Than what Phæacia’s sons discharged in air;
Fierce from his arm the enormous load he flings,
Sonorous through the shaded air it sings;
Couched to the earth, tempestuous as it flies,
The crowd gaze upwards while it cleaves the skies.
Beyond all marks, with many a giddy round,
Down rushing it upturns a hill of ground.”
The disk[[667]] in later times varied greatly both in shape, size, and materials. Generally it would seem to have been a cycloid, swelling in the middle and growing thin towards the edges. Sometimes it was perforated in the centre and hurled forward by a thong, and on other occasions would appear to have approached the spherical form, when it was denominated solos.[[668]]
Other of these exercises were shooting with the bow at wisps of straw stuck upon a pole,[[669]] and darting the javelin, sometimes with the naked hand and sometimes with a thong wound about the centre of the weapon. In the stadium at Olympia, the area within which the pentathli leaped, pitched the quoit, and hurled the javelin, appears to have been marked out by two parallel trenches: but if these existed likewise in the gymnasia, they must have been extremely shallow, as we find in Antiphon[[670]] a boy meeting with his death by inconsiderately running across the area while the youths were engaged in this exercise. Instead of throwing for the furthest, they would seem, from the expressions of the orator, to have aimed at a mark.
Wrestling[[671]] consisted of two kinds, the first, called Orthopale, was that style, still commonly in use, in which the antagonists, throwing their arms about each other’s body, endeavoured to bring him to the ground. In the other, called Anaclinopale, the wrestler who distrusted his own strength but had confidence in his courage and powers of endurance, voluntarily flung himself upon the ground, bringing his adversary along with him, and then by pinching, scratching, biting, and every other species of annoyance, sought to compel him to yield.