§ 19. There is figured on many vases, often in brilliant colors, the interior of the palæstra. It is denoted by the bearded Hermes—a rude bust of the patron god. A middle-aged man in a short mantle, or chlamys, with a rod or wand in his hand, is watching and directing the exercises of the boys, generally a wrestling-match. We know also, from the pentathlon being once introduced at Olympia for boys, that its five exercises were those in which they were usually trained—leaping, running, throwing the discus, the spear, and wrestling. For elder boys, boxing and the pancratium were doubtless added, if they meant to train for public competitions, but ordinary gentlemen’s sons would never undergo this special training and its hardships. Indeed, the Spartans strictly discountenanced such sports, both as likely to disfigure, and as sure to produce quarrels and ill-will. The lighter exercises were intended to make the frame hardy and the movements graceful, and were introduced by a thorough rubbing of the skin with olive oil, which, after the training, was scraped off with a special instrument, the στλεγγίς, as may be seen in the splendid Vatican statue of the athlete scraping his arm, the so-called Apoxyomenos, referred to as an original of Lysippus. In luxurious days they also took a bath, but this was hardly the case with ordinary boys—indeed, the water supply of Greek towns was probably scanty enough, and the nation not given to much washing.
§ 20. There remain little or no details as to the exact rules of training practised in the ordinary palæstras, but we may fairly assume them to have been the same in kind (though milder in degree) as those approved for formal athletes. If we judge from these, we will not form a high idea of Greek training. Pausanias informs us that they trained on dry cheese, which is not surprising, as they were (like most southerns) not a very carnivorous people. But when a known athlete (Dromeus[13]) discovered that meat diet was the best, they seem to have followed up the discovery by inferring that the more of a good thing the better; and so athletes were required to eat very large quantities of meat, owing to which they were lazy and sleepy when not engaged in active work.[14] We need not suppose that the diet of ordinary boys was in any way interfered with, but this particular case shows the crude notions which prevailed, and the trainer came more and more to assume the part of a dietetic doctor, as is stated by Plato.
§ 21. So much as to the conditions of good training; as to the performance, there are points of no less significance. All the learned Germans who write on these subjects notice that the Olympic races were carried out on soft sand, not on hard and springy ground, so that really good pace cannot have been a real object to Greek runners.[15] But, what is worse, they praise their zeal and energy in starting (as we see on vases) with wild swinging of their arms, in spread-eagle fashion, and encouraging themselves with loud shouts.[16] This style of running may seem very fine to a professor in his study, but will only excite ridicule among those who have ever made the least practical essay, or seen any competitions. But possibly the Greeks were not so uniformly silly in this respect as they are now represented by commentators, for there is preserved on the Acropolis at Athens one little-known vase on which a running figure has the elbows held tightly back in the proper way. We may also have grave suspicions about Greek boxing, from the facts that they weighted the hand heavily with loaded gloves, and that boxers are described as men with their ears, and not with their noses, crushed. We cannot but suspect them of swinging round, and not striking straight from the shoulder. This is further proved by the use of protecting ear-caps (ἀμφωτίδες) in boxing, a thing which no modern boxer would dream of doing.
§ 22. All these hints taken together make us reasonably suspect that, as athletics, the training of the pædotribes was not what we should admire. But, on the other hand, the picturesque and enthusiastic descriptions of beautiful and well-trained Greek boys, coupled with the ideal figures which remain to us in Greek sculpture, prove beyond any doubt that they knew perfectly what a beautiful manly form was, and by what training it could be produced. Let us, however, not exaggerate the matter. Very few boys really equalled the ideal types of the sculptor; and if we make allowance for this, we may conclude that the finest English public-school boy is not inferior to the best Greek types in real life.[17] Perhaps some advantage may have resulted from the greater freedom of limb obtained by naked training and rubbing with oil; but the advantage of this over a modern flannel suit or tight athlete’s dress is very small. Nevertheless, the English schoolboy is physically so superior to the schoolboys of other European nations that we may count him, with the Greek boy, as almost a distinct animal.
What surprises us is that by regular training in the simplest exercises, such as running, leaping, wrestling, and throwing the discus or dart, such splendid results were ever attained. Or shall we say that it was not the wrestling but the dancing side of Greek training which was of chief importance? We may dismiss with a word the fabulous stories of athletic feats at Olympia, where a certain Chionis, a Spartan of early date (Ol. 28–31, cir. 660 B.C.), was said to have leaped fifty-two feet, and afterwards Phayllus of Croton fifty-five feet. We may infer, too, from the use of weights (ἁλτῆρες), that the jump was a standing one. Happily these assertions are only made by late grammarians, and though some German critics are inclined to extend their adoration of Greek training to this point, it will rather, with practical readers, tend to discredit other statements made by the same authority. As we do not hear of a running jump, so we do not hear of a high jump either, at least in public games. Both may have been practised in the palæstra. The distance for a sprint-race for men was two hundred yards, and somewhat shorter for boys. Their longest race at Olympia was twenty-four stadia (4800 yards, 2⅔ miles), which the professors, without any knowledge of the time in which it was done, think more wonderful than the fifty-five-feet jump, but which is equalled in many English sports of the present day.
§ 23. Apart from the doubts here raised as to the perfection of Greek training, let us revert, in conclusion, to the absence among elder boys of those out-of-door games, like cricket, which are so valuable for developing mental, together with physical, qualities. There is one feature in these games which the Greeks seem to have missed altogether, and which appears to be ignored in most German books on the reform of physical education in schools. It is that forming of clubs and teams of boys, in which they choose their own leaders, and get accustomed to self-government and a submission to the superior will of equals, or the decision of public opinion among themselves. Plato saw long ago that the proper and peculiar intention of boys’ sports was more mental than bodily improvement. But he confined himself to that part of the question which advocates the cultivation of spirit in boys as better than that which cultivates strength only. This is perfectly true, and no game is worthy the name in which spirit and intelligence cannot defeat brute strength. But there is little trace, save at Sparta, of any free constitution in boys’ education, in which they manage their own affairs, fight out their own quarrels, and praise or censure according to a public opinion of their own. No Greek educator seems to have had an inkling of this, and the foreign theorists who have discussed educational reforms on the Greek models seem equally unaware of its importance. Yet here, if anywhere, is the secret of that independence of character and self-reliance which is the backbone of the English constitution and the national liberty. The Greeks were like the French and the Germans, who always imagine that the games and sports will not prosper or be properly conducted without the supervision of a Turnlehrer, or overseer; and they give great exhortations to this man to sympathize with the boys and stimulate them. In England the main duty of such people is to keep out of the way and let the boys manage their own affairs. The results of the opposed systems will strike any one who compares, on the one hand, the neat and well-regulated French boys of a boarding-school, walking two-and-two, with gloves on and toes turned out, along a road, followed by a master; on the other, the playgrounds of any good English school during recreation time. If the zealous and learned reformers who write books on the subject in modern Europe would take the trouble to come and see this for themselves, it might modify both their encomia on Greek training and their suggestions for their own countries.
FOOTNOTES
[11] The exact relation of the ancient palæstra and the gymnasium has much exercised the critics. It seems plain that the former was a private establishment, and intended for boys; the latter more general, and resorted to by young men, not only amateurs and beginners, but also more accomplished athletes. Hence the terms are often confused. In the “Tract on the Athenian State,” however, the author mentions palæstras as built by the demos for its public use; and this tract, whoever may be its author, does not date later than 415 B.C.
[12] Herodotus, indeed (viii. 89), speaks of the generality of Greek sailors as able to swim.
[13] Paus. vi. 7, 9.