Every flower of joyance blooms nor withers there.[344]
And in this Paradise how are the shades of the departed occupying themselves? “Some take their joy in horses, some in gymnasia, some in draughts.”[345] That is the highest bliss conceivable, in Pindar’s opinion.
But Euripides did not agree with him. He denounces the athletic life with much vigour.[346] “Of countless ills in Hellas, the race of athletes is quite the worst.… They are slaves of their jaw and worshippers of their belly.… In youth they go about in splendour, the admiration of their city, but when bitter old age comes upon them, they are cast aside like worn-out coats. I blame the custom of the Hellenes, who gather together to watch these men, honouring a useless pleasure.[347] Who ever helped his fatherland by winning a crown for wrestling, or speed of foot, or flinging the quoit, or giving a good blow on the jaw? Will they fight the foe with quoits, or smite their fists through shields? Garlands should be kept for the wise and good, and for him who best rules the city by his temperance and justice, or by his words drives away evil deeds, preventing strife and sedition.”
In return for this, the athlete-loving populace, finding their voice in the popular poet Aristophanes, denounced Euripides and his Sophist friends for emptying the gymnasia and making the boys desire only a good tongue, instead of a sound body, turning them into pale-faced, indoor pedants, fit for nothing but jabbering nonsense. The attitude of the poet in the Clouds and Frogs is just that of an average schoolboy discussing a student.
Plato has already been quoted as an authority against the athlete of his day. In the Laws he rejects every kind of gymnastics which is not strictly conducive to military efficiency, and, like the Spartans, condemns the pankration and boxing. Races in the ideal State are to be run in full armour, and the javelin and spear are to replace the quoit. It is exactly the position of some moderns, who would substitute shooting and field-days for cricket and football. The case against the athletes may be closed with Aristotle’s testimony: he also condemns the specialisation of the trained professional.[348]
But these denunciations of athletes do not apply so much to Athens as to the other States of Hellas. The Athenian Agora was full of the statues of generals and patriots, not, as was the usual custom, of athletes.[349] The author of the treatise on the Athenian constitution,[350] writing in the early days of the Peloponnesian War, notices that the democracy had driven gymnastics out of fashion.[351] He writes as one of the aristocrats who, like Pindar and his princely friends, cared mainly for the body and the outward beauties of life: the democracy was vulgar, for it could not spend all its time in bodily exercises and musical banquets. No doubt at that period in Athens, as can be seen in Aristophanes, there was a reaction in favour of intellectual pursuits against the exclusive athleticism of the preceding age: the time of the citizens in a great democracy was also largely monopolised by State duties, whether in the Assembly or in the Law Courts or in fighting by sea or land. But athletics still remained quite sufficiently popular even at Athens, and athletic “shop” remained one of the chief topics of conversation at a dinner-party.[352]
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Gymnastic exercises centred round two sorts of buildings which are often confused, the “gymnasium” and the “palaistra.” The former may be said to correspond to the whole series of fields and buildings intended for games, which surround a modern public school, including football and cricket grounds, running track and jumping pit, fives courts, and so forth. The “palaistra” often resembled little more than the playground of a village school: it only demanded a sandy floor, and sufficient privacy to protect the exercises from intrusion: such buildings could be run up at private expense in the smallest villages, and were often attached to private houses. A “gymnasium,” on the other hand, must have cost a vast sum to erect: even a great capital like Athens only possessed three in the fourth century; small towns must have been unable to afford them at all. But the gymnasia were public buildings, open to all; they were always full of citizens of all ages, practising or watching others practise; they were a fashionable place of resort, where Sophists lectured in the big halls, and philosophers taught in the shady gardens. For the trainer who wished to instruct his class of boys they were wholly unsuitable; besides, any casual stranger could stand by and get a lesson for nothing. Consequently, even at Athens, the boys were taught in palaistrai which could be closed to the public:[353] in the towns and villages there was no other place.
It is quite true that boys went to the gymnasia. Aristophanes[354] talks of “a nice little boy on his way home from the gymnasium.” In Antiphon,[355] some older boys are practising the javelin in a gymnasium; a younger boy, who had been standing among the spectators, being called by his paidotribes, runs across the course and is killed. If the reading “paidotribes,” for which K. F. Hermann would substitute “paidagogos,” is correct, we find a paidotribes and his class of younger boys present in a gymnasium, probably to practise javelin-throwing, which must have demanded a larger space than the palaistra often afforded. The elder boys are probably not under his tuition, for they are using real javelins, not the unpointed shafts which were employed at school. Paidotribai with small palaistrai may often have taken their classes to the free public gymnasia to practise the diskos, the javelin, and running, which required a large space. But none the less the palaistra was the usual scene of the teaching of boys.[356] It must not, however, be supposed that a palaistra was always reserved for boys. The “many palaistrai,” which the democracy built for itself,[357] were doubtless as much public buildings, open to all ages, as the Akademeia or Lukeion. The palaistrai owned or hired by private teachers must have been open to adults when the boys were not present; that which is the scene of the Lusis was apparently attended by two classes, one of boys and the other of youths, who only met there on festival days. In the palaistra of Taureas, however, mentioned in the Charmides, the different classes seem all to meet in the undressing-room; but on that occasion the building may have been open for general practice, not for teaching. Some such arrangement into classes must have taken place in the village palaistrai.[358] The master who taught the boys in the palaistra was called the paidotribes, “boy-rubber”: he must have owed his name to the great part which rubbing, whether with oil or with various sorts of dust, played in athletics.[359] He was expected to be scientific. He had to know what exercises would suit what constitutions:[360] he is often coupled with the doctor.[361] His object was to prevent, the doctor’s to cure, diseases. He even prescribed diet. Besides health, he was expected to aim at beauty and strength.[362] His training, in Plato’s opinion, also served to produce firmness of character and strength of will: he must therefore know how much training to administer to each boy, for too much would cause excess of these qualities and lead to savage brutality, and too little would result in effeminacy.[363]
Since so much science was demanded of the paidotribes, parents exercised much forethought in choosing a gymnastic school for their boys:[364] they would “call upon their friends and relations to give advice, and deliberate for many days,” in order to find a trainer whose instructions would “make their son’s body a useful servant to his mind, not likely by its bad condition to compel him to shirk his duty in war or elsewhere.”[365] This at Athens, no doubt: in the smaller towns and villages there could have been little choice: parents must have taken what they could get.