It seems, then, that the Greeks certainly practised the running jump, and probably also the standing jump. In the pentathlon the somewhat doubtful evidence of the Panathenaic amphorae is in favour of a running jump.
The pentathlete in competition seems always to have used the halteres, but in the gymnasia jumping was also practised without weights. Sometimes the jumper is represented swinging his arms in the same way as he does with the halteres, but on several vases a totally distinct type occurs.[[557]] The jumper stands with both feet together, knees well bent, and arms stretched to the front. On one vase he seems to be standing on a low bema or platform, and opposite him is a short pillar, over which Krause supposes he is preparing to jump. The attitude is, however, quite as appropriate to the long jump as to the high jump, and on the interior of a red-figured kylix in Munich we see an almost identical figure, but with the pillar behind and not in front of him. The best example of this attitude is found on a red-figured pelike belonging to Dr. Hauser (Fig. [69]). Opposite to the jumper stands a robed trainer, stretching out his hand with a familiar gesture of command. There can be no doubt that these figures represent jumpers, but whether long jumpers or high jumpers we cannot say for certain. What is certain is that the jump is a standing jump.
Fig. 69. R.-f. pelike, belonging to Dr. Hauser. (J.H.S. xxiii. p. 272.)
The use of jumping weights adds considerably to the length of jump possible. The present record for the long jump without weights is 24 feet 11-3/4 inches, whereas with jumping weights and off a board 29 feet 7 inches has been cleared by a jumper, who unassisted could probably not have jumped more than 21 feet. But neither weights nor spring-board can explain the discrepancy between these figures and the feats ascribed to the Greeks. Till recently it was commonly stated, and perhaps believed, that the Greeks jumped 50 feet or more. Even if we make the fullest allowance for the fact that jumping was a national exercise of the Greeks, a single jump of 50 feet is a physical impossibility. Two explanations are possible. Either the Greek jump was not a single jump or the record is pure fiction.
It has been suggested that the Greek jump was a hop, step, and jump, in which case the jump of 55 feet ascribed to Phaÿllus would be a very fine performance, but not perhaps impossible. Unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence in support of this suggestion. For the suggestion that the jump was a triple jump some evidence may be found in the fact that a triple jump is known in the present day in parts of Northern Greece. By itself this fact can hardly be regarded as adequate proof, and there is, I believe, good reason for discrediting all the evidence on which the supposed record rests. The evidence consists in (1) the well-known epigram on Phaÿllus, which states that he jumped 55 feet;[[558]] (2) various statements of scholiasts and lexicographers of late and mostly uncertain date; (3) a passage in Africanus, who states that one Chionis, an Olympic victor in Ol. 29 (i.e. seven or eight hundred years before the time of Africanus), jumped 52 feet.
The 52 feet of Africanus is probably a simple mistake for 22 feet, which is the reading of the Armenian Latin text. The various statements of scholiasts and others can all be traced back to the epigram on Phaÿllus, and to an explanation given by some collector of proverbs on the use of the phrase “to jump beyond the pit,”[[559]] to denote something extraordinary or excessive, and they have no independent value apart from the epigram.
The Phaÿllus of the epigram is identified by the scholiasts with Phaÿllus of Croton, who in the first half of the fifth century won two victories in the pentathlon and one in the foot-race at Delphi, but won no victory at Olympia. He fought at Salamis in a ship equipped at his own expense. Aristophanes alludes to one Phaÿllus, probably the same man, as a noted runner. He had a statue at Delphi which Pausanias saw, and Alexander the Great is said to have honoured his memory by sending a portion of his Asiatic spoils to Croton. He was evidently a popular hero, just the sort of man about whose exploits all sorts of tales arise. But though Herodotus, Aristophanes, Plutarch, and Pausanias all mention him, they know nothing of the epigram or of the jump. Moreover, according to one statement the epigram was inscribed on the basis of his statue. Parts of this basis and of the inscription have been recently found at Delphi, but, needless to say, there is no trace of the epigram. When the epigram was written we cannot say. Certainly it is not a contemporary commemorative epigram. We meet with it first in Zenobius, a collector of proverbs who lived in the time of Hadrian, and the artificiality of its style is characteristic of the epigrams of this period. But whatever its date it can hardly be regarded as serious evidence. The sporting story is notorious, and the sporting epigram is even less trustworthy than the sporting story. The pages of the Anthology abound in epigrams on famous athletes such as Milo and Ladas, some of them no less incredible. Milo, we are told in one epigram, picked up a four-year-old heifer at Olympia, and after carrying it round the Altis in triumph, killed it and ate it all in a single day. Nobody has yet elaborated a theory to account for this extraordinary gastronomic feat, and yet it rests upon just as good evidence as Phaÿllus’ jump. The mere fact that the numbers five and ten were used by the Greeks proverbially, just as we use the terms “half a dozen” or “a dozen,” sufficiently explains why an epigrammatist wishing to describe a prodigious jump should select such a number as fifty-five.
In Roman times the halteres were used as dumb-bells. The details of such exercises preserved in medical writings prove that they were very similar to those in use at the present day.[[560]] Antyllus describes three kinds of this “halter-throwing” (ἁλτηροβολία). The first consists in bending and straightening the arms, an exercise which strengthens the arms and shoulders. In the other two exercises the arms are extended and take little part in the movement, which consists in lunging with the arms advanced as in boxing, or in alternately bending and straightening the trunk. The former strengthens the legs chiefly, the latter the back. Galen adds a variety of the latter exercise for strengthening the side muscles of the body. The performer places the halteres 6 feet apart, and standing between them picks up first the left-hand halter with his right hand, next the right-hand halter with his left, and then replaces them, repeating the movement. The prominence given to exercises for developing the important muscles of the trunk is interesting, because the careful representation of these muscles in Greek sculpture and on vases shows that they were developed to a marked degree by the athletic exercises of the Greeks. Wrestling, jumping, and throwing the diskos all helped to develop these muscles. The absence of light clothing round the waist contributed to the same result, and, above all, the fact that the Greek stood and walked, but seldom sat. In the present day these muscles are the worst developed of all muscles in the ordinary man, a result due partly to the character of our games, partly to our clothing, chiefly to our habit of sitting, and sitting in a radically wrong position. It is to these causes that we may ascribe the general absence in the modern figure of the roll of flesh above the iliac crest which is so prominent in all ancient sculpture, and the difference in the form of the iliac line.[[561]]
