“It is very difficult to investigate the hairiness of Ainu women,” Baelz remarks, “for they possess a really incredible degree of modesty.  Even when in summer they bathe—­which happens but seldom—­they keep their clothes on.”  He records that he was once asked to examine a girl at the Mission School, in order to advise as regards the treatment of a diseased spine; although she had been at the school for seven years, she declared that “she would rather die than show her back to a man, even though a doctor.” (Baelz, “Die Aino,” Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1901, Heft 2, p. 178.)

The Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, appear to have been accustomed to cover the foreskin with the kynodesme (a band), or the fibula (a ring), for custom and modesty demanded that the glans should be concealed.  Such covering is represented in persons who were compelled to be naked, and is referred to by Celsus as “decori causa.” (L.  Stieda, “Anatomisch-archaeologische Studien,” Anatomische Hefte, Bd.  XIX, Heft 2, 1902.)

    “Among the Lydians, and, indeed, among the barbarians generally,
    it is considered a deep disgrace, even for a man, to be seen
    naked.” (Herodotus, Book I, Chapter X.)

“The simple dress which is now common was first worn in Sparta, and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was assimilated to that of the people.  The Lacedaemonians, too, were the first who, in their athletic exercises, stripped naked and rubbed themselves over with oil.  This was not the ancient custom; athletes formerly, even when they were contending at Olympia, wore girdles about their loins [earlier still, the Mycenaeans had always worn a loin-cloth], a practice which lasted until quite lately, and still persists among barbarians, especially those of Asia, where the combatants at boxing and wrestling matches wear girdles.” (Thucydides, History, Book I, Chapter VI.)

“The notion of the women exercising naked in the schools with the men ... at the present day would appear truly ridiculous....  Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for men to be seen naked.  And when the Cretans first, and after them the Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties....  As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, his ridicule is but ’unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom.’” (Plato, Republic, Book V.)

According to Plutarch, however, among the Spartans, at all events, nakedness in women was not ridiculous, since the institutes of Lycurgus