[Illustration: THE AGIAS OF LYSIPPUS (Delphi)]
Greek Athletics
_by_ F. A. Wright
London
Jonathan Cape Ltd
FIRST PUBLISHED IN MCMXXV
MADE & PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY BUTLER & TANNER LTD
FROME AND
LONDON
CONTENTS
PREFACE 9
1. ATHLETICS AND ATHLETIC FESTIVALS 13
2. GYMNASTICS AND MILITARY TRAINING 28
3. PHYSICAL EDUCATION 61
4. HEALTH AND BODILY EXERCISE 83
5. GALEN’S TREATISE ON THE SMALL BALL 108
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 123
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AGIAS OF LYSIPPUS (_Delphi_) _Frontispiece_
THE WRESTLERS (_Uffizi Gallery, Florence_) 30
A WRESTLING CONTEST (_Athens_) 36
THE DISKOBOLOS OF MYRON 40
INDOOR SPORTS (_Athens_) 76
THE VICTORY OF PAIONIOS (_Olympia_) 104
THE THROW-IN AT THE SMALL BALL GAME
(_Athens_) 110
A HOCKEY MATCH (_Statue base discovered
at Athens_, 1922) 116
PREFACE
In a previous volume[A] an attempt was made to set out the principles
followed by the Greeks in the three sister arts of acting, music, and
painting; and to show how in some respects we have failed to improve
upon their practice. It is perhaps doubtful whether the mass of our
countrymen will ever take a very deep interest in the laws that govern
the right use of colour, sound, and gesture; and even if our inferiority
in art were proved, it is probable that the position would be regarded
with equanimity.
But as regards athletics the case is different; and it is with some
hesitation that in this book, after giving a brief account of Greek
gymnastics and physical training, I have ventured to raise the question
whether Greek systems of bodily culture were not in some ways superior
to ours, and whether on the whole the Athenians of the fifth century
B.C. were not a finer and a healthier people than are the Englishmen of
to-day.
Before the year 1914 such doubts might never have presented themselves.
But one of the many unpleasant truths that the War revealed was that the
physical condition of our average middle-aged citizen was very far from
being what it should be. Indeed, anyone whose business it was then to
examine recruits, if he was at all familiar with the work of Greek
sculptors, must often have noticed with positive pain the difference
that was apparent between the figure of the typical Greek athlete and
the figure of the typical English town-dweller.
The reasons for this poverty of physique were manifold--city life,
alcohol, nicotine, sedentary occupations, unsuitable food among the most
frequent--but there was one that overshadowed all the rest, a complete
ignorance of the structure and functions of the human body. Accompanying
this ignorance nearly always came an utter lack of acquaintance with the
elementary principles of gymnastics. There were very few men who did not
take a passionate interest in the progress of some football team, and
there were equally few who had ever given any intelligent thought to
their own physical condition.
Games have certainly been of immense value to modern England, and we
have succeeded in making of them a real instrument of moral education.
On the cricket and the football field our national qualities of
individual initiative and cheerful obedience have been developed, the
virtues of courage, endurance, and self-control fostered. But the
average man to-day is inclined to take games too seriously, and to the
competitive element in them he attaches an altogether absurd
importance. In cricket, football, or tennis it really makes little
difference which side wins, as long as all the participants get their
due share of exercise. The true object of a game is not to secure runs
or points or goals, but rather to develop and increase the strength of
every part of our body.
On the other hand, gymnastics, in their widest sense, are not taken
seriously enough. It is the duty, and it should be the pleasure, of
every man and woman amongst us to make themselves as healthy and as
beautiful as Nature meant them to be. For this purpose the playing--not
of course the mere watching--of games has a definite value, but it does
not take the place of a properly devised system of gymnastic exercises.
Knowledge of the right methods is here of the first importance, and I
therefore dedicate this book to our real experts in physical science,
the gymnastic instructors of His Majesty’s Army.
1
Athletics and Athletic Festivals
Athletics, whether ancient or modern, is a wide term covering a large
field of bodily activities, while the boundaries between sport and
athletics are often hard to fix. But we may safely distinguish four main
branches of physical energy.
1. Athletics proper, where the essential feature is the competition with
its almost invariable concomitant the prize,--athlon; the two things
going so closely together that, as in the ‘Grand Prix,’ the same word is
used for race and reward.
2. Gymnastics, the training of the body by a system of exercises in
which the naked limbs are allowed free play. Competition is here often
replaced by united action, and there is a close connexion with the
sister arts of music and medicine.
3. Drill, the particular form of bodily training which is necessary to
fit a man for the duties of a soldier. It includes all the varieties of
military exercise and practice with arms, and differs from athletics and
gymnastics in that its formal purpose is purely utilitarian.
4. Games of various kinds, played either singly or in company, and
usually requiring some sort of implement, a ball, a stick, or a hoop.
The elements of competition and united effort are usually present, but
a prize is not essential.
The history of organized athletics in Greece is a very long one, and
extends for some twelve hundred years. The Olympic register of winners
in the foot-race begins 776 B.C., this year being taken as the first
Olympiad when, in the third century B.C., the Olympic register came into
use as the recognized method of reckoning dates. From 776 B.C. to A.D.
217 the list, as drawn up by Julius Africanus, has been preserved intact
for us by Eusebius. In the third century of our era the Roman Empire,
attacked by Goths, was forced to call in the Greeks to fight once more
for their native land, and even when the invading hordes were repulsed
the effects of their ravages were still felt. The Olympic games, as a
permanent institution, apparently ceased after the Gothic invasion, and
the policy of Constantine hastened the process of decay. Christianity,
now the official religion, looked with little favour on the ancient
festivals, and finally Theodosius I, probably on the advice of St.
Ambrose, in A.D. 393 abolished the games by imperial edict, the last
Olympic victor known to history being a certain Armenian knight, a man
of gigantic strength, named Varaztad.
There is hardly any other Greek institution which had so long a career.
Through the centuries, from the age of the tyrants to the great era of
the free States; from the rise of Macedonia to supremacy, through the
troubled years of the Achæan and Ætolian Leagues; while Greece lay
crushed under the rule of the Roman Senate and while it had its brief
revival of prosperity under the Roman Empire; in spite of every
vicissitude of fortune, year by year the Olympic games took place. There
is something impressive in this continuity which links together periods
otherwise so different, and historians have laid full stress on the
services that Olympia rendered in emphasizing the sense of national
unity and goodwill. But exaggeration is very possible here, and no one
can say that these athletic festivals created or maintained an
atmosphere of peace among the constantly warring Greek States, any more
than that their recent revival as an international event has succeeded
in bringing harmony to our modern empires. The chief benefit of all
these gatherings is the stimulus they afford to local and national
patriotism; but whether the dangers of such competitions are not greater
than the advantages is a question still undecided, and it may be useful
to remember that in Greece, despite the general popularity of athletics,
the two leading States, Athens and Sparta, during the greatest period of
their history held somewhat aloof. The reasons that actuated them were
different: for Athens, athletics were too specialized; for Sparta, they
were not specialized enough. But the fact remains that the two cities
which give to us most of what is valuable in Greek culture took but
little interest in this particular organization.
The Athenian, in his indifference, was influenced probably by various
currents of thought. There was the old Ionian vein of softness, which
made the arduous straining of the athlete distasteful and led to the
formation of the adjective _athlios_, ‘distressful,’ from the noun
_athlon_; the spirit that regarded work as a ‘plaguy nuisance,’ the
carrying of burdens as ‘vulgar,’ and any form of manual labour as
beneath the dignity of a gentleman. There was also the finer feeling
that the excessive pursuit of athletics tended to coarsen rather than to
refine the human body by developing particular muscles at the expense of
general grace, and thus destroying that _eutrapelia_, the ready
nimbleness of mind and limb, which the Athenian valued most. Lastly,
there was the just belief that athletics in themselves are but a means
to an end, the health of the body, and that although that end is a
desirable one, a healthy mind is even more important. This is the point
of view that Xenophanes of Colophon (576-480 B.C.) represents when he
says:
‘It is not right to prefer strength to the blessings of wisdom: our
wisdom is better than the strength of men and horses. It is not speed of
foot that gives a city good government; nor does it bring fatness into
the dark places of a land.’
In the next century Euripides repeats the complaint, and in more bitter
language:
‘Of all the countless evils in Greece, none is worse than
the athlete tribe. Slaves of their belly, they know neither how to make
money nor to bear poverty. In early manhood they seem fine fellows and
strut about, the darlings of the town; but when old age comes, like
worn-out cloaks they are flung aside.’
And for all this mischief the athletic gatherings, with their crowds of
useless spectators, are chiefly responsible. The principle of valuation
is wrong, for
‘Who by skill in wrestling, or by lifting the diskos, or by
a shrewd blow on the jaw ever helped his native land, even though he won
the prize? Will men fight the foe holding a diskos in both hands, or
will they get home with one fist through the foemen’s shield? No one
thinks of such folly when he is standing near cold steel.’
These last lines, though written by an Athenian poet, represent the
Spartan reasons for withdrawal from Olympia. In the early days of the
festival--from 720 to 576 B.C.--the number of Spartan victors in the
list is very large, and shows, indeed, an undisputed Spartan supremacy.
After 576 they cease almost entirely, and the disappearance of Sparta
coincides with the specialization of athletics which then began. At
Delphi, Corinth, and Nemea small local games were changed into national
festivals which hoped to rival Olympia. Besides the four great
festivals, there were countless smaller competitions established--at
Athens, for example, at Argos and at Pellene, and the first result was a
distinct rise in the standard of athletic performances, so that definite
training became necessary to win success. Secondly, people began to
attend the meetings purely as spectators, and additional
competitions--in music, poetry, even in beauty--were introduced to
please an idle audience, with the result that at last these gatherings
presented almost as many attractions as a mediæval fair. It was against
this combination of international merrymaking and individual
prize-winning that the Spartan system was a protest. ‘Sparta for the
Spartans’ was the ruling principle of the Spartan State, and aliens who
tried to establish themselves at Lacedæmon were removed by somewhat
drastic methods. In a State where all personal initiative was
discouraged, the international athlete, honoured by poets and sculptors
for his mere personal prowess, could have no place. Moreover, athletics,
which the Spartans were prepared to support as a useful recreation
tending to produce that which alone in their judgment was of importance
to a State, good soldiers, had in the sixth century before Christ
become an end in themselves, and the gulf between the specialized
athlete and the soldier very quickly began to widen. The athlete soon
became a professional in fact if not in name, with little time for
anything else but training. A class of professional instructors came
into existence, and Sparta, after first excluding the trainers, finally
forbade her citizens to take part in such competitions. She saw that the
spirit of the professional athlete was at enmity with the military
ardour which she made it her business to create, and so after about the
middle of the sixth century she practically withdrew from active
participation in the Olympic festival.
The withdrawal of Sparta, however, had also its political reasons, and
was only part of her general disapproval of the Tyrants. While she, the
Dorian ox, represented the principle of individual isolation, the
tyrannis, the Ionian horse, was the champion of expansion and national
unity. Athletic festivals were to the tyrants one of several means
whereby the commercial and social intercourse of all the Greek States,
on the mainland or across the seas, might be encouraged, and the period
of the tyrants’ prosperity was also the period when most of the
Panhellenic Games were instituted. Periander, tyrant of Corinth, founded
the Isthmia about 586 B.C.: Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, about the
same time helped the Amphictyons to establish the Pythia: the Nemea,
which began in 573, almost certainly owed their importance to one of the
tyrants of Argos who succeeded Phidon. As for Phidon himself, it is
probable that he should be regarded as the second founder of the Olympic
Games, and that his was the influence which changed a local festival
into a national gathering where East and West could meet. We know that
the chief object of his policy was to promote free intercourse with
South Italy and Sicily, and the geographical position of Elis, looking
across the western sea, was probably an important factor in his plans.
But however this may be, and we know too little of Phidon to be
dogmatic, it is a certain fact that the Olympic games were reorganized
by the managers at Elis some time in the early part of the sixth century
B.C. The festival, which had been for one day only, was now enlarged and
the chief competitions became races for chariots and single horses,
these taking the place of importance given formerly to the simple
running and wrestling matches of which alone the Spartans approved.
Chariot races, except in so far as they improve the breed of horses,
have no military value, and they also require a considerable expenditure
of money, time and trouble, things of which Sparta thought better use
might be made; but they exactly suited the merchant princes of the
West, and after 550 B.C. we find the Greeks of Italy and Sicily playing
always a very prominent part at Olympia. Of the ten treasure-houses
there that have been identified five belonged to them, and possessing
those material resources which the home-staying Greeks so painfully
lacked they were able both very frequently to win the chariot race and
also to commission Pindar to celebrate their victories. Among other
places that were especially successful in the athletic contests we find
the great African colony of Cyrene, the island of Rhodes, whence came
the famous athlete Dorieus, and, curiously enough, the little State of
Ægina for whose citizens Pindar wrote no fewer than eleven of the
forty-four epinikian odes we now possess. Athens was occasionally
represented, Sparta never.
At the beginning of the fifth century the four great games were all
firmly established. The Olympic took place in the first year of each
Olympiad; the Nemean and the Isthmian came in the second year, the
Pythian in the third, and the Nemean and the Isthmian again in the
fourth. Every year therefore the Greek athlete had one competition open
to him and in alternate years two. Of the four, the Nemean games were
the most purely athletic, as befitted a festival where the old
Peloponnesian traditions still maintained some of their vitality. The
Pythians gave rather more importance to literary and musical
competitions than did the others; one of the chief events was a recital
of the ‘Hymn to Apollo’ and there were also contests in flute playing.
The Isthmians, which were the most frequented by the Athenians, catered
especially for sightseers and there was a large number of side shows of
every kind. But the Olympic festival, the first of the four to be
established, always maintained its premier place, having furthermore the
distinct advantage of a site especially designed and reserved for this
one great occasion. The games were to the ruling families of Elis what
the oracle was to the ruling families of Delphi, a source of honour,
profit and wealth, and every effort was made to glorify and embellish
the precinct of Olympian Zeus.
Of that precinct, the Altis, we have a very full description by the old
Greek traveller Pausanias, who visited it in the second century of our
era. Following his indications German archæologists, assisted by their
Government, excavated the greater part of the site with the most careful
thoroughness between the years 1875-1881, and discovered there, _inter
alia_, nearly all the exterior temple sculptures, the Hermes of
Praxiteles, and the Victory of Pæonius, although they failed to find any
trace of the greatest treasure of all, the sitting figure of Zeus by
Pheidias.
The Altis is a quadrilateral space, where goats now feed, about 750 feet
long by 570 feet broad, lying between the river Alpheus on the south and
a low but steep hill, thickly wooded with pine trees, the ancient Mount
of Cronos, which rises to the north. Immediately to the west, the river
Cladeus flows between high sandy banks into the Alpheus, which now in
the summer is only a trickle of muddy water running over a broad
gravelly bed, but in old times was a navigable stream.
In the precinct itself stood the Temple of Zeus, built by the architect
Libon, about 460 B.C., to house the statue of the god; the Temple of
Hera, one of the oldest of Greek shrines, dating back perhaps to the
tenth century B.C.; the Treasuries of the various states; and the
Council House. The stadion, some 230 by 32 yards, where the athletic
contests took place, was just outside the precinct at the north-east
corner, the spectators being accommodated on raised embankments of earth
which may have contained as many as forty-five thousand people standing.
The festival took place at the time of one of the summer full moons, and
as soon as the sacred truce was proclaimed, sightseers began to flock in
by sea and land from all parts of the Greek world. The first day of the
five, to which the games in 472 B.C. were extended, was spent in
sacrifices and general festivity, while the competitors and the judges,
the Hellanodicæ, took the oath of fair dealing. On the second morning at
daybreak the judges, in purple robes, were conducted to the special
seats reserved for them, the herald proclaimed the names of competitors,
and the day was spent in chariot and horse races and in the pentathlon
competition for men; the crown of wild olive, which was the only prize,
being presented by the judges to the victors at the conclusion of each
event. The boys’ contests came on the third day; the men’s foot-races,
wrestling, boxing and pankration on the fourth; and the last event of
all was the race for men in armour. On the fifth day there were
sacrifices again, and in the evening a ceremonial banquet at which the
victors were entertained. This was the beginning of that athletic
glorification to which Sparta so strongly objected, and their homecoming
was usually made the occasion of the most elaborate celebrations.
Exainetos of Agrigentum, for example, who won the foot-race in 416 B.C.,
was brought into the city in a chariot to which his fellow townsmen
harnessed themselves and was escorted by three hundred cars drawn by
white horses. In the western states especially they sometimes received
almost divine worship: their exploits were recorded on stone monuments,
and songs composed in their honour were sung by bands of youths and
maidens, while for the rest of their lives they had the privilege of a
front seat at all public festivals, and often also the right of taking
their meals free in the town hall.
All this was part of the exaggerated pomp with which the festival itself
in all its details was conducted; its processions, feastings,
proclamations, and sacrifices, where each state vied with the others in
making a show of gold and silver plate and displaying all the wealth
they possessed. Ostentation was not a common fault in Greece, but it had
full scope at Olympia. The two worst defects of the Greek character were
also prominent there--a contempt for women which forbade any female even
to be present, and an exaggerated idea of racial purity which shut out
all competitors except those of undisputed Greek descent. But the
spectacle must have been a splendid one, and it undoubtedly inspired
some of the finest works of Greek art. The erection of a statue in the
Altis was one of the honours given to victorious athletes to glorify
their triumph, and if the victor was unable himself to meet the expense
of setting up such a monument, the cost was often borne for him by his
native city. ‘In the courts of Olympia,’ as Walter Pater says, ‘a whole
population in marble and bronze gathered quickly,--a world of portraits
out of which, as the purged and perfected essence, the ideal soul, of
them, emerged the _Diadumenus_ and the _Discobolus_.’ Pausanias gives
us a list of some of the great sculptors whose works were still standing
there in his time--Hagelaidas, Pythagoras, Kalamis, Myron, Polycleitus,
Lysippus, and possibly Pheidias--and these nude figures established a
canon of bodily perfection which had no little influence in actual life.
Poets also vied with sculptors in glorifying the Olympic victor.
Simonides of Keos and Bacchylides sang his praise, and in the Epinikian
Odes of Pindar we have the greatest of all memorials to the athletic
spirit--‘Verse that is all of gold and wine and flowers, and is itself
avowedly a flower, or “liquid nectar,” or “the sweet fruit of his soul,
to men that are winners in the games.” “As when from a wealthy hand one
lifting a cup, made glad within with the dew of the vine, maketh gift to
a youth”: the keynote of Pindar’s verse is there.’ With a choral music
unsurpassed in any language, with wealth of legend and myth, with
accumulation of epithet and metaphor, Pindar bears his witness to the
pride of physical perfection. And with all the grandeur of his odes it
is significant that he lacks conspicuously both the Spartan virtue of
simplicity and the Athenian desire for economy of effort.
‘His soul rejoiced in splendour--splendour of stately palace
halls where the columns were of marble and the entablature of wrought
gold; splendour of temples of the gods, where the sculptor’s waxing art
had brought the very deities to dwell with man; splendour of the
white-pillared cities that glittered across the Ægean and Sicilian seas;
splendour of the holy Panhellenic games, of whirlwind chariots and the
fiery grace of thoroughbreds, of the naked shapely limbs of the athlete,
man and boy.’[B]
Splendour was the ideal alike of the Achæan chieftain, the Corinthian
tyrant, and the Olympic judge. But the stern lesson of the Persian Wars
led the Greek people in the fifth century to higher things, and the true
spirit of athletics passed from the magnificent precinct of Olympian
Zeus to the simple exercising grounds which every town possessed.
Olympia and its prizes fell into the hands of professionals; but
gymnastics remained an essential part of national education.
2
Gymnastics and Military Training
The various athletic exercises, which are here for convenience classed
together under the word ‘gymnastics,’ fall into three main classes,
depending respectively on strength of body, of leg, and of arm. To the
first class belong boxing and wrestling, to the second running and
jumping, to the third throwing the diskos and the javelin. The last five
of these six sports--boxing being excluded--formed the Pentathlon, a
combined competition of five events arranged to suit the all-round
military athlete, for whom Greek athletic training at its best was
especially designed. In such a competition the foot-race probably came
first and the wrestling last; the three middle events--the field events,
as we should call them, jumping, throwing the javelin, and hurling the
diskos--being those that were particularly identified with the
five-sport system which aimed at producing, not a specialized athlete,
but a man who combined strength with agility and skill. Victory in the
Pentathlon depended, not on success in all events, but on a system of
marks; victory in three of the competitions was sufficient in itself,
but if no competitor won three times, and two competitors tied with two
victories each, it is highly probable that account was taken of second
and third places.
Of the separate exercises, wrestling perhaps was the favourite. It was
the oldest of all sports, and to the Greeks one of the most important.
To them it was both a science and an art. Theseus, its inventor, was,
according to the myth, taught the rules by Athena herself. Victory alone
was not sufficient; the winner must win gracefully and according to the
precepts of the schools. It was from wrestling that the palæstra took
its name, and the Greek language is full of metaphors and expressions
borrowed from the technical phraseology of the ring. The contests
between Heracles and Antæus, and between Atalanta and Peleus, are two of
the best known and most frequently depicted episodes of the heroic saga,
and wrestling was one of the sports in which women were allowed by some
States--by Sparta and Chios, for example--to take part, competing even
against men. Instruction was given in the school; there were separate
rules for men and boys, and the different movements, grips, and throws
were taught on a system of progressive difficulty; textbooks were used,
and fragments of such a manual have recently been found on an Egyptian
papyrus. There were two principal styles, the upright wrestling, in
which the object was to throw one’s opponent to the ground, three falls
being necessary for victory, and the ground wrestling, in which the
struggle was continued even after a fall until one of the combatants
yielded. The first style, however, was the only one regarded as strictly
legitimate, the second being merely part of the pankration. The attitude
of a Greek before coming to grips was very similar to that of modern
wrestlers, and is beautifully illustrated in the pair of boy statues
from Naples which may be seen in the Embankment gardens. Standing square
to one another, they endeavoured to get a hold from the front or the
side. The defence was often a grip on the opponent’s wrist, which might
lead to the offensive if his elbow could also be seized and the throw we
call ‘the flying mare’ be then executed. Of front body-holds, the most
effective was gained by catching the waist with both hands and then
lifting the opponent off his feet, such a hold as Heracles used against
Antæus. Of side-throws the best known was ‘the heave,’ usually ascribed
to Theseus, where one hand was passed round the opponent’s back and the
other hand slipped underneath him. Another favourite hold was by the
neck--a strong neck was essential for a wrestler--and when this was
secured a sudden turn of the body would lead to the throw that we call a
‘cross-buttock.’ In all wrestling tripping played an important part, and
there are a very large number of technical terms in Greek for the
different trips that are
[Illustration: THE WRESTLERS (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)]
employed. Every district in Greece had a style of its own, and these
diversities of method helped to keep active an interest in wrestling and
to preserve it from the disease of professionalism, so that even when
other sports had been ruined the wrestling ring still remained a useful
and a popular institution.
It is this popularity in actual life that accounts for the frequency of
descriptions of wrestling matches in Greek literature. Two of them at
least are worth quoting; the first from the _Iliad_, Book XXIII, the
contest between Ajax and Odysseus at the funeral games of Patroclus:
He said; and straight uprose the giant form
Of Ajax Telamon: with him uprose
Ulysses, skilled in every crafty wile.
Girt with the belt, within the ring they stood,
And each, with stalwart grasp, laid hold on each;
As stand two rafters of a lofty house,
Each propping each, by skilful architect
Designed the tempest’s fury to withstand.
Creaked their backbones beneath the tug and strain
Of those strong arms; their sweat poured down like rain;
And bloody weals of livid purple hue
Their sides and shoulders streaked, as sternly they
For victory and the well-wrought tripod strove.
Nor could Ulysses Ajax overthrow,
Nor Ajax bring Ulysses to the ground,
So stubbornly he stood; but when the Greeks
Were weary of the long protracted strife,
Thus to Ulysses mighty Ajax spoke:
‘Ulysses sage, Laertes’ godlike son,
Or lift thou me, or I will thee uplift:
The issue of our struggle rests with Jove.’
He said, and raised Ulysses from the ground;
Nor he his ancient craft remembered not,
But locked his leg around, and striking sharp
Upon the hollow of the knee, the joint
Gave way; the giant Ajax backwards fell,
Ulysses on his breast; the people saw,
And marvelled. Then in turn Ulysses strove
Ajax to lift; a little way he moved,
But failed to lift him fairly from the ground;
Yet crooked his knee, that both together fell,
And side by side, defiled with dust, they lay.
(Homer: _Iliad_, XXIII, 820-851,
Derby’s translation.)
The second description is separated from Homer by some twelve centuries,
but it is equally vigorous. In the tenth book of _The Æthiopian History_
of Heliodorus, the hero Theagenes, as his last trial before winning his
beloved Chariclea, is matched against a stalwart Æthiopian, and in
Underdowne’s quaint Elizabethan version the passage thus appears:
‘Then hee tooke dust, and cast it upon his armes and
shoulders, and stretched foorth his hands, and tooke some footing, and
bent his legges a little, and stouped lowe, at a word all partes of his
body were ready, so that he stoode, and with great desire awayted for
the advantage at the close. The Æthiopian seeing this laughed irefully,
and triumphed scornefully upon him: and ranne suddenly upon him, and
with his elbowe hit Theagenes in the necke, as sore as if he had
stricken him with a leaver, and then drewe backe, and laughed againe at
his owne foolish conceite. But Theagenes like a man alway from his
cradle brought up in wrastling, and throughly instructed in Mercuries
arte, thought it good to geve place at first, and take some triall of
his adversaries strength, and not to withstand so rude a violence, but
with arte to delude the same. Therefore he stouped lower, and made
semblance as though he had beene very sorrowfull, and layde his other
side to receive his other blowe. And when the Æthiopian came upon him
againe, he made as though hee would have fallen flat upon his face; but
as soon as the Æthiopian began to despise him, and was incouraged well,
and came unadvisedly the third time, and lyfted up his arme againe to
take holde of him, putting his right arme under his left side, by
lifting up his hande he overthrew him in a heape, and casting himselfe
under his arme pittes gryped his gorbelly with much a doo, and forced
him with his heeles to fall on his knees, and then leapt on his backe,
and clasping his feete about his privie parts made him stretch out his
legges, wherewith he did stay up himselfe, and pulled his armes over his
head behinde him, and laide his bellie flatte upon the earth.’
Boxing also, like wrestling, always retained its attractiveness, and in
its ancient form offers some varieties from the modern mode. There were
three stages in its history, depending largely upon the instruments of
fighting used. Down to the beginning of the fourth century B.C. it was
customary to wind soft strips of leather--_meilichai_--round the hands
and arms, which served, like our light gloves, to protect the knuckles
and so increased the power of attack, but did not in themselves add to
the severity of the blow. Early in the fourth century the _meilichai_
were superseded by gloves--_sphairai_--made of hard pieces of leather
with projecting and cutting edges, real weapons of offence, like our
knuckle-dusters. From these the Roman _cæstus_ was developed, where the
glove was weighted with pieces of iron and metal spikes placed in
position over the knuckles.
In Greek boxing there was no ring and therefore little close fighting,
there were no rounds and therefore the pace was slow, for rushing
tactics marked the untrained man; lastly, there was no classification
by weight; the heavier the man the greater his chance of success, so
that a meat diet for boxers was almost compulsory, and boxing became
practically the monopoly of the heavy-weights. As thongs or gloves were
always used on the hands, wrestling was impossible, and in later times
at least the defence was all-important. It seems fairly well established
that body-hitting was not practised, and in the Hellenistic age a fight
was usually decided by a knock-out blow on the jaw. But in the best
period the Greek boxer used both his hands freely, was active on his
feet, and had a considerable variety of attack. The introduction of
heavy gloves vitiated the art, and boxers began to rely merely on their
weight and defensive powers.
Of all these stages we have plentiful evidence both in art and
literature, for boxing and its preliminaries are among the favourite
subjects of vase painters, while in poetry, beside the account of the
fight between Odysseus and the beggar Irus in the _Odyssey_ and between
Entellus and Dares in the _Æneid_, we have a really enthusiastic and
expert description by Theocritus of the great struggle between Amycus
and Polydeuces. The battle is as vividly described as the epic contest
in the Dell between Lavengro and the Flaming Tinman, and the poet, by
making it a fight between the old school of scientific activity and the
new method of stolid strength, ingeniously enlists our sympathies from
the first upon the side of skill against brute force.
‘Then Amycus came on furiously, making play with both hands; but Pollux
smote him on the point of the chin as he charged, maddening him the
more, and the giant confused the fighting, laying on with all his might,
and going in with head down.... But the son of Zeus stepped now this
side, now that, and hit him with both fists in turn, and checked his
onslaught, for all his monstrous strength. Like a drunken man he reeled
beneath the hero’s blows, and spat out the red blood, while all the
princes shouted together, as they marked the ugly bruises about his
mouth and jaws, and saw his eyes half closed by puffy flesh. Next Pollux
began to tease him, feinting on every side, and at last, seeing that he
was now quite bewildered, he got in a smashing blow just above the
middle of the nose beneath the eyebrows, and laid the bone of his
forehead bare. Stretched on his back the giant fell amid the flowers;
but he rose again, and the fighting went on fiercely. They mauled each
other hard, laying on with the weighted thongs; but the giant was always
busy with his fists on the other’s chest and outside his neck, while
Pollux, the invincible, kept on smashing his opponent’s face with cruel
blows.’ (Theocritus: _Idyll_, XXII, 87-111.)
[Illustration: A WRESTLING CONTEST (Athens)]
Boxing and wrestling were combined in the pankration and allied with
many other devices, such as kicking, strangling, twisting, etc.; it was
a versatile performance, the joint invention of Heracles and Theseus,
and considered both by Pindar and Philostratus as ‘the fairest of all
contests.’ There was an element of danger, but it was no more brutal
than is the almost similar method of jujitsu; moreover, strict rules
were enforced by umpires who closely watched the combatants. Biting and
gouging were strictly forbidden, although frequently attempted, as for
example by Alcibiades. ‘You bite like a woman,’ cried his opponent.
‘No,’ said the young Athenian, ‘like a lion.’ Of gouging we have a
picture on a cup in the British Museum, where one figure has inserted
his finger into his opponent’s eye, while the umpire hurries forward
with uplifted rod. But nearly every manœuvre of hands, feet, and body
was permissible. You might catch your opponent by his foot and throw him
backwards; you might seize his heel or ankle, and then, if you could,
twist his foot out of its socket; you might kick him violently in the
stomach; you might plant your foot against the other man’s waist and
throw him over your shoulder; you might even stand on your own head, if
that position seemed expedient. All these tricks were used in the
standing position, but the issue of the combat was usually decided on
the ground. There you might twist arm or hand, break fingers, and
strangle. All neck holds were allowed, but the favourite method of
strangling was known as the ‘ladder grip,’ in which you mounted your
opponent’s back and wound your legs round his stomach and your arms
round his neck. Ground wrestling was indeed the distinctive feature of
the pankration, and the well-known group in the Uffizi Palace at
Florence represents one of the last stages in such a contest.
Of running and jumping little need be said, for it is very possible that
in neither sport had the Greeks much to teach modern athletes. They were
a short-legged people, and although they may have had some advantages in
long-distance races they probably would be much inferior to our
specialized sprint runners: length of leg must tell, and as in
horse-racing ‘a good big ’un’ is better than ‘a good little ’un,’ so in
a short-distance race length of stride ensures victory. But running was
very popular in Greece, and of the eight events in the early Olympic
games no less than four were foot-races, three for men--at 200 yards,
400 yards, and three miles--and one for boys. The running course--the
stade--was a straight 200 yards; for the diaulos of 400 yards the
runners turned at a post and came back to the starting-point. The start
was marked by two parallel lines, for a Greek runner began in a somewhat
cramped position, with the feet close together. The runners ran naked,
their bodies carefully oiled, and for each man there was a post at the
starting and at the finishing point to which he ran; there were no
dividing strings, nor was there any tape. Vase paintings of runners are
very frequent and plainly show the difference of style between the
sprinter and the long-distance man; in the early vases a short, thickset
type is common, in the later the thin sprinter is preferred. The most
famous names are those of long-distance runners--e.g. Pheidippides and
Ladas, whose statue by Myron was even more admired than the same
master’s Diskobolos,--and in these races the Cretans and Arcadians
especially excelled, while the Athenians were better at short distances.
Beside races proper there were various running contests; for example,
the race in armour, which was introduced at Olympia towards the close of
the sixth century and was the final event of the games, the competitors
running in full panoply of shield, helmet, and greaves. Other similar
events were the Oschophoria, where youths ran in women’s clothes, and
the Lampadophoria, in which a lighted torch was carried by single
runners or by teams. These latter were very popular at Athens, and they
illustrate the difference between the ancient and modern view of
running. They were not serious and specialized enough for a modern
athletic meeting, where everything is a matter of record and a fifth of
a second is of vital importance.
Jumping, also, was comparatively simple and restricted in its scope. Of
high jumping and pole jumping the Greeks had none, for athletics were
always practical, and as there were no hedges in Greece for soldiers to
jump over it was unnecessary to practise high jumping in the school.
Their long jump differed from ours in that it was always performed with
the help of jumping weights--_halteres_--things much like our dumb-bells
and used in a very similar fashion. With these implements a class of
pupils would practise together to the music of the flute. Both standing
and running jumps were performed from a take-off into a
pit--_skamma_--and jumps of over twenty feet were common; the fifty-five
feet ascribed to Phayllus is an impossible exaggeration.
But if in running and jumping we have little to learn, it is very
different in regard to the ‘field events,’ the throwing of the javelin
and the diskos. Here the Greek system of body poise and muscular
development gave their athletes an enormous advantage and enabled them
easily to perform movements which to our modern bodies seem almost
impossible. Both exercises were especially popular at Athens, and were
there regarded as part of gymnastics rather than athletics: i.e. they
were designed, not as
[Illustration: THE DISKOBOLOS OF MYRON]
competitive sports, but as means to improve bodily efficiency.
The javelin was a light stick of wood, usually pointless. Distance
throwing was far more usual than throwing at a mark, and for this
purpose a thong--_amentum_--was used, fastened near the centre of the
javelin shaft. Such a thong practically quadruples the range of throw,
but the process needs long practice and is of course highly artificial
in comparison with the natural use of the spear in hunting or in war.
Greek athletics had a definite purpose, and we may be sure that it was
not the actual throw but the movements necessary for the throw that gave
its value to the exercise. These movements, the short, quick steps
before the cast and the sharp turn of the body to the right, are
illustrated frequently on the vases; the throw itself is seldom
represented, and then with very poor results. The diskos was a flat and
fairly heavy circle of bronze. It was thrown from behind a line and in a
restricted space, a throw of 100 feet being exceptionally good.
II
Such is a brief account of the gymnastic sports and exercises which
formed so important a part of a Greek’s everyday round. Each one of them
had its own special value in developing the strength of some particular
part of the body, and taken together they formed a complete and
adequate training for what was to an ancient citizen the chief business
of life--war.
To us, whose civilization is based on the habits of peace and to whom
war means the negation of all the humanities, it may seem illogical to
think of fighting as a business. But it was not so in Greece. Warfare
was _the_ art of life, so far surpassing all the other arts that it was
regarded not so much as an accidental state but rather as a vital
function, as necessary to existence as breathing, sleeping, eating, and
drinking. It would accept what help the other arts could give: athletics
made a soldier nimble and supple; medicine kept him in health; the music
of the flute was useful in marching; the lyric poet and the dramatist
could foster and elevate the martial spirit; but all these were
subservient to the one engrossing purpose. Men fought to live and lived
to fight.
For the Greeks it was war, not peace, that seemed the natural state of
an organized community. War was part of their civilization: they liked
fighting and they fought like gentlemen. The Romans, on the other hand,
had no love for fighting in itself and fought without much regard to the
rules of the game. And yet the Romans were more successful in the
conduct of war, for, as our English general says, Courage, Common Sense
and Cunning are the essentials of victory, and if by courage we mean
endurance all three were Roman rather than Greek qualities. The Romans
were always anxious to win and get finished with it, and for this
purpose they were willing to fight on year after year in order that at
last they might inflict a crushing defeat on the enemy and then return
home to their flesh-pots. The Greeks were satisfied with one indecisive
success and never tried to annihilate their opponents; for then the
sport would have come to an end. To the Romans, in spite of their many
campaigns, war was an unpleasant interruption of their usual way of
life; to the Greeks, it was simply an exciting but somewhat dangerous
diversion, which was, however, an integral part of the citizen’s service
to the state.
The Greek attitude may be easily understood if we consider their
history. They were never, like the Romans, a pastoral or agricultural
community. Their culture was cradled on the battle-field and the more
intense the fighting the more intense the literary and artistic effort
of the nation. The constant stress of battle wore the race out
eventually, but it never hurt their civilization. From the earliest days
peace was unknown in the land. The raids of sea pirates, the forced
migrations of peoples, tribal wars, trade wars, dynastic wars: such is
the history of Greece in its first, middle, and concluding stages. If
war is a curse that can only bring evil, then the Greeks were the most
unhappy of nations, for the noise of battle was seldom hushed, and
instead of declaring war they thought themselves fortunate if
occasionally they could declare peace.
This constant presence of the martial spirit is visible in all that
remains to us of their art and literature. Upon the silver ware of
Mycenæ we see the Minoans fighting naked, crouching with bow and arrow
behind their shields. The statues from Ægina are all of men arrayed for
battle with lance, shield, and sword. Even Pallas Athene, the goddess of
wisdom and the household arts, is usually represented wearing the
panoply of war, and the decorations of her temple are mostly pictures of
battle or of preparation for the fray, the combats between Centaurs and
Lapithæ and the marshalling of the mounted soldiers for her solemn
procession. Painters, like sculptors, found their chief subjects in war,
either in the ancient combats of the epic lays or in the actual life of
the parade-ground and the guard-room. The Attic vases of the sixth and
fifth centuries, the best example we possess of truly popular art,
repeat the warrior motif almost to satiety, and they did so because the
potter knew that of this subject at least his clients would never be
weary.
It is the same in Greek literature, from first to last. In the Homeric
poems fighting is the normal business of man. There are fairy-lands, the
poet can imagine, where fighting is not the common rule of life, the
land of the lotus-eaters, the orchards of the Phæacians, the island
realms of Circe and Calypso: but these are all uncanny magic places
where decent everyday rules do not hold good. In Homer it is a man’s
function to fight, by sea and land, in a chariot or on foot, to use
spear and sword, to attack and plunder, or to defend himself from the
enemy’s raids. So also with the lyric poets of the next era, from
Archilochus downwards; they are men of battle first and men of letters
afterwards, squires of the War god, as Archilochus cries:
‘My spear is bread, white kneaded bread,
My spear’s Ismarian wine,
My spear is food and drink and bed,
With it the world is mine.’
We get the same refrain in Hybrias the Cretan, the verses known to
English musicians by Campbell’s translation: