Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit,
Abstinuit venere et vino.
Who in th' Olympic race the prize would gain,
Has borne from early youth fatigue and pain,
Excess of heat and cold has often try'd,
Love's softness banish'd, and the glass deny'd.
St. Paul, by a comparison drawn from the Athletæ, exhorts the Corinthians, near whose city the Isthmian games were celebrated, to a sober and penitent life. “Those who strive,” says he, “for the mastery, are temperate in all things: Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.” Tertullian uses the same thought to encourage the martyrs.[123] He makes a comparison from what the hopes of victory made the Athletæ endure. He repeats the severe and painful exercises they were obliged to undergo; the continual denial and constraint, in which they passed the best years of their lives; and the voluntary privation which they imposed upon themselves, of all that was most pleasing and grateful to their passions. It is true, the Athletæ did not always observe so severe a regimen, but at length substituted in its stead a voracity and indolence extremely remote from it.
The Athletæ, before their exercises,[124] were rubbed with oils and ointments to make their bodies more supple and vigorous. At first they made use of a belt, with an apron or scarf fastened to it, for their more decent appearance in the combats; but one of the combatants happening to lose the victory by this covering's falling off, that accident was the occasion of sacrificing modesty to convenience, and retrenching the apron for the future. The Athletæ were naked only in some exercises, as wrestling, boxing, the pancratium, and the foot-race. They practised a kind of novitiate in the Gymnasia for ten months, to accomplish themselves in the several exercises by assiduous application; and this they did in the presence of such, as curiosity or idleness conducted to look on. But when the celebration of the Olympic games drew nigh, the Athletæ who were to appear in them were kept to double exercise.
Before they were admitted to combat, other proofs were required; as to birth, none but Greeks were to be received. It was also necessary, that their manners should be unexceptionable, and their condition free. No foreigner was admitted to combat in the Olympic games; and when Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedon, presented himself to dispute the prize, his competitors, without any regard to the royal dignity, opposed his reception as a Macedonian, and consequently a barbarian and a stranger; nor could the judges be prevailed upon to admit him, till he had proved in due form his family originally descended from the Argives.