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Women bathing men in the Odyssey


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Not sure, but I think I remember watching a little bit of bathing practices in ancient Greece on a documentary, and they often used oil to get the dirt off. So you'd have to be oiled up, and then stripped down with a scraper, and then you'd need to be rinsed. Probably be a two person job.

I seem to remember that sometimes the oil from athletes would be saved and actually used in medicines. 

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We get that the guys needed a bath and it was an act of hospitality to offer one, but to have the young girls, even daughters of the hosts of the palace actually bath the visiting men?  Were the men naked I wonder?  It just seems a tad creepy to our modern sensibilities!  LOL.

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From what I remember, it was the custom as indicated in the Odyssey. Customs of the times or the specific regions may not be understandable to us here & now. Isn't it Sweden that does naked saunas as a national past time? It isn't sexual to them. Could we view it as hospitality and not in a sexual manner?

 

Odysseus oftentimes begs off on this custom, if I remember correctly, but perhaps more for Homer's storytelling than for actual modesty?

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We get that the guys needed a bath and it was an act of hospitality to offer one, but to have the young girls, even daughters of the hosts of the palace actually bath the visiting men?  Were the men naked I wonder?  It just seems a tad creepy to our modern sensibilities!  LOL.

I think that's the key--creepy to our modern sensibilities. Evidently it wasn't an issue at the time. There might have been some very good religious (magic-medicine) reasons for having the young women bathe returning heroes. As I said, the sweat of the athletes, and presumably all the stink and body odor in the oil was in high demand for women's cosmetics. That was what the documentary said. So maybe there was a connection there.

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