Fig. 70. R.-f. oinochoe. British Museum, E. 561.
When were the halteres first used as dumb-bells? We have no definite evidence, but I venture to suggest as probable that the practice began about the time of the Persian wars, when the Greeks first consciously realized the national importance of athletic training. The first signs of such a use of the halteres occur on the red-figured vases. It began, I conjecture, in connexion with the jump. We have seen how certain vase paintings suggest that the various movements of the jump and the swinging of the halteres were practised in classes and in rhythmical time. Take the swing of the halteres and make of it a separate exercise, and you have at once a familiar and valuable dumb-bell exercise. Not that this exercise was practised by the Greeks at this period consciously as a physical exercise; it was an exercise for jumpers, and practised for the sake of the jump. It was soon found that the swinging of halteres was useful for other exercises. In Fig. [66] we see to the left a youth swinging the halteres sideways, his head is turned towards his extended left arm, and his right arm is bent, the hand being level with the breast. The type occurs on several vases, sometimes the left, sometimes the right arm being extended, but the head is always turned towards the extended hand. Now, if we compare this type with the type of the javelin-thrower drawing back his javelin to throw, we shall find that the position of body, arms, legs, and head is identical in the two types. Does it not seem, then, that we have here a halter exercise suggested by javelin-throwing, perhaps invented by the javelin-thrower to develop the special muscles and practise the special positions required for the throw? Perhaps we may recognize an intermediate position of this swing on a red-figured oinochoe in the British Museum (Fig. [70]). In this sideways swing of the halteres we have another familiar exercise of the modern gymnasium. Such exercises intended originally for the jumper or javelin-thrower were subsequently adopted by trainers and medical men, and were incorporated by them in their systems of physical training. This conjectural history of the use of the halteres is confirmed by the fact that on later vases, when athletic scenes have given place to groups of idle epheboi, the halteres are still frequently seen hanging on the wall as the symbol of athletic training.
CHAPTER XV
THROWING THE DISKOS
It will be remembered that while frequent reference is made in the Homeric poems to throwing the diskos,[[562]] the weight thrown at the games of Patroclus was a lump of unwrought iron described as “solos.” The word diskos seems already to have acquired its special athletic meaning, but there is in Homer nothing distinctively athletic about “solos,” which probably meant originally a boulder, then a mass of iron. Later writers occasionally use “solos” as equivalent to diskos, and scholiasts and lexicographers are much exercised in distinguishing the two terms.[[563]] Their arbitrary and often contradictory distinctions still find a place in our dictionaries and commentaries. The diskos, they tell us, is flat, the solos round and ball-shaped; the diskos of stone, the solos of metal; the diskos has a hole in it and is thrown by means of a cord; the solos is solid. The first distinction is fairly accurate: the diskos is more or less flat, the solos is a mass which may be roundish. As to material, we know that the diskos was made in stone and in metal; the solos might also be stone or metal. As to the hole and cord, authorities differ: some assign them to the diskos, some to the solos. That they belonged to the solos is disproved by every passage in which the word is used; that they belonged to the diskos is still more conclusively disproved by the monuments. The origin of this blunder, which is ascribed to Eratosthenes, may perhaps be found in some popular game in which a round object is bowled along by means of a cord wound round it. A game of this sort called “ruzzola” is still played in parts of Italy on the roads, much to the danger of pedestrians.[[564]] It is played with round stones about a foot in diameter, or sometimes with cheeses, which are believed to be improved by the treatment. A more probable explanation of the mistake is that suggested to me by Mr. J. L. Myres, and already accepted in Chapter II., that the scholia to Iliad xxiii. have become dislocated, and that the hole and string belong not to the diskos or the solos, but to the word καλαῦροψ mentioned in the same passage. This word, usually interpreted as a shepherd’s staff, is explained by Mr. Myres as a kind of bolas, an implement formed by a string to which one or more perforated stones are attached, which is used in the present day in South America for catching cattle, and is still a plaything with boys in the country districts of Greece. Whatever the explanation, the hole and string have nothing to do either with diskos or with solos, nor is there any ground for the statement that the solos was an athletic implement distinct from the diskos. The popular translation of diskos as “quoit” is erroneous and most misleading.
Fig. 71. B.-f. amphora, in British Museum, B. 271.
The diskos of the fifth century was of bronze, but the Homeric diskos was of stone, and Pindar, therefore, makes the heroes Niceus and Castor hurl the older stone diskos rather than the bronze diskos of his own day.[[565]] The stone diskos is clearly represented on the black-figured vases of the sixth century as a thick white object (Fig. [71]), but the metal diskos must have been introduced before the close of this century. The British Museum possesses a bronze diskos found at Cephallenia which bears a sixth-century inscription (Fig. [73]).
Fig. 72. Bronze diskos found at Aegina. Berlin.
There exist in our museums various inscribed and carved marble diskoi.[[566]] But though in size and shape they differ little from the bronze specimens, they are too fragile and thin for actual use, and their inscriptions prove clearly that they are merely votive offerings. The practice of inscribing and dedicating diskoi was an ancient one, as we see from the diskos of Iphitos dedicated at Olympia. With regard to the metal diskos we are more fortunate. Of the fifteen specimens which we possess, four are probably votive offerings, but one of these certainly, possibly three, had also been used; the rest were certainly intended for use. Their weights and measurements can be best seen from the following table:—