[105] In the great stone torso of which we shall speak presently (p. 98), these details seem to have been omitted; at least no trace of them is to be found on the stone; but they may have been added in paint. In figures of men the Assyrians very rarely indicated the male organs. One of the personages sculptured on the Balawat gates affords an exception to this general practice, but he is a prisoner about to be put to death, and the detail in question is a kind of indignity meant by the sculptor to show that the man in question was a savage who fought in puris naturalibus.
[106] Among the Lydians, says Herodotus, in his account of the adventure of Gyges (i. 10), “As among nearly all barbarous nations, it was a great indignity, even for a man, to be seen naked.” Conf. Plato, Republic, 452, c; Thucydides, i. 6; Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. iv. 19.
[107] Herodotus, i. 195; “As for their dress they wore a linen tunic coming down to their feet, and, over that, a woollen tunic. Finally they wrapped themselves in a short white cloak.”
[108] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 98.
[109] Heuzev, Les fouilles de Chaldée, p. 13.
[110] See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 255; vol. ii. figs. 247, 259, &c.
[111] Ibid. vol. ii. plate facing p. 334, and figs. 268, 269.
[112] See Layard, Monuments, 1st series, plates 15 and 16.
[113] In one relief the figures of these swimmers are no more than fourteen inches long (British Museum, Assyrian Basement room, No. 56).
[114] Layard, Monuments, 1st series, plate 57; 2nd series, plates 25 and 28.