GYMNASTICS.
HISTORICAL MEMORANDA.
The first gymnasium is said to have been established at Sparta, and some years afterwards at Athens. In the former city the exercises partook of a rude military character; but among the Athenians, who were always disposed to mingle the elements of the beautiful in whatever they undertook, gymnastics were refined, and the Gymnasia became temples of the Graces. In each there was a place called Palæstra, in which wrestling, boxing, running, leaping, throwing the discus, and other exercises of the kind were taught. Gymnastics were afterwards divided into two principal branches—the Palæstræ, taking its name from the Palæstra, and the Orchestræ. The former embraced the whole class of athletic exercises; the latter dancing, and the art of gesticulation and declamation.
The Gymnasia were spacious edifices, surrounded by gardens and a sacred grove. Their principal parts were: 1. The Portices, furnished with seats and side buildings, where the youths met to converse. 2. The Ephebeion, that part of the edifice where the youth alone exercised. 3. The Apodyterion, or undressing room to the Conisterium, or small court in which was kept the yellow kind of sand sprinkled by the wrestlers over their bodies after being anointed with the aroma, or oil tempered with wax. 5. The Palæstra properly was the place for wrestling. 6. The Sphæristerium, where the game of ball was played. 7. Aliterium, where the wrestlers anointed themselves with oil. 8. The Area or great court, where running, leaping, and pitching the quoit were performed. 9. The Xysta, open walks in which the youths exercised themselves in running. 10. The Balanea, or baths. Behind the Xysta lay the Stadium, which, as its name imports, was the eighth of a mile in length; and in this were performed all sorts of exercises, in the presence of large numbers of persons and the chiefs of the state.
To all these branches of gymnastics the Grecian youth applied themselves with peculiar eagerness, and on quitting the schools devoted to them a particular portion of their time, since they regarded them as a preparation for victory in the Olympic and other games, and as the best possible means for promoting health and ripening the physical powers; nor could anything be better adapted for those whose heroism was liberty, and whose first great aims were to be good citizens and the defenders of their country.
The Romans never made gymnastics a national matter, but considered them merely as preparatory to the military service; and, though forming a part of the exhibitions at festivals, they were practised only by a particular class trained for brutal entertainments, at which large bets were laid by the spectators, as is still the custom on our own racecourse: but when all the acquisitions of the human intellect were lost in the utter corruption of the Roman empire and the irruptions of wandering nations, the gymnastic art perished.