Visions of female flesh, oiled and tanned, glistened in the imaginings of many a Sparta-watcher. The Spartans themselves, sensitive to the mockery that labeled their daughters “thigh-flashers,”33 would retort sternly “that there was nothing shameful about female nudity, nothing immoral in the slightest.” In fact, “since it encouraged a sense of sobriety, and a passion for physical fitness,”34 precisely the opposite. Yet, paramount though the requirements of Sparta’s eugenic program undoubtedly were, an aura of the erotic still clung to the training grounds nevertheless. The fertility of a
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