CHAPTER IV
ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS:
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
It is well known that the Hellenes attached an enormous importance to physical exercise. This was partly, no doubt, due to their intense appreciation of bodily beauty, which it was the endeavour of their gymnastic training to produce. But it must be remembered that to be in “good condition” was essential to them. Any morning an Hellenic citizen might find himself called upon to take the field against an invader, or might be despatched to ravage an enemy’s territory. Only the most cogent excuses were accepted. Plato[332] has left a vivid picture of a rich man, who has lived in idleness and luxury, suddenly called out to serve his country. Unhappy Dives marches along panting and perspiring, he is ill on board ship, and in battle when he has to charge or fight vigorously, he has no wind and is in a state of hopeless misery; while his poorer or wiser companions, who are “lean and wiry, and have lived in the open air,” mock at him and despise him. Sokrates points out to young Epigenes,[333] who has neglected his physical condition, what risks he runs. In battle, when a retreat is sounded, he will be left behind by his companions, and be either killed or taken prisoner by the foe; and the lot of the captive was frequently slavery for life, unless his friends ransomed him. But there were also intellectual and moral risks. “Bodily debility,” says Sokrates, “frequently causes a loss of memory, and low spirits, and a peevish temper, and even madness, to invade a man, so as to make even intellectual pursuits impossible.” To be a good citizen and to be a good thinker a man must always be in good physical condition. It became a duty to oneself and to the State “to live in the open air and accustom oneself to manly toils and sweat, avoiding the shade and unmanly ways of life.”[334] By divine ordinance, “Sweat was the doorstep of manly virtue,” as old Hesiod had sung.[335]
This addiction to gymnastic exercises of all kinds was characteristic of the Hellenic peoples from the days of Homer. The original object had been symmetrical development of the body, health, speed, strength, and agility. But, as the Egyptian sage remarked, the Hellenes were a nation of children—it is just that which gives to them their charm and interest—and children usually and naturally care most for the body. Consequently athletics were carried too far: they became an end in themselves, instead of being merely a means of attaining physical activity and health. The professional athlete became a sort of spoilt child, fed at public expense,[336] courted by crowds of admirers, and all the time he was quite useless for everything except his own particular sort of contest, boxing or wrestling or the like. The tendency was ruinous: the Hellenes preferred to be good gymnasts rather than good soldiers.[337] The competitor, boy or man, who entered for one of the great prizes had to live in complete idleness from other pursuits.[338] Such professionals “slept all the day long, and if they departed from their prescribed system of training in the very slightest degree, they were seized with serious diseases.”[339] Consequently they were useless as soldiers, since in war it is necessary to be wide awake, not torpid, and to be able to stand vicissitudes of heat and cold, and not to be made ill by changes of diet. Specialisation even led to deformity. The long-distance runner developed thick legs and narrow shoulders, the boxer broad shoulders and thin legs.[340] It is to this specialisation that Galen[341] attributes the decline in utility of Hellenic athletics. Philostratos even notes that only in the good old days was the health of athletes not actually impaired by their exercises. In those times, he says, they grew old late, and took part in eight or nine Olympic contests—retained, that is, their efficiency for thirty years or more; moreover, they were as good soldiers as they were athletes. Later, these habits changed, and athletes became averse to war, torpid, effeminate, luxurious in their diet. The medical profession took upon itself to advise them—a good thing in its way, but unsuitable for athletes; for it told them to sit still after meals before taking exercise, and introduced them to elaborate cookery. Bribery also
came into vogue among the professionals; usurers began to enter the training schools on purpose to lend them money for bribing their opponents.[342] The first recorded instance of this was early in the fourth century.[343]
PLATE V. A.
SCENES IN A PALAISTRA
Archaeologische Zeitung, 1878, Plate II. From a Kulix at Munich, attributed to Euphronios.
PLATE V. B.
SCENE IN A PALAISTRA—A BOY WITH HALTERES, A BOY WITH JAVELIN, AND TWO PAIDOTRIBAI
Archaeologische Zeitung, 1878, Plate II. From a Kulix at Munich, attributed to Euphronios.
Critics of this exaggerated athleticism were not wanting, even in the earliest times. The attack begins with Xenophanes of Kolophon. In an elegiac poem he writes: “If a man wins a victory at Olympia … either by speed of foot or in the pentathlon, or by wrestling, or competing in painful boxing, or in the dread contest called the pankration, his countrymen will look upon him with admiration, and he will receive a front seat in the games, and eat his dinners at the public cost, and be presented with some gift that he will treasure. All this he will get, even if he only win a horse race. Yet he is not as worthy as I; for my wisdom is better than the strength of men and steeds. Nay, this custom is foolish, and it is not right to honour strength more than the excellence of wisdom. Not by good boxing, not by the pentathlon, nor by wrestling, nor yet by speed of foot, which is the most honoured in the contests of all the feats of human strength—not so would a city be well governed. Small joy would it get from a victory at Olympia: such things do not fatten the dark corners of a city.”
Pass straight from this to the works of Pindar, in order to see whether Xenophanes’ attack was justified. To Pindar the world holds nothing better than an Olympian victory. Be the descendant of athletes and be an athlete yourself—that is the summit of human attainment and bliss. His gods are either athletes themselves or founders of athletic contests. A man’s true desires may usually be best traced in the conception which he forms of the future state: Pindar’s portrait of Elysium is characteristic. First the scenery, a magnificent description in his best manner:
In that Underworld the sun shines in his might
Through our night.
Round that city through the dewy meadow-ways
Roses blaze.
Through the fragrant shadows, bright with golden gleams,
Fruitage teems.…
Every flower of joyance blooms nor withers there.[344]
And in this Paradise how are the shades of the departed occupying themselves? “Some take their joy in horses, some in gymnasia, some in draughts.”[345] That is the highest bliss conceivable, in Pindar’s opinion.
But Euripides did not agree with him. He denounces the athletic life with much vigour.[346] “Of countless ills in Hellas, the race of athletes is quite the worst.… They are slaves of their jaw and worshippers of their belly.… In youth they go about in splendour, the admiration of their city, but when bitter old age comes upon them, they are cast aside like worn-out coats. I blame the custom of the Hellenes, who gather together to watch these men, honouring a useless pleasure.[347] Who ever helped his fatherland by winning a crown for wrestling, or speed of foot, or flinging the quoit, or giving a good blow on the jaw? Will they fight the foe with quoits, or smite their fists through shields? Garlands should be kept for the wise and good, and for him who best rules the city by his temperance and justice, or by his words drives away evil deeds, preventing strife and sedition.”
In return for this, the athlete-loving populace, finding their voice in the popular poet Aristophanes, denounced Euripides and his Sophist friends for emptying the gymnasia and making the boys desire only a good tongue, instead of a sound body, turning them into pale-faced, indoor pedants, fit for nothing but jabbering nonsense. The attitude of the poet in the Clouds and Frogs is just that of an average schoolboy discussing a student.
Plato has already been quoted as an authority against the athlete of his day. In the Laws he rejects every kind of gymnastics which is not strictly conducive to military efficiency, and, like the Spartans, condemns the pankration and boxing. Races in the ideal State are to be run in full armour, and the javelin and spear are to replace the quoit. It is exactly the position of some moderns, who would substitute shooting and field-days for cricket and football. The case against the athletes may be closed with Aristotle’s testimony: he also condemns the specialisation of the trained professional.[348]
But these denunciations of athletes do not apply so much to Athens as to the other States of Hellas. The Athenian Agora was full of the statues of generals and patriots, not, as was the usual custom, of athletes.[349] The author of the treatise on the Athenian constitution,[350] writing in the early days of the Peloponnesian War, notices that the democracy had driven gymnastics out of fashion.[351] He writes as one of the aristocrats who, like Pindar and his princely friends, cared mainly for the body and the outward beauties of life: the democracy was vulgar, for it could not spend all its time in bodily exercises and musical banquets. No doubt at that period in Athens, as can be seen in Aristophanes, there was a reaction in favour of intellectual pursuits against the exclusive athleticism of the preceding age: the time of the citizens in a great democracy was also largely monopolised by State duties, whether in the Assembly or in the Law Courts or in fighting by sea or land. But athletics still remained quite sufficiently popular even at Athens, and athletic “shop” remained one of the chief topics of conversation at a dinner-party.[352]
* * * * *
Gymnastic exercises centred round two sorts of buildings which are often confused, the “gymnasium” and the “palaistra.” The former may be said to correspond to the whole series of fields and buildings intended for games, which surround a modern public school, including football and cricket grounds, running track and jumping pit, fives courts, and so forth. The “palaistra” often resembled little more than the playground of a village school: it only demanded a sandy floor, and sufficient privacy to protect the exercises from intrusion: such buildings could be run up at private expense in the smallest villages, and were often attached to private houses. A “gymnasium,” on the other hand, must have cost a vast sum to erect: even a great capital like Athens only possessed three in the fourth century; small towns must have been unable to afford them at all. But the gymnasia were public buildings, open to all; they were always full of citizens of all ages, practising or watching others practise; they were a fashionable place of resort, where Sophists lectured in the big halls, and philosophers taught in the shady gardens. For the trainer who wished to instruct his class of boys they were wholly unsuitable; besides, any casual stranger could stand by and get a lesson for nothing. Consequently, even at Athens, the boys were taught in palaistrai which could be closed to the public:[353] in the towns and villages there was no other place.
It is quite true that boys went to the gymnasia. Aristophanes[354] talks of “a nice little boy on his way home from the gymnasium.” In Antiphon,[355] some older boys are practising the javelin in a gymnasium; a younger boy, who had been standing among the spectators, being called by his paidotribes, runs across the course and is killed. If the reading “paidotribes,” for which K. F. Hermann would substitute “paidagogos,” is correct, we find a paidotribes and his class of younger boys present in a gymnasium, probably to practise javelin-throwing, which must have demanded a larger space than the palaistra often afforded. The elder boys are probably not under his tuition, for they are using real javelins, not the unpointed shafts which were employed at school. Paidotribai with small palaistrai may often have taken their classes to the free public gymnasia to practise the diskos, the javelin, and running, which required a large space. But none the less the palaistra was the usual scene of the teaching of boys.[356] It must not, however, be supposed that a palaistra was always reserved for boys. The “many palaistrai,” which the democracy built for itself,[357] were doubtless as much public buildings, open to all ages, as the Akademeia or Lukeion. The palaistrai owned or hired by private teachers must have been open to adults when the boys were not present; that which is the scene of the Lusis was apparently attended by two classes, one of boys and the other of youths, who only met there on festival days. In the palaistra of Taureas, however, mentioned in the Charmides, the different classes seem all to meet in the undressing-room; but on that occasion the building may have been open for general practice, not for teaching. Some such arrangement into classes must have taken place in the village palaistrai.[358] The master who taught the boys in the palaistra was called the paidotribes, “boy-rubber”: he must have owed his name to the great part which rubbing, whether with oil or with various sorts of dust, played in athletics.[359] He was expected to be scientific. He had to know what exercises would suit what constitutions:[360] he is often coupled with the doctor.[361] His object was to prevent, the doctor’s to cure, diseases. He even prescribed diet. Besides health, he was expected to aim at beauty and strength.[362] His training, in Plato’s opinion, also served to produce firmness of character and strength of will: he must therefore know how much training to administer to each boy, for too much would cause excess of these qualities and lead to savage brutality, and too little would result in effeminacy.[363]
Since so much science was demanded of the paidotribes, parents exercised much forethought in choosing a gymnastic school for their boys:[364] they would “call upon their friends and relations to give advice, and deliberate for many days,” in order to find a trainer whose instructions would “make their son’s body a useful servant to his mind, not likely by its bad condition to compel him to shirk his duty in war or elsewhere.”[365] This at Athens, no doubt: in the smaller towns and villages there could have been little choice: parents must have taken what they could get.
On arriving at the chosen palaistra with his paidagogos the boy would find a class assembling. He would first go into the undressing-room[366] and strip. For all the exercises were performed naked. This no doubt gave the trainer a good opportunity of watching which muscles most required development, and what constitutional weaknesses, if any, must be treated circumspectly. Passing into the palaistra proper, the boy would find an enclosure surrounded, in the case of the more expensive schools, with pillars. There would be no roof. Hellenic custom maintained that it was healthy to expose the naked body to the open air and the mid-day sun: a white skin was regarded as a sign of effeminacy.[367] If the sun became dangerously hot, little caps were worn, which at other times hung on the walls of the palaistra. The floor was sand. Before wrestling or practising the pankration or jumping, the boys had to break up the soil with pickaxes[368] in order to make it soft: these pickaxes were also suspended on the walls. Beside them would be also kôrukoi or punch-balls, haltêres (a sort of dumb-bell, used for jumping and other exercises), the scrapers with which the dirt and sweat were removed, bags to hold the cords which were used as boxing-gloves, and spare javelins. Grown-up men were not allowed to enter during the lessons, but could apparently, if they wished, watch “from outside,” that is, probably, from the dressing-room, where we often find Sokrates conversing with the pupils, boys and lads: he could not, probably, penetrate further.
The symbol of office which marked the paidotribes was a long forked stick depicted in the vases.[369] This was probably derived from the branch which the umpires at the games held in their hands. The two symbols are so much alike when represented on the vases[370] that it is often hard to distinguish them. There were generally several under-masters in the palaistra. The more proficient boys also were employed in teaching backward schoolfellows; these “pupil-teachers” appear on vases,[371] holding the stick of office like the grown-up masters. No doubt, poor boys managed to get instruction in this manner from their richer friends in the public gymnasia and palaistrai, without attending a school at all.
The staff of a palaistra also included professional flute-players, for most of the exercises[372] were performed to the sound of a flute, in order that good time might be preserved in the various movements. The player in these cases wore the φορβεία or mouth-band.[373]
As I have pointed out in Chapter II., although the literary authorities make gymnastic training of a sort
begin with the seventh year, it is not at all probable that the more recognised exercises, such as boxing and wrestling, began till a good many years later. The vases suggest that these subjects were taught some years after letters and music had begun, for they represent only older boys as learning them. Aristotle seems to vouch for a graduated course of gymnastic exercises during boyhood.[374]
PLATE VI. A.
IN THE PALAISTRA: WRESTLERS, PAIDOTRIBES, BOY PREPARING GROUND
Gerhard’s Auserlesene Vasenbilder, cclxxi. Fig. 2.
PLATE VI. B.
IN THE PALAISTRA: BOY PUTTING ON BOXING-THONG, A PANKRATION LESSON, AND A PAIDOTRIBES
Gerhard’s Auserlesene Vasenbilder, cclxxi. Fig. 1.
What did the boys learn at the palaistra in the meantime? Deportment and easy exercises. A passage in Aristophanes informs us that they were taught the most graceful way to sit down and get up.[375] Vases represent boys learning how to stand straight. There were also all sorts of exercises in which the unpointed javelin played the part of a training-rod and the halteres the part of dumb-bells. The paidotribes might also try to strengthen particular muscles in particular boys. In an epigram,[376] a trainer is exercising a boy’s middle by bending him over his knee, and then, while holding his feet fast, swinging him over backwards.
No doubt what was known as “gesticulation” (τὸ χειρονομεῖν) played a large part in this earlier training. “Gesticulation” meant a scientific series of gestures and movements of all the limbs, somewhat like the modern systems of physical education taught by Sandow and others. It was chiefly an exercise for the arms, as the name implies, but on a celebrated occasion Hippokleides the Athenian stood on his head on a table and “gesticulated” with his feet.[377] The particular movements were very carefully designed, and were all intended to be beautiful and gentlemanly.[378] Gesticulation served as a preparation for various dancing-systems, but was distinct from dancing, for Charmides was able to gesticulate but unable to dance.[379] It was also preparatory to gymnastics, for it resembled the movements of a boxer sparring at the air for lack of an opponent.[380] The halteres were possibly often employed, for they played a part in many gymnastic exercises.[381] This “gesticulation,” then, being a preliminary to gymnastics and dancing, would be the natural thing for the small boys to learn in the palaistra. Other early exercises were rope-climbing[382] and a sort of leap-frog.[383] The various kinds of ball-game,[384] mostly designed to exercise the body scientifically, may also have been employed. Of the regular exercises of the palaistra, which I am about to discuss, running and jumping would suit quite small boys; the diskos and javelin could also be begun at an early age, for smaller sizes were made for children.
* * * * *
The age at which the recognised exercises were first taught no doubt varied with individual taste and physical capacity: no strict line can be drawn. These exercises were wrestling, boxing, the pankration, jumping, running, throwing the diskos and the javelin. Wrestling (πάλη) was probably regarded as the most important of these subjects, for it gave its name to the Palaistra. For this exercise the soil was broken up with the pickaxe and watered: the bodies of the combatants were oiled beforehand. By these means the Hellenes prevented their boys from disfiguring their bodies with bumps and bruises, and the slipperiness of the ground and of the antagonist’s body made the exercise more difficult and therefore more valuable. Three throws were necessary for victory. There were two sorts of wrestling. In one the victor had to throw his antagonist without coming to the ground himself; this was a matter of ingenious twists and turns somewhat like the Japanese jiu-jitsu. In the other both combatants rolled over and over on the ground: this was less scientific. The leading paidotribai had their own favourite systems of wrestling, with various openings, as in chess, and various ways of meeting them. “What style of wrestling did you learn at the Palaistra?” Kleon asks the sausage-seller.[385] When two boys were set to wrestle in school, they were not allowed to contend as they pleased with a view to victory, but had to carry out the directions of the paidotribes.[386] A fragment of a system of wrestling has been unearthed at Oxurhunchos.[387]
Suppose there are two boys, Charmides and Glaukon. The paidotribes sets them to wrestle, while the rest of the class watch. He holds a long forked stick in his hand. Pointing with it to Charmides, he says, “You put your right hand between his legs and grip him.” Then to Glaukon, “Close your legs on it, and thrust your left side against his side.” To Charmides, “Throw him off with your left hand.” To Glaukon, “Shift your ground, and engage.” Each group of directions, or figure σχῆμα, as it was called, closes with the word “Engage” πλέξον. At this point, probably, the two boys were allowed to wrestle at will, the result, however, being foreseen and inevitable owing to the previous moves.
An epigram in the Anthology represents instruction of this sort being given: the boy retorts in the middle, “I can’t possibly do it, Diophantos; that’s not the way boys wrestle.”[388]
But, to use a parallel given by Isokrates, a pupil is not yet a complete orator, when he knows how to create pathos, irony, and so forth, and has been taught the parts of a speech: he has still to learn when and where and in what order to employ these several artifices. So with wrestling. A boy who knows his “figures” is not yet a wrestler: he has got to learn when is the right moment to employ each of them in an actual contest with a real antagonist. “When the paidotribes has taught his pupils the ‘figures’ invented for bodily training and practised them and made them perfect in these, he makes the boys go through their exercises again and accustoms them to physical toil, and compels them to string together one by one the figures which they have learnt, that they may have a firmer grasp of them and get a clearer comprehension of the right occasions for using them: for it is impossible to comprehend these in an exact science.”[389] The boys have to judge for themselves, in the heat of the contest, which figure it will be expedient to use: the trainer cannot fix that beforehand. But they will best be able to judge, if by long practice they have discovered which figures suit them best and which prove fatal to a particular type of opponent.
Boxing was similarly taught by a series of “figures.” The boys used the light gloves, consisting of strings wound round the hands, not the heavy, metal-weighted gloves which professional athletes wore. The pankration[390] was a mixture of boxing and wrestling: the boys
usually wore similar gloves for this but left the fingers unfastened, only the wrists and knuckles being protected: sometimes they fought with bare hands. For both these exercises it was usual to wear dogskin caps, in order to protect the ears from injury. The pankration seems to have been regarded as an unsatisfactory game for boys: so it was excluded from both Olympian and Pythian games till a comparatively late date. For one thing, it was dangerous, and the exercise was very severe. But in the palaistra, carefully regulated by the paidotribes and stopped when the fighting became dangerous, no doubt it was harmless enough. Alkibiades, however, once succeeded in biting an opponent who was pressing him hard, being ready to do anything rather than be beaten. “You bite like a girl, Alkibiades!” exclaimed the indignant boy. “No, like a lion,” answered Alkibiades.[400]
PLATE VII.
Photo by Mr. R. Coupland.
Stadion at Delphi from the Fortifications of Philomelos.
Length about 220 yards.
Photo by Mr. R. Coupland.
Stadion at Delphi from the Fortifications of Philomelos.
A nearer view.
Running needs no comment: the methods are much the same in all ages. The chief distances for races in Hellas were the Stadion or 200 yards,[401] the Diaulos or quarter-mile, and the Long-distance race, which varied from three-quarter mile to about three miles. The race in armour was not taught to boys. Races were often run over soft sand, where the runners sank in, just as long-distance races in England often include a ploughed field or two. The sand made running both a more severe exercise (so that a shorter distance sufficed) and also a better training for war.
For the long jump the Hellenes used the “halteres” or light dumb-bells, to assist their momentum.[402] Even in competitions, a flute-player stood by, to give the competitors the assistance of his music: no doubt it helped them to manage their steps so as to “take off” on the right spot. They alighted into a large sandy pit, dug up by the ever-present pickaxe: the jump was only measured if they came down on to this evenly, leaving a clear trace of their foot.
The diskos was a flat circle of polished bronze or other metal.[403] The specimen in the British Museum is between 8 and 9 inches in diameter, and is inscribed with athletic pictures on either side. It was flung with either hand. A great many attitudes were necessary before the diskos was launched, and every muscle of the body must have been well exercised in the process. The time was given, in the palaistra, by a flute-player. In competitions both the distance and the direction of the throw were taken into consideration.
Boys learnt to throw the javelin and spear by practising with long unpointed rods, which were also used for a variety of physical exercises. The mark seems to have been a sort of croquet-hoop or pair of compasses, fixed into the ground: other targets were also employed.[404] The vases which represent this pursuit often show the paidotribes carrying this hoop or fixing it into the ground. It was planted at a fixed distance which was stepped out.
It may be mentioned, before we leave the “paidotribes,” that his fee for his whole course seems to have been a μνᾶ, about £4:[405] this enabled the pupil to attend his lectures “for ever,” that is, perhaps till the course was finished. Or perhaps this sum made a pupil a life-member of a particular private palaistra.
Let us now look into one of the gymnasia at Athens, the Akademeia or Lukeion. We will suppose that it is late in the afternoon, for this was a favourite time for taking exercise: the Athenians liked to get a good appetite for their evening meal. Outside, a troop of young men who intend to be enrolled in the State-cavalry are practising their evolutions, mounting, in the absence of stirrups, by a leaping-pole, and charging in squadrons. On another side a body of heavy infantry with spear and shield are assembling for a night march into the Megarid;[406] they are packing their supplies, onions and dried fish, perhaps, into their knapsacks as they fall in, and are grumbling at having to leave Athens just when a festival is coming; a burly countryman is complaining to his general that it is not his turn to serve, as he took part in the raid into Boiotia last week, and his general is threatening him with a prosecution for insubordination if he becomes abusive. After paying our respects to the patron deities, Herakles and Hermes and Eros,[407] and having muttered a curse on all tyrants suggested by the statue of Eros which Charmos the father-in-law of Hippias the Peisistratid set up,[408] we enter the gymnasium.
The first room which we come to is the undressing-room.[409] On the benches round the walls a row of men are sitting discussing the exact nature of Self-control: an extremely ugly person, to whom they all pay great respect, is stating that it is an exact science, and, if only they can discover this science, the whole world will become virtuous. Lads and men are stripping all about the room, and passing off to take their exercises elsewhere; others keep coming in and dressing and listening to the discussion for a minute or two. A handsome young fellow comes in: the ugly man makes room for him with great energy, and his friends who are sitting at the end of the bench are pushed off suddenly on to the floor. A shout of laughter, mingled with some strong Attic abuse, arises. Not wishing to be involved as witnesses in an interminable lawsuit, we hurry out through the further door into a great cloister.[410] In the centre of this is a large open space, with no roof. Here we meet a well-known mathematician from Kurene,[411] who is walking round the cloister with a crowd of pupils: he is explaining to them that famous theorem about right-angled triangles, whose proof is so neat that Pythagoras the vegetarian sacrificed a hundred oxen when he discovered it. At intervals the mathematician stops and draws a diagram in the dust with his stick. As we follow him, we can look into the rooms which surround the cloister. In one, a crowd of men are anointing themselves with oil.[412] The rubbing, which is so good for all bodily ills, and the oil, even if not followed by any further exercise, are regarded as an excellent thing. An Athenian gentleman is expected to carry about a certain fragrance of this oil,[413] and his skin must always be sleek with it; but as a rule the anointing is a prelude to exercise, and is meant to make the joints supple and the body slippery enough to elude a wrestler’s grip.[414] A slave or an attendant stands by many of the men, holding one of those dainty oil-flasks which make so great a feature in modern Museums of Archæology. Through the next door we see the “dusting-room.” Various sorts of dust were used for rubbing the body. They served to clean it of sweat after exercise, to open the pores, to warm it when cold, and to soften the skin. A yellow dust was particularly popular; for it made the body glisten so as to be pleasant to look at, as a good body in good condition ought to be.[415] Next perhaps will be the bathing-room—a popular place in the evening, for it was usual to take a bath before dinner.[416] The bathers either splash themselves out of great bowls which stand upon pedestals, or receive a shower bath by getting a companion or an attendant to pour a pitcher of water over them. Tanks capable of receiving the whole body at once were not usual, though known to Homer.[417] Then we see the room of the korukos, or punch-ball, which will present a very curious appearance.[418] The korukos is a large sack hanging from the ceiling by a rope. The lighter korukoi are filled with fig seeds or meal, the heavier with sand. They hang at about the height of a man’s waist. You push one of them gently at first, and more and more violently as you gain experience; having pushed it, you plant yourself in the way of the rebound, and try to stop the sack with your hands or your chest or your back or your head. If you are not strong enough, you will be knocked over, and the room will laugh. This will practise you in standing steady, and make all parts of your body firm and muscular. The korukos can also be used as a punch-ball, to strengthen the boxer’s arms and shoulders. This exercise is especially recommended for boxers and pankratiasts: the latter ought to use the heavier variety. Perhaps there will also be some lay-figures hanging up round the walls, for these also were used for practising. Here, too, some unlucky individuals who, from unpopularity or other causes, are unable to find an antagonist, will be exercising their fists on thin air. But both these expedients were regarded as ridiculous.[419]
There were a large number of other rooms round the cloister, some intended for exercises in wet weather, for, if possible, exercise was always taken out of doors; for it was regarded as a great object to make the skin brown and hard by exposure to the sun. So King Agesilaos put his Asiatic captives up for sale in his camp naked, in order that his Hellenic soldiers, seeing their pale, soft flesh, unused to exposure, might despise their enemy. But as most of these rooms were furnished with seats, they were largely used as lecture-halls by wandering Sophists,[420] who gave free lectures in them to any passer-by who might care to listen, in order to attract regular, paying pupils. So we can take our pick and hear lectures on poetry or metaphysics, music or rhetoric, geography or history, at our pleasure.
After this, we can turn our attention to the great central courtyard,[421] which is surrounded by the cloister, or to the racecourse and open spaces which lie beyond it. In one part will be the wrestling arena.[422] Pairs of oiled, naked combatants will be struggling together, amid a crowd of cheering spectators, and perhaps the trainer will be standing by, giving them directions. One group attracts especial attention: for the pair are going to represent Athens at Olympia next year. Elsewhere the pankratiasts are contending, some sparring at arm’s length, others joined in a deadly grapple, rolling over and over on the ground and pummelling one another’s heads with their gloved knuckles. They are covered with clotted dust and oil and will need much scraping. Then there are the boxers, bearing either the light gloves, or, if they intend to take part in a big competition, the heavy iron balls padded over with leather which were used in the great Games.[423] There are races too in progress, lap by lap round the great Stadion. Some of the runners are naked, others are wearing helmet and shield, since they are practising for the Race in Armour. Friends run beside them for a little way, pacing them and encouraging them. Others are jumping, with the halteres in their hands, into the pit, while their friends mark the point where their heels have left a mark in the sand. A professional flute-player, with his mouth-band on, sets the time. Each is, no doubt, hoping to beat Phaüllos’ great jump of 55 feet—the world’s record. Everywhere are crowds of spectators,[424] and everywhere eager trainers giving advice, hoping, if their pupil gains a prize at some great Games, to make a name for themselves, and attract a crowd of lads to their paid lessons: perhaps they will even be immortalised by some contemporary Pindar in a song in honour of their pupil’s victory.
In another corner, it may be, there will be teams practising together. A regiment of epheboi may be undergoing their gymnastic training before service on the frontier:[425] or a team of them may be training, watched by the rich “gumnasiarchos,” for the torch-race at the festival of Hephaistos, or for the race from the Temple of Dionusos to that of Athena of the Sunshades, where the winner will receive a large bowl containing wine and honey and cheese and meat and olive oil—not all mixed together, let us hope.[426] There may also be teams practising wrestling and other bodily exercises together. Their trainer, “thinking it impossible to lay down separate regulations for each individual, orders roughly what suits the majority. So every one of the team takes an equal amount of exercise, and they all start and all stop running, or wrestling, or whatever it may be, at the same moment.”[427]
In the larger open spaces we shall find Athenians throwing the diskos, like Muron’s celebrated figure, or practising archery, or flinging the spear or javelin. In watching these care must be exercised: unwary spectators may be killed or injured. Mythology is full of unfortunates killed in this way. Was not the fair Huakinthos slain by Apollo’s quoit? Antiphon, too, in his new book on speech-writing, takes as one of his themes a boy killed by a comrade’s javelin accidentally. We can also take a lesson in the use of spear and shield from the teacher of arms: a pair of Sophists, who specialise in this subject, have just come to Athens, and will doubtless be exhibiting their skill here. We remember, though, that the warlike Spartans ridicule these professors, and General Laches regards them as quite useless for military purposes, as we heard him telling Sokrates the other day.[428] So we will pass on.
The vast majority of people in the gymnasium confine themselves to walking about. The colonnades and the gardens are convenient and attractive, and there is plenty to watch everywhere. The “xustos,” or covered cloister,[429] where athletes exercise in bad weather, is particularly popular among the walkers. And while they walk, they talk. There is a group of philosophical students arguing about the Supreme Good or constructing an ideal State. There is a party of inquirers who are discussing the nature of plants, or the varieties of crustaceans. Yonder, a half-naked, unkempt enthusiast is declaiming against luxury. “Man,” he cries, “is independent of circumstances.” Everywhere, walkers and spectators and talkers, but walkers above all.
For the average Athenian spent all his time upon his legs: to sit down was the mark of a slave.[430] He walked nearly all day: the distance which he covered in five or six days would easily stretch from Athens to Olympia. He took a walk before breakfast, another before lunch, another before dinner, and another between dinner and bed.[431]
Games of ball are going on in the ball-court yonder.[432] We may remember that the poet Sophocles was a famous player.[433] But the shadow on the great sun-dial has nearly reached the ten-foot mark which announces dinner-time to the Athenian world. The crowds who have been exercising themselves are scraping off the sweat and dirt with the στλεγγίς or scraper,[434] or else hurrying to the bath-rooms. After the bath comes another anointing, with oil and water this time.[435] Then away through the nearest gate into the city, while the great buildings on the Akropolis grow misty in the twilight and Athena’s guardian Spear catches the last rays of the setting sun.
All this was open to the poorest Athenian: there was no fee for entrance. The only expenses were those incurred in buying an oil-flask and scraper, which the State did not as a rule provide, and any fees that might be paid to a trainer for special “coaching.” The poor could learn as much as they required from watching those who were proficient. It was usual to tip the man in the public baths who poured cold water over the bathers and assisted them generally: but this probably did not apply to the bath-rooms in the gymnasia. The State certainly made it easy for every citizen to take as much exercise as he pleased.
Women were wholly excluded from athletics at Athens. In Sparta girls exercised themselves as much as the boys. In other Dorian States feminine athletics were encouraged to a less degree. At Argos there were foot-races for girls. In Chios they could be seen wrestling in the gymnasia.[436]
* * * * *
But the gymnasia and palaistrai, though they provided so many different kinds of exercises, did not supply the Hellenes with their sole opportunities for keeping the body in good condition. Hunting was a popular employment at Sparta and no doubt elsewhere: Xenophon, who was devoted to it, would have liked to make it more popular in Attica,[437] where it languished, perhaps from lack of game. Swimming and rowing were usual accomplishments. Riding was compulsory for rich citizens at Athens, for they had to serve in the cavalry; it was also popular in Thessaly, the land of horses. Military service provided both an incentive to physical exercise and a frequent means of obtaining it. Dancing was universal throughout the Hellenic world and played a larger part in Hellenic education than is usually recognised. At Sparta it was of paramount importance. At Athens it was taught free to large numbers of boys under the system of leitourgiai. Plato divides physical education into dancing and wrestling.[438] Aristophanes[439] brackets dancing between the palaistra and music, when he wishes to give the three elements of a gentleman’s education. Choral dancing to a Hellene was at once the ritual of religion, the ordinary accompaniment of a festival or public holiday, the highest form of music, and the most perfect system of physical exercise then discovered.
The modern reader finds it very hard to realise why Hellenic philosophers attach so much educational importance to the various kinds of dance. This is because modern dancing differs from its ancient prototype in two very important particulars: it is not connected with religion and it is not dramatic. In the East dancing was, and is, the language of religion. David, to show his fervour, danced before the Ark with all his might. In Hellas, dancing accompanied every rite and every mystery.[440] The choral dance afforded the outlet to religious enthusiasm which elsewhere is provided by services: any change in its characteristics was a change in ritual and in the inexpressible sentiments and moral attitudes which become so closely bound up with habitual religious observances. And, since it was the usual ritual of worship, dancing became all-important in education, as providing the forms through which the highest aspirations of the children were accustomed to find expression.
The boy who danced in honour of Dionusos was trying to assimilate himself to the god, whose history and personality would be brought home to him vividly by the vineyards around him: they would serve him for a parable. The vine that came so mysteriously out of the earth, lived its short life in the rain and sunshine, and was crushed and killed at the harvest, to rise again in the strange juice which thrilled him with such wondrous power—there was plenty of parable for him there. And while he felt the god’s history so vividly, he was acting it, for acting was the very essence of Hellenic dancing. He would act the sorrows of Dionusos, his persecution from city to city, and his final conquest; he would match each incident in the story with suitable inward feelings and outward gestures of sorrow and triumph. Thus his dancing came to be a keenly religious observance, accompanied by more vivid acting than is possible on a modern stage; such dancing, it must be remembered, was the parent of Attic Drama. The dramatic power of such acting became enormous; one dancer, it is said, could make the whole philosophic system of Pythagoras intelligible without speaking a word, simply by his gestures and attitudes.[441]
In such dramatic dancing the subject or plot was important. Here the weakness of the old Hellenic mythology became fatal. For it was the old myths that supplied the motives of religious dances as well as of the drama, and many of them were morally unsatisfactory. When a chorus of boys danced the Birth-pangs of Semelé, the most famous dithyramb of Timotheos, not unnaturally objections were raised. The new school of musicians and poets, which arose towards the end of the fifth century, tried to represent everything and anything in the most realistic way possible: their dancers had to imitate with voice and gesture “blacksmiths at the forge, craftsmen at work, sailors rowing and boatswains giving them orders, horses neighing, bulls bellowing,”[442] and so forth. They chose the commonest and coarsest scenes, just like Dutch painters. In their hands, dancing became something vulgar, as well as morally risky, though still under a semi-religious sanction. It is this charge which justified Plato’s denunciations of the dramatic element in poetry and music. It must be remembered that the choregos at Athens, who collected the boys from his tribe to dance these dithyrambs, could use compulsion if fathers refused to allow their sons to join his chorus.[443] Yet the advantages of learning to dance were great, quite apart from the religious aspects. Dancing was a scientifically designed system of physical training, which exercised every part of the body symmetrically.[444] The different masters invented systems of their own, just as the paidotribai invented systems of wrestling; in both cases the teaching began with a series of figures, which were afterwards fitted together. Different localities also had their own particular figures.[445]
The solo dance was used for private exercise. It also made its way into the drama. Sometimes, too, in the choral performances one or two of the best dancers were singled out to perform more elaborate evolutions expressing the dramatic course of the subject. But the choral dance was universal throughout Hellas. Its motives ranged from the solemn religious questionings of Aeschylus to the drunken buffoonery of the vine-festivals. The dance might be the act of worship of a whole people, as in the great festivals at Delos. It might, like the Gumnopaidia at Sparta, be designed to exhibit the physical perfection and practise the military evolutions of a nation in arms. It might celebrate the triumphant return of an Olympian victor to his native city, as did many of the dances which accompanied the extant odes of Pindar. The chorus-songs of Tragedy and Comedy were set to dances of a sort; but from these last boys seem to have been excluded.
For educational purposes, besides the dithuramboi already mentioned, the two most important classes were the War-dance and the Naked-dance (γυμνοπαιδία).[446] In the War-dance the performers, clad in arms, imitated all the ways in which blows and spears might be avoided, now bending to one side, now drawing back, now leaping in the air, now crouching down: then, again, they acted as though they were hurling javelins and spears and dealing all manner of blows at close quarters.[447] The Kuretic dance in Crete was very similar; the dancers “in full armour beat their swords against their shields and leaped in an inspired and warlike manner.”[448] The field-days, when teams of boys and “packs” of epheboi fought one another to the sound of music, were only a more warlike sort of dance. In fact, war and the war-dance were as closely connected in Hellas as war and drill in Modern Europe. The Thessalians called their heroes “dancers”; Lucian quotes an inscription that “the people set up this statue to Eilation, who danced the battle well”: “chief dancer” (προορχηστήρ)[449] was a dignified title. The same author observes that in warlike Sparta the young men learn to dance as much as to fight, and that their military and gymnastic exercises alike were inextricably mixed up with dancing.[449]
The “Naked-dance” was to gymnastics what the war-dance was to war.[450] It represented the movements of the palaistra set to music, accompanied by some singing.[451] The style was solemn, like that of the ἐμμέλεια, or dance of Tragedy. It was performed in the main by boys, as the name γυμνοπαιδία implies; but grown men also took part, as at Sparta, where practically the whole male population danced it at once. Plato seems to mean a similar type by his “peace-dance” (in the Laws), which is to be a thanksgiving for past mercies or a prayer for continued prosperity.
In the regular system of education at Athens, it is true, the boys learned only to sing and play, not to dance. But owing to the perpetual demand for boys from each of the ten tribes to compete at the great festivals in war-dances and dithyrambs, dancing must have been a common accomplishment. These competitors also attracted and encouraged a large number of dancing-masters. Any boy who showed promise as a dancer, or perhaps even as a singer only, would be singled out by the agents who collected choroi for the choregoi.
Some rich man, let us call him Tisias,[452] has just been appointed choregos of the Erechtheid tribe for the war-dance of boys at the Panathenaic festival, or a boy-chorus in dithyrambs at the Thargelia. After drawing lots with the choregoi of other tribes, he gets Pantakles assigned to him as his poet and music-master, to teach the boys: he might, if he wished, hire at his own expense extra dancing- and music-masters.[453] Tisias then sends for Amunias, whom the Erechtheid tribe have chosen to collect their choroi and keep an eye on them while they are being trained. If Tisias bears a bad name or is unpopular with his tribe, he and his agent will have trouble in collecting the boys; for the fathers will refuse to give them up, and there will be fines imposed and securities taken, before the chorus assembles. But as a rule the parents will accept gladly; it is a chance of a free education for a month or so, for Tisias will pay all expenses, even of meals, and the State supplies the teacher; it is a chance, too, for the boy to distinguish himself.
Meanwhile, Tisias will have provided a suitable schoolroom, in his own house, if possible; rich men, to whom the post of choregos was a frequent burden, would keep an apartment for the purpose. If he himself is busy, he will depute friends, who can be trusted to swear in his favour before the Courts, to watch the teaching; the agent will also be present.[454] For sometimes accidents occurred. Once a boy was given a dose to drink, to improve his voice, and it killed him.[455]
When the day of the competition came, the chorus would be suitably dressed at Tisias’ expense; he might perhaps allow them gold crowns.[456] There might be nine other choroi entering for the prize, but in the time of Demosthenes this was not common. The whole Athenian people and many foreigners would be present at the contest, and it would be an anxious day for choregos, boys, and parents. The State gave the prizes,[457] usually a tripod, which went to the winning choregos, who would set it up in some public place with an appropriate inscription, such as—
The Oeneid tribe was victorious; a choros of boys. Eureimenes, son of Meleteon, was choregos. Nikostratos taught.[458]
Or—
Lusikrates, son of Lusitheides of Kikunna, was choregos. The boys of the Acamantid tribe won. Theon played the flute. Lusiades taught. Euainetos led.[459]
* * * * *
We pass to the position which riding held in Athenian education. The two richest classes in the State were liable to service in the cavalry. They had to supply their own horses, which were examined and, if unfit, rejected; but the State paid them a sum of £8 annually for maintenance and arms in time of peace. As, however, the number of the citizen cavalry never rose above 1000, the whole of these two classes can never have been so employed at once: the remainder served in the heavy infantry. The two Hipparchoi elected for the year, and their subordinates, the ten Phularchoi, who each commanded a tribal contingent, on coming into their office, would note how many of the thousand who had served in the former year were no longer liable to service owing to age, and would fill up the vacancies; they would also make good those gaps which occurred from time to time during their term of office owing to wounds or death or sudden poverty. To secure a recruit, they had only to go to some rich and active young man who was not already serving; if he refused to be enrolled, they could prosecute him. The training often began before eighteen, for Xenophon speaks of persuading the recruit’s guardians,[460] from whom he would be free at that age. So Teles mentions the horse-breaker as among the teachers of the lad in the secondary stage of education. No doubt it took some training to make an efficient cavalryman, and the Hipparchoi liked to take the recruits young; but to keep a stud was the favourite amusement of a rich young Athenian, and many would learn to ride without any view to military efficiency. As the Hellenes rode without stirrups, mounting was one of the great difficulties of the young rider, and figures chiefly on the vases. Often they used the long cavalry-spear as a vaulting-pole.[461] Otherwise a groom or the master gave the pupil a leg up: on a vase[462] in the British Museum the master is seen simply pushing the boy into his seat. A comic poet,[463] who has left us a picture of the young recruits learning to ride under the eye of their Phularchoi, speaks only of mounting and dismounting.[464] “Go to the Agora,” says the speaker to his slave, “to the Hermai, where the phularchoi keep coming, and to the pretty disciples whom Pheidon is teaching to mount their steeds and to get down again.” Xenophon, among much sound advice to the young rider about buying, training, and keeping his horse, gives the Hipparchos the following suggestions:—
“Persuade the younger men to vault on to their horses. It will be best if you supply the teacher for this. The older men may be put up by some one else in the Persian way. To practise the men in keeping their seats over difficult country, frequent riding expeditions are a good thing, but will be unpopular. So tell your men to practise by themselves whenever they are in the open country. But take them out yourself occasionally and test them over all sorts of ground. Give them sham fights in different kinds of country. In order to make them keen about throwing the javelin from horseback,[465] stir up rivalry between the different squadrons and give prizes for this and for good riding and the like. Above all make yourself and your attendant gallopers as smart as possible.”[466]
There were frequent reviews under the eyes of the Boule. In the race-course at the Lukeion there was a sham fight, each hipparchos commanding five squadrons which pursued one another, and then charged front to front, passing through the gaps in one another’s lines. They had, also, to wheel in line. The review was followed by javelin-throwing.[467] Another review was held at the Akademeia, on a course with a hard soil (ὁ ἐπίκροτος)—good practice for cavalry intending to fight in rocky Attica. Here they had, among other manœuvres, to charge at full gallop and suddenly come to a halt.[468]
One of the attractions of the cavalry service was the great Panathenaic procession, where the horsemen played a leading part: an idealised picture of them may be seen on the frieze of the Parthenon. Xenophon gives a series of directions how to make the horses prance and hold their heads up on this great occasion, and suggests devices in gait which will attract popular notice. This and kindred processions must have made recruiting for the cavalry easy.
* * * * *
Swimming seems to have been, as would naturally be expected, an exceedingly common accomplishment in the maritime states of Hellas; even at inland Sparta the boys must have learnt it for their daily plunge in the Eurotas. According to tradition,[469] there was a law at Athens that every boy should be taught reading, writing, and swimming: the proverb for an utter dunce was “he knows neither his letters nor how to swim.”[470] Herodotos distinctly implies that all Hellenes knew how to swim. “The Hellenic loss at Salamis,” he says, “was small. For, as they knew how to swim (as opposed to the barbarians who did not), when their ships were destroyed, they swam over to the island.”[471] He takes it as a matter of course that every sailor could swim. The whole crew of a captured trireme during the Peloponnesian War as often as not jumped overboard and escaped by swimming.[472] In a story in Athenaeus the boys of Lasos, on coming out of the wrestling-school, go off together for a bathe and begin to dive. A friend of Aristippos used to boast to him of his diving.[473] During the blockade of Sphakteria by the Athenian fleet, numbers of Helots swam over from the mainland to the island under water.[474] Scanty and scrappy as they are, these details show that swimming must have been taught to most boys, at any rate if they were ever likely to serve in a fleet. Plato twice[475] uses a metaphor drawn from a man swimming on his back, showing that this method was known. When a young disputant is being severely handled in a discussion, Sokrates intervenes, “wishing to give the boy a rest, since he saw that he was getting a severe ducking and he feared that he might lose heart.”[476] The phrase suggests that the sight of boys learning to swim was familiar. They could learn either in the innumerable creeks and bays of the sea, or in the lakes and rivers, or in diving-pools.[477] There were also various “gymnastic games” which young people played in the water together;[478] but of their nature nothing is known.
It cannot reasonably be doubted that in the maritime states a large proportion of the boys, at any rate of the lower classes, were taught to row, since each trireme required a crew of 200, nearly all of whom had to use the oar. In the good old days, according to the Wasps, the main object was to be a good oar,[479] and rowing-blisters were a sign of patriotism.[480] In an emergency, the Athenians could make the whole citizen force under a certain age embark on the fleet and could win a victory with these rowers; this would have been impossible if the average citizen had been ignorant of rowing.[481] On such occasions many even of the Hippeis embarked: Aristophanes jestingly asserts that in an expedition to Korinth the horses tried also, shouting, “Gee-ho, put your backs into it. Do more work, Dobbin.”[482] Before the close of the war,[483] Charon, the ferryman of Styx, assuming that every Hellene knows the way to row, makes the souls of the departed row themselves across. Boat-races were certainly known at this period. A client of Lusias asserts that he has won a race with a trireme off Cape Sounion.[484] Probably the trierarchoi, the rich men appointed to fit out the State navy, either voluntarily or by regular custom, made the ships race one another. Thus the races would be as much inter-tribal contests as the dithyrambs or torch-races. Two crews of the epheboi of a later date used to race in the two sacred triremes. The vessels sailing out for the Sicilian expedition raced as far as Aigina.[485]
A fragment of Plato the comic poet[486] refers to similar contests:
Thy high-heaped tomb on this fair promontory
Shall take the greetings of our far-flung fleets,
And watch the merchants sailing out and in,
And be spectator when the galleons race.
EXCURSUS I
The “gumnasiarchoi” have created some confusion among those who have discussed Attic ways. Some authorities would make them rich men performing a “leitourgia” and holding a similar position to the trierarchoi and choregoi: others make them officials appointed to superintend the gymnasia.
The gumnasiarchia is certainly reckoned among leitourgiai as a general rule. A speaker in Lusias,[487] giving a list of these duties which he had performed, says: “I supplied a chorus of men at the Thargelia, a chorus of war-dancers at the Panathenaia, a cyclic chorus at the little Panathenaia, I was Gumnasiarchos for the Prometheia and was victorious, then choregos with a chorus of boys, then with beardless war-dancers at the little Panathenaia.” In Andokides[488] a gumnasiarchos at the Hephaisteia is mentioned. The author of the treatise on the Athenian constitution says:[489] “In the case of the choregiai, gumnasiarchiai, and trierarchiai, the Athenians realise that the rich fill the offices and the populace serve under them and get the benefit. So the populace claims to be paid for singing and running and dancing and sailing in the ships.” Now “singing and dancing” belong to the choregiai, and “sailing in the ships” to the trierarchiai. So “running” is left for the gumnasiarchiai. The main feature of the yearly festivals of Hephaistos and Prometheus, which the two earlier passages gave as the scene of the duties of the gumnasiarchos, was a torch-race. It may thus be inferred that the duty of the gumnasiarchos was to collect, and train, a team of his own tribe for the torch-race at these festivals.[490] In connection with this duty, they could prosecute members of their team, or any one who interfered with them, for impiety before the Archon Basileus,[491] since the race was a religious function. They were thus in the sacrosanct position which Demosthenes as choregos claims for himself in his speech against Meidias.
So far the gumnasiarchos is an ordinary performer of a leitourgia, and his duties are confined to providing a tribal team for the torch-races at the Prometheia and Hephaisteia. His team, usually at any rate, consisted of epheboi, as we learn from an inscription describing the victory of Eutuchides with his epheboi.[492]
* * * * *
There is also the law quoted as Solon’s in Aischines’ speech against Timarchos.[493] “The gumnasiarchai (note that it is a different word) “are not to allow any one over age to keep company with the boys at the festival of Hermes in any way whatsoever: if he does not keep all such persons out of the gymnasia, the gumnasiarches shall be liable to the law that prescribes penalties for those who corrupt free boys.” But the orator himself only mentions paidotribai, and special enactments dealing with the Hermaia; there is no mention of a gumnasiarches. The law itself is an addition made in a later period when there was a special officer to control the gymnasia. But there is no evidence for such an official in the days of the independence of Hellas.
One interesting passage remains. “I was gumnasiarchos in my deme,” or country district, says a speaker in Isaios.[494] There must therefore have been local torch-races, for which rich men were called upon to pay and train teams, just as there were certainly local theatrical performances. The passage opens up a prospect of vigorous athletic life throughout the country districts and villages of Attica.
[332] Plato, Rep. 556 B-D.
[333] Xen. Mem. iii. 12. 1.
[334] Plato, Phaidr. 239 c.
[335] Hesiod, Works and Days, 289.
[336] Solon reduced this endowment to 500 drachmai for an Olympian victor, 100 for an Isthmian (Plut. Solon, 23).
[337] Plut. Quaest. Rom. 40.
[338] Plato, Laws, 807 c.
[339] For this their vast appetites were partly responsible. Milo and Theagenes each ate a whole ox in a single day (Athen. 412 f). Astuanax the pankratiast ate what was meant for nine guests (ibid. 413 b).
[340] Xen. Banquet, ii. 17.
[341] Galen, On Medic. and Gym. § 33 (ed. Kühn. v. 870).
[342] Philos. On Gymnastics, 54.
[343] Pausan. v. 21. 10.
[344] Pind. Olymp.
[345] Pindar, frag.
[346] Fragment of Autolukos.
[347] A very bold attack on the Olympian games, which must have caused a sensation in the theatre.
[348] Aristot. Pol. vii. 16. 13.
[349] Lukourg. ag. Leok. 51.
[350] [Xen.] Constit. of Athens, i. 13.
[351] κατέλυσε must mean this, as in [Andok.] ag. Alkibiades, where that gentleman is said to be καταλύων τὰ γυμνάσια by his bad example.
[352] See end of Aristoph. Wasps.
[353] As shown by the beginning of Plato, Lusis, 203 B.
[354] Aristoph. Birds, 141.
[355] Antiphon, Second Tetralogy.
[356] The law quoted in Aischines ag. Timarchos is spurious, being a later interpolation; it cannot therefore be used as evidence.
[357] [Xen.] Constit. of Athens, ii. 10.
[358] The division of the boys into classes by age in the contests points to such a usage. Cp. the ἡλικίαι at Teos.
[359] Later, this was done by a special official, the ἀλειπτής.
[360] Aristot. Pol. iv. 1. 1.
[361] e.g. Plato, Gorg. 504 A; Protag. 313 D; Aristot. Pol. iii. 16. 8.
[362] Plato, Gorg. 452 B.
[363] The paidotribes is distinguished from the gumnastes as the schoolmaster from the crammer. The gumnastes coached pupils chiefly for the great games, while the paidotribes presided over physical training generally, especially of boys, but sometimes of epheboi. See the elaborate discussion in Grasberger, i. 263-268.
[364] Plato, Protag. 313 A.
[365] Ibid. 326 C.
[366] ἀποδυτήριον.
[367] See Thompson, Plato, Phaedr. 239 C., and Eur. Bacch. 456.
[368] Illustr. [Plate VI. A].
[369] Illustr. [Plates VI. A] and [VI. B].
[370] See especially the Panathenaic vases in the British Museum.
[371] e.g. Brit. Mus. E 288.
[372] Brit Mus. B 361, E 427, E 288.
[373] Illustr. [Plate VIII.]
[374] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4.
[375] Aristoph. Clouds, 973.
[376] Anthol. Palat. xiii. 222.
[377] Herod, vi. 127-129.
[378] Athen. 629 B.
[379] Xen. Banquet, ii. 19.
[380] Plato, Laws, 830 C.
[381] Philostratus, On Gymnastics, 55.
[382] Galen, De sanit. tuend. ii. 8.
[383] Grasberger, i. 154.
[384] Described at length, Grasberger, i. 84-98.
[385] Aristoph. Knights, 1238.
[386] See Illustr. [Plate VI. A] for a wrestling lesson. Lucian, Ass. 8-11.
[387] Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Grenfell and Hunt, Part III. No. 466 (1903). The papyrus is of the second century.
[388] Anthol. Palat. xii. 206.
[389] Isok. Antid. 184.
[390] See Illustr. [Plate VI. B] for a pankration lesson.
[400] Plut. Alkib. ii. 3.
[401] See Illustr. [Plate VII.]
[402] See Illustr. [Plate V. B].
[403] Illustr. [Plate V. A].
[404] Illustr. [Plate V. B].
[405] Athen. 584 C, referring to about 320 B.C.
[406] Aristoph. Peace, 357.
[407] Zeno in Athen. 561 C.
[408] Athen. 609 D.
[409] ἀποδυτήριον. See Plato, Charmides, 153 ff.
[410] κατάστεγος δρόμος. Plato, Euthud. 273 A.
[411] Theodoros (Plato, Theait.).
[412] This was often done outside (Plato, Theait. 144 C). The oil-room (ἐλαιοθέσιον) of Vitruvius may be a later invention. This preliminary anointing was called ξηραλοιφεῖν. After the baths they rubbed themselves with a mixture of oil and water; this was χυτλοῦσθαι.
[413] See Xen. Banquet, 1. 7.
[414] Aristoph. Knights, 492.
[415] Philostratus, On Gymnastics, 56. It was usual to be dusted before wrestling.
[416] Xen. Banquet.
[417] For a good bathing scene, see Brit. Mus. Vase E 83. Also E 32.
[418] Philostratus, On Gymnastics, 57.
[419] Plato, Laws, 830 C.
[420] Particular Sophists attached themselves to particular gymnasia and palaistrai which they came to regard as their schools. Mikkos has already occupied the newly-built palaistra in the Lusis, 204 A. Cp. Plato’s position at the Akademeia and Aristotle’s at the Lukeion.
[421] αὐλή (Plato, Lusis, 206 E).
[422] κονίστρα.
[423] Plato, Laws, 830 B.
[424] For the excitement of the spectators and their shouts of encouragement see Isok. Euag. 32.
[425] Some gymnasia provided a large “Room of the Epheboi.” So in Vitruvius’ model.
[426] Athen. 495-6.
[427] Plato, Polit. 294 D, E.
[428] But by the end of the fourth century the teacher of arms becomes an important individual in the training of the epheboi.
[429] Plato, Euthud. 273 A.
[430] Xen. Econ. iii. 13.
[431] Xen. Econ. xi. 18; Banquet, i. 7, ix. 1.
[432] σφαιριστήριον.
[433] Athen. 20 f.
[434] Brit. Mus. E 83, for a picture of this in use.
[435] χυτλοῦσθαι.
[436] Athen. 566 e.
[437] Hunting with Hounds, passim. So Plato in the Laws, with reservations.
[438] Plato, Laws, 795 E.
[439] Aristoph. Frogs, 729.
[440] Lucian, On Dancing, 15.
[441] Athen. 20 d.
[442] Plato, Rep. 396 A, B.
[443] Antiphon, The Choreutes, 11.
[444] Xen. Banquet, ii. 17.
[445] Lakonian and Attic (Herod. vi. 129); Persian (Xen. Anab. vi. 1. 10); Troizenìan Epizephurian Lokrian, Cretan, Ionian, Mantinean in Lucian, On Dancing, 22.
[446] Not necessarily nude, for γυμνός only represents the absence of the armour used in the War-dance.
[447] Plato, Laws, 815 A.
[448] Lucian, On Dancing, 8.
[449] Lucian, On Dancing, 8.
[450] The dance known as γυμνοπαιδική is described in Athen. 631 b, as including representations of wrestling. In 678 b, c, the festival of the Γυμνοπαιδίαι, and the dances in it are referred to, but no mention is there made of wrestling.
[451] Athen. 630 d.
[452] This sketch is drawn chiefly from Antiphon, The Choreutes.
[453] Demos. ag. Midias, 533.
[454] Rivals sometimes tried to interrupt the lessons or bribe the teacher (Demos. Mid. 535).
[455] The situation of Antiphon’s speech.
[456] Demos. Mid. 520.
[457] Xen. Hiero, ix. 4.
[458] Böckh, 212.
[459] Ibid. 221.
[460] Xen. Hipparch. i. 11.
[461] Illustr. [Plate IX.]
[462] Brit. Mus. E 485.
[463] Mnesimachos, Hippotrophos (Athen. 402 f).
[464] See Illustr. [Plates X. A], [X. B] and the [Frontispiece] for scenes in a riding-school.
[465] The mark was a suspended shield, Brit. Mus. Prize-Amphora 7, Room IV.
[466] A rough summary of Xen. Hipparch. i. 15-26.
[467] Xen. Hipparch. iii. 6.
[468] Xen. Hipparch. iii. 14.
[469] Petit, Leg. Att. ii. 4.
[470] Plato, Laws, 689 D.
[471] Herod. viii. 89.
[472] e.g. Thuc. iv. 25.
[473] Diogenes Laert. ii. 8. 73.
[474] Thuc. iv. 26.
[475] Plato, Rep. 529 C; Phaedr. 264 A.
[476] Plato, Euthud. 277 D.
[477] Plato, Rep. 453 D.
[478] Galen, de loc. aff. iv. 8. See Grasberger, i. 151.
[479] Aristoph. Wasps, 1095.
[480] Ibid. 1119.
[481] Xen. Hellen. i. 6. 24.
[482] Aristoph. Knights, 600.
[483] Aristoph. Frogs, 200-271, describes a rowing lesson.
[484] Lus. 21. 5.
[485] Thuc. vi. 32.
[486] Plut. Themist. 32.
[487] Lusias, speech 21. 1-2.
[488] Andok. 17. 20.
[489] [Xen.] Constit. of Athen. i. 13.
[490] So
γυμνασιαρχεῖν λαμπάδι.—Isaios, Philoktemon, 62. 60.
γυμνασιαρχεῖσθαι εὐ ταῖς λαμπάσιν.—Xen. Revenues, 4. 52.
λάμπάδι νικήσας γυμνασιαρχῶν.—Böckh, 257.
[491] Dem. ag. Lakritos, 940; Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. 57.
[492] Böckh, 243.
[493] Aesch. Tim. 12.
[494] Isaios, Menekles, § 42. See Wyse’s edition on the passage.