Gardens of Nudes - Part One
The ancient Greeks created many statues of nude athletes whose proportions were believed to be perfect. You would think that their love of mathematics would have caused them to create formal, geometric gardens; but they seem to have preferred to set their symmetrical temples among natural, unspoiled landscapes.
The earliest known formal garden to be created in Greece surrounded the Temple of Hephaistos, above the Agora of Athens. This temple was built in the fifth century BCE, but the garden probably dates from around 300 BCE. The garden had orderly rows of shrubs and flowerpots, but there don't seem to have been any statues adorning this garden.
The use of statues to decorate gardens seems to date from after Alexander the Great (356 - 323 BCE) conquered much of the known world. After Alexander's death, his generals divided up the conquered lands amongst themselves. A new international civilization arose which we call Hellenistic because it was rooted in ancient Greece.
Egypt, Syria, and Persia had been ruled by kings for thousands of years, so their new Greek rulers began to live in lavish palaces which were filled with works of art. Before the Hellenistic period, Greek sculptures had been erected as memorials in cemeteries or placed in the sanctuaries of Temples; the Temple of Zeus at Olympia was surrounded by statues of athletes who had won in the Olympic games, but they were memorials rather than garden ornaments. It was also usual for statues of victorious athletes to be erected in their hometowns.
The ancient Greeks were very comfortable with male nudity, this was part of their rather homosexual culture, but they were quite prudish about female nudity. The Athenians were shocked by the Spartans, who allowed lightly clad women to compete in their games. The ancient Greeks often created nudes statues of their gods, but Aphrodite was the only goddess to be portrayed in the nude, and nude statues of her were very rare before the Hellenistic period. When Praxiteles created his famous nude statue of Aphrodite about 350 BCE, the people of Kos, who had commissioned the statue, were shocked, so he created a clothed statue of the goddess for them and the nude statue was bought by the citizens of Knidos. They displayed their Knidian Aphrodite in an open shrine; this was surrounded by fruit trees which were linked by living festoons
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