The torch-race was widely spread throughout Greek lands and its popularity was maintained till Roman times. At Athens there were torch-races at the Panathenaea, at the Epitaphia and the Thesea, and in the time of Socrates a torch-race on horseback was instituted at the festival of Bendis. The torch-race took place at night. There were two principal varieties of it—one a race between individuals, the other between teams. In the former the runners started from the altar of Prometheus in the Academy, and raced into the city, the one who arrived first with his torch lighted being proclaimed victor. The efforts of the runners to keep their torches alight as they ran along stooping like boys in an egg and spoon race caused endless amusement among the spectators, and as they passed through the narrow gateway into the city, the ribald dwellers in the potters’ quarter sped them on their way with loud resounding slaps.[[522]] The team-race is familiar to all from the famous simile in the Agamemnon. The members of the teams were posted at intervals along the way; the first runner handed it to the second as he reached him, and so on till it came to the last. The team that brought their torch still lighted to the finish first was declared the winner. The teams must have been originally representative of the tribes. In the first century B.C. we find teams mentioned from various palaestrae; thus victories are recorded of boys from the palaestra of Timeas, and of Antigenes, or from the Lyceum.[[523]] The training of the teams was a voluntary service (λειτουργία) performed by the Gymnasiarchoi, or by special officials, the Lampadarchoi, whose names are mentioned on inscriptions when their teams won. There were torch-races for boys and youths of various ages. Aristophanes speaks of torch-racing and hunting as the fashionable amusements of a smart youth.[[524]] At a later time the torch-race is mentioned in inscriptions as one of the duties expected from the epheboi, rather as a ceremonial duty than as an athletic exercise.[[525]] The religious character of the race was maintained in Roman times. An inscription from Scyros prescribes penalties for any one, whether slave or freeman, found guilty of unfair practices in the torch-races of the tribes. If a slave, he is to be scourged and his master fined; if a freeman or one of the runners, he is not only to be fined but considered a “sacrilegious person and accursed.”[[526]]

Little is known of the methods of training employed by Greek runners. The gymnasia at Olympia and Delphi were provided with running tracks corresponding in length to the actual stadia, and that at Olympia was provided with grooved starting sills. Thus the runners could practise the start, and, what was equally important, the turn, under the same conditions as obtained in competition. To gain endurance they ran in heavy sand. Aristotle mentions as an exercise practised in the palaestra running or rather waddling on the knees![[527]] At a later date we learn from Epictetus that the training for the long-distance runner was different from that of the sprinter in its regulations for diet, massage, and food; but he gives us no details.[[528]] Philostratus tells us that the long-distance runner instead of training over the whole course would run eight or ten stades only, a practice quite in accord with that of the present day.[[529]] In those degenerate days athletes had also recourse to quack medicines and charms. A concoction of equisetum was recommended as a cure for the stitch, and some runners for a similar purpose wore a girdle of horses’ teeth. Athletes have always been superstitious.[[530]]

CHAPTER XIV
THE JUMP AND HALTERES

Jumping is not a military exercise but an amusement of peace. It is useful, of course, at times for a soldier to be able to leap over any obstacle in his way. But the Homeric chieftain was not suitably dressed for such feats of agility, whether he went to war in Mycenaean style with his long-shadowing spear and towerlike shield reaching down to his feet, or like the later hoplite arrayed in panoply of bronze. For flight or pursuit he trusted in his chariot and horses. Hence jumping was no part of his training, and it is mentioned in Homer only as an accomplishment of the peaceful Phaeacian traders. Pindar, true to Homeric tradition, does not include it among the sports introduced by Heracles in the first Olympic games, and Plato has no use for it in the training of his soldier-citizens. In athletic festivals the jump was one of the events of the pentathlon, but never existed as an independent competition. Yet it must have been always a popular exercise and amusement, and its popularity during the sixth and fifth centuries is shown by the frequency with which it is depicted on vases. Pentathletes were sometimes represented with jumping weights in their hands, and the jump seems to have been regarded as the typical event of the pentathlon.[[531]] Perhaps it owed its importance to the part which the jumping weights played in physical training, at least in later times. They were used much in the same way as the modern dumb-bells, and many of the modern dumb-bell exercises were known to the Greeks and freely practised, especially in medical gymnastics.

The only form of jumping that had any place in athletic competitions was the long jump. The explanation of this is obvious. Greece was not a land of fences or hedges, and the only natural obstacles which it afforded were streams and ditches. There is no ground for the statement frequently made that the Greeks practised also the high jump, and the deep jump, much less that they practised the pole jump. They certainly used a spear or a pole in vaulting on horseback (Fig. [174]), but the so-called jumping poles are now universally recognized as either javelins or measuring rods. A certain number of vase paintings may possibly represent the high jump, but they may just as well represent a standing long jump; none represent jumping from a height, or the deep jump.

It would be rash to say that such exercises were never practised; but certainly they were unknown in athletic competitions. In the daily life of the palaestra and gymnasium there must have been countless exercises and feats practised, of which no record survives. Lucian describes the athletes in the gymnasium jumping up and down like runners, but without moving from their places, and kicking the air.[[532]] The exercise is that known in the modern gymnasium as “knees up,” and is apparently the same as that described by Seneca as “the fuller’s jump,”[[533]] from its resemblance to the action of a fuller jumping up and down on the clothes in his tub. The Spartan Lampito in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes ascribes her complexion and figure to her athletic training, and mentions an exercise, not unknown in foreign gymnasia and dancing-schools, of jumping up and down and kicking the buttocks with alternate feet.[[534]] Another Spartan lady claims to have made a record by repeating this feat a thousand times. But these tricks belong rather to the sphere of dancing than to that of athletics, though we must remember that dancing was an important part of Greek physical training. Its value consisted chiefly in graceful and rhythmic movement; but its practice also involved a variety of jumps, hops, flings, and kicks. Hopping (ἀσκωλιασμός)[[535]] was a favourite amusement, but can hardly claim to be classed under athletics, unless we suppose that the Greek jump was a hop, skip, and jump.[[536]] At the Dionysia there was a popular competition in which the competitors had to hop on to a greased wine-skin full of wine. He who succeeded in hopping on to it and staying there took it as a prize, while the falls of the unsuccessful were a source of boundless amusement to the populace. Mr. Henry Balfour informs me that the game still exists in Northern Greece.

The Greeks jumped into a pit (σκάμμα)[[537]] the ground of which had been carefully dug up and levelled. The same term skamma is also used of the wrestling ring. The picks (σκαπάναι) used for loosening the ground are frequently represented on athletic scenes on the vases, and the exercise of digging with them was regarded as a valuable means of training, especially for wrestlers and boxers.[[538]] The ground of the skamma was soft, so as to take the impress of the jumper’s feet. No jump was allowed to be measured unless the impress of the feet was regular, says Philostratus, meaning thereby that if the jumper fell or stumbled or landed with one foot in advance of the other, the jump was not counted.[[539]] In all athletics the Greeks attached great importance to style. If we are to believe the legends recorded by scholiasts and lexicographers about Phaÿllus, the length of the skamma was 50 feet. One version of this story is that Phaÿllus having jumped 5 feet beyond the skamma, on to the hard ground, broke his leg—a contingency by no means unlikely if such a jump were possible.[[540]]

The take-off (βατήρ) was at one end of the skamma. It is marked in vase paintings, sometimes by spears or poles placed in the ground, sometimes by pillars similar to those that mark the start of the running track.[[541]] Possibly the stone starting-lines of the stadium may have served as the bater. The word merely denotes a stepping-place or threshold. We know that the bater must have been hard and firm,[[542]] but whether it was made of wood or stone we cannot say. There is no evidence for the use of any kind of spring-board in athletics.[[543]]

The jumps were measured by rods (κανόνες),[[544]] and the individual jumps were marked either by pegs or by lines drawn in the sand. On a vase in the British Museum (Fig. [67]) three vertical lines are drawn beneath the figure of a jumper in mid-air, and three similar lines occur under a jumper depicted on an Etruscan carnelian. They mark the jumps of previous competitors, but may equally well be interpreted as pegs or as lines in the sand. Certainly they are not, as has been sometimes suggested, spikes or arrows set there to give zest and danger to the sport. The acrobat might turn somersaults over swords and spikes, but the acrobat was a slave-girl usually, not a free citizen, and the Greeks fully appreciated the difference between acrobatics and athletics.