount Olympus, and, among his other jobs, he presided over initiations into manhood. Along the way, the god took many male lovers, including Adonis, Hyacinth, and Hippolytus.
Undoubtedly, Apollo would have appreciated the so-called “Sounion Kouros,” among the oldest surviving kouroi. Ten feet tall and blessed with quads of steel, he is clearly influenced by the statuary of Egyptian pharaohs, but with the naughty bits showing. Unfortunately, his lower body routine is lost to history.
Athenian political and economic power rose throughout the 6th and 5th centuries BC. And as each successive generation grew more self-confident, sculptors achieved ever-greater realism. Just compare the six-pack of the Sounion Kouros with that of the Anavysos Kouro, created some 70 years later. Mr. Anavysos’s abs aren’t just etched into the stone but carved in three dimensions. You can begin to feel skin and flesh and bones.
Yet, Anavysos looks stiff and stylized when we compare him to the Aristodikos Kouros, carved around 500 BC just as Athens was entering its Golden Age. Rather than a stiff block of stone, the Aristodikos Sounion stands in a natural position—an actual human body holding itself upright. Likewise, the proportions do not exaggerate certain features but adhere to those of a real human being, albeit someone who seems to combine genetic privilege with the world’s finest fitness coach. Gone are the days of unrealistically narrow waists and thunder thighs.
And yes, we have to address the pubes. Unfortunately, we don’t know what a star-shaped bush signified to the ancient Greeks. However, it proves that manscaping has been around for at least 2,500 years.
By the 440s, Athens had reached the height of its power, best expressed in the rebuilding of the Acropolis. Here, too, images of naked men, often engaged in shameless flirting, penetrated the Athenian holiest of holies—the inner walls of the Parthenon.
In one section, a nameless young man leans into the lap of his bearded daddy as both their togas slide off their gym-toned frames. Things get even steamier in another panel of the same frieze, in which a naked young man links his arm with an older protector who could not not be thinking about the bubble butt that is hidden from him but that we see in glorious profile.
Unfortunately for the Athenians, their city began to decline almost as soon as it reached its height. A war with Sparta left Athens and most of Greece weakened and disunited. Macedonian kings Philip and his son Alexander the Great swept in to fill the vacuum.
Fortunately, the conquering Macedonians fully bought into male nudity. In the 300s BC, they encouraged Greek craftsmen to get even better at capturing all the subtle nuances of the male body. One of the greatest examples of their work is the marvelously naturalistic Antikythera Ephebe, also at the National Archaeological Museum. He doesn’t just have skin, bone, and muscle. He ripples with life, movement, and volition.
There are many more male nudes to see in Athens, but we will end our story with the Antikythera Ephebe. Not long after the revelation of his magnificence to the world, Greece lost its role as a leader and innovator of the Mediterranean. Despite the attempt of Alexander’s heirs to unite Greece, infighting and discord continued. Meanwhile, the ruthlessly united Roman Republic was on the march.
Within a century, Rome had robbed the Greeks of their independence. However, the Romans stood in awe of the culture they had just defeated and gradually adopted their gods, their literature, and their passion for naked men. But Roman nudes are a story for another day.
Naked Practicalities
The National Archeological Museum is the best place to witness the ancient Greek love affair with nude men. Turn left at the entrance, and you will see the amazing collection of kouroi. Arranged chronologically, the first five or six galleries tell an amazing story of the emergence of what we still refer to as “classical” male beauty today. This standard still informs many a workout routine in the 21st century.
The Acropolis Museum is another mandatory stop. Here, you find the extraordinary and plainly homoerotic frieze that once wrapped around the inner sanctum of the Parthenon (parts of it reside in the British Museum and have been recreated in plaster casts).
While nude gyms are no longer a thing in Athens, the city does have a couple of saunas where men wear only towels that have a marked tendency to slip to the floor. The two widely considered the best are the full-service Alexander Sauna and FLEX Sauna.
For open-air nudity, you have to head to Limanakia Beach, which sits at the far southeastern edge of the city. It’s called a beach, but don’t expect any sand. Instead, you’ll find three rocky coves. They offer plenty of privacy for those wanting to practice the art of Greek love. Just come prepared with good walking shoes to get you down the steep path, water, food, an umbrella, and whatever else you might need to enjoy this undeveloped stretch of coast.
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