History of the Peloponnesian War

For once they were wont throughout all Greece to go armed because their houses were unfenced and travelling was unsafe, and accustomed themselves, like the barbarians, to the ordinary wearing of their armour.

And the nations of Greece that live so yet, do testify that the same manner of life was anciently universal to all the rest.

Amongst whom the Athenians were the first that laid by their armour and growing civil, passed into a more tender kind of life. And such of the rich as were anything stepped into years laid away upon the same delicacy, not long after, the fashion of wearing linen coats and golden grasshoppers, which they were wont to bind up in the locks of their hair. From whence also the same fashion, by reason of their affinity, remained a long time in use amongst the ancient Ionians.

But the moderate kind of garment, and conformable to the wearing of these times, was first taken up by the Lacedaemonians, amongst whom also, both in other things and especially in the culture of their bodies, the nobility observed the most equality with the commons.

The same were also the first that when they were to contend in the Olympic games stripped themselves naked and anointed their bodies with ointment; whereas in ancient times the champions did also in the Olympic games use breeches, nor is it many years since this custom ceased. Also there are to this day amongst the barbarians, especially those of Asia, prizes propounded of fighting with fists and of wrestling, and the combatants about their privy parts wear breeches in the exercise.