IN THE PALAISTRA: BOY PUTTING ON BOXING-THONG, A PANKRATION LESSON, AND A PAIDOTRIBES
Gerhard’s Auserlesene Vasenbilder, cclxxi. Fig. 1.
What did the boys learn at the palaistra in the meantime? Deportment and easy exercises. A passage in Aristophanes informs us that they were taught the most graceful way to sit down and get up.[375] Vases represent boys learning how to stand straight. There were also all sorts of exercises in which the unpointed javelin played the part of a training-rod and the halteres the part of dumb-bells. The paidotribes might also try to strengthen particular muscles in particular boys. In an epigram,[376] a trainer is exercising a boy’s middle by bending him over his knee, and then, while holding his feet fast, swinging him over backwards.
No doubt what was known as “gesticulation” (τὸ χειρονομεῖν) played a large part in this earlier training. “Gesticulation” meant a scientific series of gestures and movements of all the limbs, somewhat like the modern systems of physical education taught by Sandow and others. It was chiefly an exercise for the arms, as the name implies, but on a celebrated occasion Hippokleides the Athenian stood on his head on a table and “gesticulated” with his feet.[377] The particular movements were very carefully designed, and were all intended to be beautiful and gentlemanly.[378] Gesticulation served as a preparation for various dancing-systems, but was distinct from dancing, for Charmides was able to gesticulate but unable to dance.[379] It was also preparatory to gymnastics, for it resembled the movements of a boxer sparring at the air for lack of an opponent.[380] The halteres were possibly often employed, for they played a part in many gymnastic exercises.[381] This “gesticulation,” then, being a preliminary to gymnastics and dancing, would be the natural thing for the small boys to learn in the palaistra. Other early exercises were rope-climbing[382] and a sort of leap-frog.[383] The various kinds of ball-game,[384] mostly designed to exercise the body scientifically, may also have been employed. Of the regular exercises of the palaistra, which I am about to discuss, running and jumping would suit quite small boys; the diskos and javelin could also be begun at an early age, for smaller sizes were made for children.
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The age at which the recognised exercises were first taught no doubt varied with individual taste and physical capacity: no strict line can be drawn. These exercises were wrestling, boxing, the pankration, jumping, running, throwing the diskos and the javelin. Wrestling (πάλη) was probably regarded as the most important of these subjects, for it gave its name to the Palaistra. For this exercise the soil was broken up with the pickaxe and watered: the bodies of the combatants were oiled beforehand. By these means the Hellenes prevented their boys from disfiguring their bodies with bumps and bruises, and the slipperiness of the ground and of the antagonist’s body made the exercise more difficult and therefore more valuable. Three throws were necessary for victory. There were two sorts of wrestling. In one the victor had to throw his antagonist without coming to the ground himself; this was a matter of ingenious twists and turns somewhat like the Japanese jiu-jitsu. In the other both combatants rolled over and over on the ground: this was less scientific. The leading paidotribai had their own favourite systems of wrestling, with various openings, as in chess, and various ways of meeting them. “What style of wrestling did you learn at the Palaistra?” Kleon asks the sausage-seller.[385] When two boys were set to wrestle in school, they were not allowed to contend as they pleased with a view to victory, but had to carry out the directions of the paidotribes.[386] A fragment of a system of wrestling has been unearthed at Oxurhunchos.[387]
Suppose there are two boys, Charmides and Glaukon. The paidotribes sets them to wrestle, while the rest of the class watch. He holds a long forked stick in his hand. Pointing with it to Charmides, he says, “You put your right hand between his legs and grip him.” Then to Glaukon, “Close your legs on it, and thrust your left side against his side.” To Charmides, “Throw him off with your left hand.” To Glaukon, “Shift your ground, and engage.” Each group of directions, or figure σχῆμα, as it was called, closes with the word “Engage” πλέξον. At this point, probably, the two boys were allowed to wrestle at will, the result, however, being foreseen and inevitable owing to the previous moves.
An epigram in the Anthology represents instruction of this sort being given: the boy retorts in the middle, “I can’t possibly do it, Diophantos; that’s not the way boys wrestle.”[388]
But, to use a parallel given by Isokrates, a pupil is not yet a complete orator, when he knows how to create pathos, irony, and so forth, and has been taught the parts of a speech: he has still to learn when and where and in what order to employ these several artifices. So with wrestling. A boy who knows his “figures” is not yet a wrestler: he has got to learn when is the right moment to employ each of them in an actual contest with a real antagonist. “When the paidotribes has taught his pupils the ‘figures’ invented for bodily training and practised them and made them perfect in these, he makes the boys go through their exercises again and accustoms them to physical toil, and compels them to string together one by one the figures which they have learnt, that they may have a firmer grasp of them and get a clearer comprehension of the right occasions for using them: for it is impossible to comprehend these in an exact science.”[389] The boys have to judge for themselves, in the heat of the contest, which figure it will be expedient to use: the trainer cannot fix that beforehand. But they will best be able to judge, if by long practice they have discovered which figures suit them best and which prove fatal to a particular type of opponent.
Boxing was similarly taught by a series of “figures.” The boys used the light gloves, consisting of strings wound round the hands, not the heavy, metal-weighted gloves which professional athletes wore. The pankration[390] was a mixture of boxing and wrestling: the boys
usually wore similar gloves for this but left the fingers unfastened, only the wrists and knuckles being protected: sometimes they fought with bare hands. For both these exercises it was usual to wear dogskin caps, in order to protect the ears from injury. The pankration seems to have been regarded as an unsatisfactory game for boys: so it was excluded from both Olympian and Pythian games till a comparatively late date. For one thing, it was dangerous, and the exercise was very severe. But in the palaistra, carefully regulated by the paidotribes and stopped when the fighting became dangerous, no doubt it was harmless enough. Alkibiades, however, once succeeded in biting an opponent who was pressing him hard, being ready to do anything rather than be beaten. “You bite like a girl, Alkibiades!” exclaimed the indignant boy. “No, like a lion,” answered Alkibiades.[400]