Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

Secondly, if the art of poetry soon devoted itself to the higher objects of tragedy, and created for itself the conflict which it celebrated, the art of sculpture became so closely connected with athletics as to give them an æsthetic importance of the highest kind all through Greek history. The ancient [pg 322]habit of setting up ideal statues of victors, which were made special likenesses if the subject was specially distinguished, supplied the Greeks with a series of historical monuments and a series of physical types not elsewhere to be matched, and thus perhaps the most interesting part of Pausanias’s invaluable guide-book to Greece is his collection of notes (lib. vi., 1–20) on various statues set up in this way at Olympia, of which he mentions about two hundred, though he only professes to make a selection, and though several of the finest had already been carried off by Roman emperors.

These things kept alive the athletic meetings in Greece, and even preserved for them some celebrity. The sacred truce proclaimed during the national games was of inestimable convenience in times of long and bitter hostilities, and doubtless enabled friends to meet who had else been separated for life.[122] But the Panathenaic festivals were better exponents of fourth century taste in Greece. There music and the drama predominated. Professional displays became equally admired as a pastime and despised as a profession; and I have no doubt that the athlete who spent his life going about from one contest to another in search of gymnastic triumphs [pg 323]was held in like contempt by Brasidas and by Cleon, by Xenophon and by Agesilaus.

In the days of Solon things had been very different. He appointed a reward of 500 drachmas, then a very large sum, for victors at Olympia, 100 for those at the Isthmus, and for the others in proportion. Pindar sings as if, to the aristocrats of Ægina, or the tyrants of Sicily, no higher earthly prizes were attainable. But we must not transfer these evidences—the habit or the echo of the sixth century B. C.—to the days of political and educated Greece, when public opinion altered very considerably on the advantage and value of physical competition. This being once understood, I will proceed to a short analysis of the sports, and will attempt to criticise the methods adopted by the old Greeks to obtain the highest physical condition, the nature of the competitions they established, and the results which they appear to have attained.

The Greeks of Europe seem always to have been aware that physical exercise was of the greatest importance for health, and consequently for mental vigor, and the earliest notices we have of education include careful bodily training. Apart from the games of children, which were much the same as ours, there was not only orchestic or rhythmical dancing in graceful figures, in which girls took part, and which corresponded to what are now vulgarly called callisthenics, but also gymnastics, in which boys were [pg 324]trained to those exercises which they afterward practised as men. In addition to the palæstras, which were kept for the benefit of boys as a matter of private speculation in Athens, and probably in other towns, regular gymnasia were established by the civic authorities, and put under strict supervision as state institutions to prevent either idleness or immorality.[123] In these gymnasia, where young men came in the afternoon, stripped, oiled themselves, and then got a coat of dust or fine sand over the skin, running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, and throwing with the dart were commonly practised.

This sort of physical training I conceive to have grown up with the growth of towns, and with the abandonment of hunting and marauding, owing to the increase of culture. Among the aristocrats of epical days, as well as among the Spartans, who lived a village life, surrounded by forest and mountain, I presume field sports must have been quite the leading amusement; nor ought competitions in a gymnasium to be compared for one moment to this far higher and more varied recreation. The contrast still subsists among us, and our fox-hunting, salmon-fishing, grouse-shooting country gentleman has the same inestimable advantage over the city [pg 325]athlete, whose special training for a particular event has a necessary tendency to lower him into a professional. There is even a danger of some fine exercises, which seemed common ground for both, such as boating and cricket, being vulgarized by the invasion of this professional spirit, which implies such attention to the body as to exclude higher pursuits, and which rewards by special victories, and by public applause rather than by the intrinsic pleasure of sport for its own sake. Thus the Spartans not only objected to boxing and the pankration, in which the defeated competitor might have to ask for mercy; they even for general purposes preferred field-sports, for which they had ample opportunities, to any special competitions in the strength of particular muscles. But in such places as Athens and its neighborhood, where close cultivation had caused all wild country and all game to disappear, it was necessary to supply the place of country sport by the training of the gymnasium. This sort of exercise naturally led to contests, so that for our purpose we need not separate gymnastic and agonistic, but may use the details preserved about the latter to tell us how the Greeks practised the former.

There is no doubt that the pursuit of high muscular condition was early associated with that of health, and that hygiene and physical training were soon discovered to be closely allied. Thus Herodicus, a trainer, who was also an invalid, was said to [pg 326]have discovered from his own case the method of treating disease by careful diet and regimen, and to have thus contributed to the advancement of Greek medicine. Pausanias also mentions (vi. 3, 9) the case of a certain Hysmon, an Elean, who, when a boy, had rheumatism in his limbs, and on this account practised for the pentathlon, that he might become a healthy and sound man. His training made him not only sound, but a celebrated victor.

It would be very interesting to know in detail what rules the Greeks prescribed for this purpose. Pausanias tells us (vi. 7, 9) that a certain Dromeus, who won ten victories in long races at various games (about Ol. 74, 485 B. C.), was the first who thought of eating meat in his training, for that up to that time the diet of athletes had been cheese from wicker baskets (ἐκ τῶν ταλάρων).[124] It must be remembered that meat diet was not common among the Greeks, who, like most southern people, lived rather upon fish, fruit, and vegetables, so that the meat dinners of Bœotia were censured as heavy and rather disgusting. However, the discovery of [pg 327]Dromeus was adopted by Greek athletes ever after, and we hear of their compulsory meals of large quantities of meat, and their consequent sleepiness and sluggishness in ordinary life, in such a way as to make us believe that the Greeks had missed the real secret of training, and actually thought that the more strong nutriment a man could take, the stronger he would become. The quantity eaten by athletes is universally spoken of as far exceeding the quantity eaten by ordinary men, not to speak of its heavier quality.

The suspicion that, in consequence, Greek athletic performances were not in speed greater than, if even equal to, our own, is however hard to verify, as we are without any information as to the time in which their running feats were performed. They had no watches, or nice measures of short moments of time, and always ran races merely to see who would win, not to see in how short a time a given distance could be done. Nevertheless, as the course was over soft sand, and as the vases picture them rushing along in spread-eagle fashion, with their arms like the sails of a windmill—in order to aid the motion of their bodies, as the Germans explain (after Philostratos)—nay, as we even hear of their having started shouting, if we can believe such a thing, their time performances in running must have been decidedly poor.[125]

In the Olympic games the running, which had originally been the only competition, always came first. The distance was once up the course, and seems to have been about 200 yards. After the year 720 B. C. (?) races of double the course, and long races of about 3000 yards were added;[126] races in armor were a later addition, and came at the end of the sports. It is remarkable that among all these varieties hurdle races were unknown, though the long jump was assigned a special place, and thought very important. We have several extraordinary anecdotes of endurance in running long journeys cited throughout Greek history, and even now the modern inhabitants are remarkable for this quality. I have seen a young man keep up with a horse ridden at a good pace across rough country for many miles, and have been told that the Greek postmen are quite wonderful for their speed and lasting. But this is compatible with very poor performances at prize meetings.

There were short races for boys at Olympia of half the course. Eighteen years was beyond the limit of age for competing, as a story in Pausanias implies, and a boy who won at the age of twelve was thought wonderfully young. The same authority tells us of a man who won the sprint race at four successive meetings, thus keeping up his pace for sixteen years—a remarkable case. There seems to have been no second prize in any of the historical games, a natural consequence of the abolition of material rewards.[127] There was, naturally, a good deal of chance in the course of the contest, and Pausanias evidently knew cases where the winner was not the best man. For example, the races were run in heats of four, and if there was an odd man over, the owner of the last lot drawn could sit down till the winners of the heats were declared, and then run against them without any previous fatigue. The limitation of each heat to four competitors arose, I fancy, from their not wearing colors (or even clothes), and so not being easily distinguishable. They were accordingly walked into the arena through an underground passage in the raised side of the stadium, and the name and country of each proclaimed in order by a herald. This practice is accurately [pg 330]copied in the present Olympic games held at Athens every four years.