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Most of the victor statues at Olympia were nude.442 In the early period all athletes wore the loin-cloth. Cretan frescoes show it was the custom in the early Mediterranean world. The athletes of Homer girded themselves on entering the games of Patroklos,443 and the girdle appears in the earliest athletic scenes on vases.444 Throughout the historic period, however, the Greeks entered their contests in complete nudity, and this nudity naturally was carried over into athletic sculpture. Pliny’s445 statement, Graeca res nihil velare, is, therefore, correct, despite another of Philostratos to the effect that at Delphi, at the Isthmus, and everywhere except at Olympia, the athlete wore the coarse mantle.446 The beginning of the change from wearing the loin-cloth to complete nudity was ascribed to an accident. The Megarian runner Orsippos in the 15th Ol. ( = 720 B.C.) dropped his loin-cloth while running, either accidentally or because it impeded him.447 The story was commemorated by an epigram, perhaps by Simonides, which was inscribed on his tomb at Megara.448 A copy of this epigram in the Megarian dialect, executed in late Roman or Byzantine times, when the original had become illegible, was discovered at Megara in 1769 and shows that its original was the source of Pausanias’ remarks.449 Philostratos says that athletes contended nude at Olympia, either because of the summer heat or a mishap which befell the woman Pherenike of Rhodes. She accompanied her son, the boy boxer Peisirhodos, to Olympia disguised as a trainer, and in her joy at his victory she leaped over the barrier and disclosed her sex.450 The practice does not appear to have become universal with all athletes in all the competitions at Olympia until some time after Orsippos’ day, since Thukydides says the abandonment of the girdle took place shortly before his time and that in his day it was still retained by certain foreigners, notably Asiatics, in boxing and wrestling matches.451 The change is not illustrated in sculpture. The earliest victor statues, i. e., those of the “Apollo” type, are all nude. The nudity of this type shows an essential difference between Greek and foreigner and also between the later Greek and his rude ancestor. Plato gives the use of the loin-cloth as an example of convention, by which what seems peculiar to one generation becomes usual to another.452 We see the change, however, in vase-paintings. The loin-cloth is common on seventh-century vases, but is gradually left off in later ones.