The Naked Truth

When Archimedes was commissioned by the King of Thebes to determine if he had been swindled by his crownmaker (an interesting profession, that) he was at a loss as to how to determine if base metals had been used. He was under a lot of stress, since failure meant more than a loss of his fee, so our hero decided to take a hot bath. When he sunk into the water, he realized that different materials would displace water differently, and that a bogus crown would displace water differently than an equal amount of pure gold. He jumped from his bathtub, running naked through the streets shouting ``Eureka, Eureka`` or ``I found it, I found it``.

It turns out that the ancient Greeks weren`t so tolerant of nudity after all, according to this piece in Livescience:

Greek males, it is generally agreed, did not walk around town naked, they did not ride their horses naked, and they certainly did not go into battle naked," Hurwit said. "In most public contexts, clothing was not optional, and in combat nakedness was suicidal."

Apparently, nudity had numerous symbolic representations in Greek art, rather than depicting actual conditions in the ancient world-and here I just thought they were libertines!

I wonder whatever happened to Archimedes for his little streaking incident? Did the King arrest him for indecent exposure?