meetings in Greece, and even preserved for them some celebrity. The sacred truce proclaimed during the national games was of inestimable convenience in the times of long and bitter hostilities, and doubtless enabled friends to meet who had else been separated for life. But the Panathenaic festivals were better exponents of fourth centry 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 was equally despised 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 the main object of this study, 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 vigour, 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 trained to those exercises which they afterwards practised as men. In addition to the palestras, 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. 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 conceive field-sports to have been quite the leading amusement, nor ought competitions in a gymnasium to be compared for a 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 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 vulgarised by the invasion of this professional spirit, which implies such attention to the body as excludes higher pursuits, and reward by special victories and

1 The very stringent laws quoted in Eschylus in Timarch, may possibly be spurious, since we know from other allusions that they were not enforced. But more probably they existed as a dead letter, which could be revived if occasion required.

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 pancratium, in which the defeated competitor had to ask for mercy; they even for general purposes preferred field-sports, of which they could command plenty, to any special competitions in the strength of particular muscles. But in such places as Attica, 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 necessarily 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 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 muscles, 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), 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). 1 It must be

1 This must mean dry, as opposed to creamcheese. The modern Greeks make their

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 Boeotia were censured as heavy and rather disgusting. However, the discovery of 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 absorb the stronger he would become. The quantity eaten by athletes is universally spoken of as far exceeding the quantity eaten by ordinary men, not considering its heavier quality.

Our suspicion that, in consequence, Greek athletic performances were not greater, 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 subdivisions of time, and always ran races only 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. In the Olympic games the running, which had originally been the only competition, always came first. The

cheese for keeping in wicker baskets to the present day, and distinguish it from xλwpòs Túpos, which still means cream-cheese, and which they carry to market in woollen bags. There was a special market for it in Athens in Aristophanes' day. This is one of the innumerable points which can be explained by a knowledge of the present customs in Greece. It was pointed out to me by Mr. Gennadius.

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short race was once up the course, and seems to have been about 125 yards. About the year 720 B.C. races of double the course, and long races of about 3,000 yards, were added; races in armour 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 jumping was assigned a special place, and thought very important. We have several remarkable 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 in their speed and endurance. But this is compatible with very poor performances at prize meetings.

There were short races for boys at Olympia of half the length. 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 short race at four successive meetings, thus keeping up his pace for sixteen yearsa 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." There was, of course, 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

1 It is noted as a special wonder that the same man should win the sprint and long races at Olympia, which shows that the latter must have been mainly a test of staying power. The Spartan Ladas died at the winning post, and this was thought rather a wonderful feat, but of course may have resulted from bad training or from heart disease.

"Know ye not," says St. Paul, "that all run, and one receiveth the crown?" A quite different condition of things from that of the Iliad, when every competitor, like the boys at a private school, comes off with a prize. No. 211.-VOL. XXXVI.

an odd man over, the owner of the last lot drawn could sit down till the winners of the heats came together, and run against them without any previous fatigue. The limitation of each heat of four competitors arose, I fancy, from their not wearing colours (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 copied in the present Olympic games held at Athens every four years.

The next event was the wrestling match, which is out of fashion at our prize meetings, though still a favourite sport in many country districts. There is very ample terminology for the various tricks and devices in this contest, and they have been explained with much absurdity by scholiasts both ancient and modern. It seems that it was not always enough to throw your adversary, but that an important part of the sport was the getting uppermost on the ground, and in no case was a man declared beaten till he was thrown three times, and was actually laid on his back. It is not worth while enumerating the various technical terms, but it may be observed that a good deal of what we should call foul play was tolerated. There was no kicking, such as there was in wrestling matches in Ireland, because there were no boots, but Pausanias mentions (vi. 4, 3) a man who did not know how to wrestle, but defeated his opponents by breaking their fingers. We shall return to this point when speaking of the pankration.

When the wrestling was over there followed the throwing of the discus and the dart, and the long leap, but in what order is uncertain; for I cannot accept as evidence the pentameter line of Simonides, which enumerates the

1 Possibly this special sort of wrestling has been confused with the pankration, from which it can have differed but little, if it indeed subsisted as a distinct form of wrestling.

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principle is not admitted, so far as I know, by any scientific authority as of the slightest assistance.

We hear of no vaulting or jumping with a pole, so that in fact the leap seems an isolated contest, and of little interest except as determining one of the events of the pentathlon, in which a man must win three in order to be declared victor. This pentathlon, as comprising gentlemanly exercise and little brutality, was especially patronized by the Spartans. It attempted for boys, but immediately abandoned, the strain being thought excessive for growing constitutions.

was

There remain the two severest and most objectionable sports, boxing and the pankration. Boxing came first (Ol. 23), the other test of strength not being admitted till Ol. 33. But one special occasion is mentioned when a competitor, who was contending in both, persuaded the judges to change the order, that he might not contend against a specially famous antagonist when already wounded and bruised with boxing. For boxing was, even from Homeric times, a very dangerous and bloody amusement, in which the vanquished were always severely punished. The Greeks were not content with naked fists, but always used a boxing apparatus, called pártes, which consisted at first of a weight carried in the hand, and fastened by thongs of hide round the hand and wrist. But this ancient cestus came to be called the gentle kind (μeλixai) when a later and more brutal invention introduced "sharp thongs on the wrist," and probably increased the weight of the instrument. The successful boxer in the Iliad (Epeius) confesses that he is a bad warrior, though he is the acknowledged champion in his own line; but evidently this sport was not highly esteemed in epic days. In historical times it seems to have been more favoured. There was no doubt a great deal of skill required for it, but I think the body of the evidence goes to prove that the Greeks did not box on sound principles, and that any prominent member

of the P.R. would with his naked fists have easily settled any armed champion of Olympian fame. Here

are my reasons :

The principle of increasing the weight of the fist as much as possible is only to be explained by the habit of dealing swinging or downward strokes, and is incompatible with the true principle of striking straight home quickly, and giving weight to the stroke by sending the whole body with it. In Virgil's description a boxer is even described getting up on tip-toe to strike his adversary on the top of the head-a ridiculous manœuvre, reproduced in one of Canova's boxers in the Vatican, who has his arm so raised aloft as to make his instant ruin certain, if his opponent knew the first elements of the art. That this down stroke was used also appears from the anecdote in Pausanias, where a father saw his son, who was ploughing, drive in the share, which had fallen out, with strokes of his fist, and without a hammer, so he immediately entered him for the boys' boxing match at Olympia. The boy got roughly handled from want of skill, and seemed likely to lose, when the father called out : "Boy! give him the plough stroke!" and so encouraged the lad, that he forthwith knocked his adversary out of time.

It is almost conclusive as to the swinging stroke that throughout antiquity a boxer was not known as a man with his nose broken, but as a man with his ears crushed. Virgil even speaks of their receiving blows on the back. Against all this there are only two pieces of evidence-one of them incredible-in favour of the straight home stroke. In the fight between Pollux and Amykos, described by Theokritus (Idyl 22), Pollux strikes his man on the left temple, kai éñéμñeσEV μw, which may mean, "and follows the stroke up from the shoulder." But this is doubtful. The other is the story of Pausanias (viii. 40, 3), that when Kreugas and Damoxenos boxed till evening, and neither could hit the other, they at last agreed to receive stroke about, and after Kreugas had