large stone basin on a stand as its chief feature. Bathing
establishments with hot and vapour baths existed in Athens, but they
were discouraged by manly folk as corrupting athletic vigour and
considered only truly suitable for the old and feeble. In the palæstra
cold water was used alone, and the bath was either taken direct from the
basin or else the athlete stood while a friend swilled him down from a
bucket. Before the actual washing a flesh scraper was used to remove the
dust and dirt from the skin, and a sort of lye obtained from wood ashes
took the place of soap.
All this at Athens, as befits a true democracy, was open without
restriction and without payment to every citizen. In the palæstra rich
and poor met on equal terms without regard for rank or position. A
strigil and an oil flask were the only implements that were needed, and
on occasions the State even supplied the oil. We have scarcely anything
like it in modern days; perhaps a racecourse, in its mingling together
of all classes for sport, is the nearest equivalent. But our racecourses
have some peculiar features that need not now be specified, from which
the Greek palæstra was free.
4
Health and Bodily Exercise
For the attainment of the perfect health which is one of the highest
goals of human endeavour, the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. in
comparison with ourselves were placed under some disadvantages. Firstly,
their racial stock, a difficult blend of the old Mediterranean people
with central European immigrants, was not so good, for purposes of
active strength, as our mixture of Saxon, Norman and Dane: the
inhabitants of Attica claimed with some reason to be autochthonous, but
in historical times they were already showing plain signs of race decay.
Secondly, their climate on the whole was inferior to ours, the summer
too hot and enervating, the winter dank and depressing rather than sharp
and bracing: Attica in this respect also was more favoured than many
states, and Athenian authors are very fond of contrasting the clear
brilliance of their native air with the heavy dullness of the Bœotian
plain. Thirdly, they lacked most of those sanitary appliances without
which life in our cities now would seem almost impossible, and their
doctors and surgeons had not that wealth of drugs and instruments which
we possess.
On the other hand the Greeks, or at least the Athenians, had some points
in their favour. Of all the people that we know the citizens of Attica
did the highest thinking on the lowest feeding. They were naturally
temperate both in food and drink, and a very great contrast both to the
Romans and such other Greeks as the Bœotians and Thessalians. In this,
at any rate, they were feminists; like most women they did not pay much
regard to their stomachs, and made their meals not the most important
but the least important thing in their lives, so that a Greek banquet
was a very simple affair, compared with an English or a Roman repast,
and its chief attraction was the music and conversation which followed
the mere eating and drinking. The ordinary diet of the Athenians
consisted almost entirely of cereals; porridge and bread were the
staples, and although sometimes a little salt fish, cheese, honey or
olives might serve as a relish, yet porridge in various forms was the
staff of life. Their drink was usually water; a good supply was brought
in to the city by pipes dating apparently from the time of Pisistratus,
and the big fountain of the nine springs is mentioned by Thucydides.
They realized all the benefits that come from a copious use of nature’s
chief medicine: ‘best of all things is water’--such is the motto on the
entrance portal to the great temple of Pindar’s poems, and the
Athenians, knowing the truth, acted on their knowledge. Wine, of course,
they drank and enjoyed--there were teetotalers amongst them,
Demosthenes, for example, and they were regarded as crabbed, unpleasant
fellows--but they enjoyed in moderation, and always diluted their wine
copiously with water. To drink wine neat was to be a barbarian, and the
story of the Spartan king who was driven mad by his unmixed potations
was often repeated at Athens. The typical citizen was a thin wiry
person, active and restless, and the highest praise you could give to an
Athenian was to call him εὐτράπελος, ready to turn his hand to anything.
As Aristophanes says, the Athenians were wasplike, thin-waisted and
ready to sting--while one of commonest terms of political approbrium was
παχύς--‘fat’--the word applied by the democrats to the idle rich.
Again, as we have said, the Athenians were autochthonous--such was their
favourite boast--sprung from the land, born from the actual womb of
mother Attica. Without examining too closely the exact truth of their
claim, or accepting the origin of their grasshopper king, we may regard
it as an historical fact that the Athenian stock remained undisturbed
and without admixture for a very long period in Attica. They had
therefore all the advantages which are derived from a pure and an old
race; they were thoroughly suited to their environment, and had
developed strong special characteristics. They were fully conscious of
this themselves, never admitted aliens to Athenian citizenship, and took
the most careful precautions to see that all citizens on the roll should
be of pure Athenian parentage. In its relation to general health this
steady continuity of race and domicile is more important than is often
recognized. Only long centuries of undisturbed habitation can bring man
into real harmony with nature, and this is one reason why the English
peasant is so much finer a man, physically and intellectually, than the
mixed breed of a great town. Half the diseases of our time are of
nervous origin, caused ultimately by a feverish attempt to adapt oneself
too rapidly to a new environment.
Moreover, the chief means whereby we stave off for the moment the
results of this strain, drugs and stimulants of every kind, were unknown
to the Greeks, and they were all the better for their ignorance. Tea,
coffee, tobacco, opium; all these poisons are among the blessings of
modern civilization, and in the fifth century B.C. were as unfamiliar to
the Greeks as the countries from which they come. Here again the Greeks
were closer to nature than we are. When they needed a stimulant--and
stimulants are on occasion a real necessity--they took wine, the natural
product of their own country, not something only to be found among
totally different conditions. They knew nothing of the poisons of
tropical countries, and nothing of the diseases which we have imported
from the tropics. Asiatic fever, smallpox, cholera, syphilis, typhus
were diseases of which the Greeks had neither knowledge nor experience,
and even from our milder infectious complaints, such as measles and
scarlatina, they were immune. Until the advent of malaria during the
Peloponnesian War their most common malady seems to have been ophthalmia
in its various forms, and consumption was their only serious scourge.
This would seem to be a fair statement of our respective advantages and
disadvantages; and on the whole perhaps the balance of the account is in
our favour. But all these considerations are counterbalanced and more
than counterbalanced by one fact: an ancient Greek took a lively and
intelligent interest in his own physical condition, and devoted most of
his time, not to making money, or reading books or playing cards, but to
what is a more remunerative investment than any of these, to the care of
his health.
The most precious thing that a Greek possessed was not his soul, the
existence of which he doubted, but his body. He took an interest in his
body; he was not afraid of it in any of its parts, and he was not always
trying to cover it up as something of which he was ashamed. He had none
of those curious and morbid feelings that still linger on amongst us as
an inheritance from Syrian conventicles and Egyptian monasteries. He
stripped himself freely and often, in public as in private, and he
allowed the sunlight, the fresh air, and the running water to reach
every limb. Dirt was not to a Greek a proof of holiness, nor neglect of
one’s person the sure sign of a love of learning. Cleanliness was not
merely next to godliness; it was godliness itself. To be χαθαρός--clean,
pure, free from defilement--was the ideal, and an ideal generally
attained.
A Greek concentrated his attention on the care of his skin by means of
baths, massage, and external applications. Bathing with the Greeks of
the classical period was not the elaborate function that it became with
the Romans, who used it indeed, as we use drugs, to correct the results
of their own follies and self-indulgence; but it was thorough and it was
constant. Moreover they knew the value of sun and air baths, a thing
almost unattainable in England, and their dress allowed the free-play of
air round the body. Hats, stockings, and gloves were practically
unknown, and the feet were usually bare.
Of massage, both by the hand and by the instrument, which they called a
‘strigil,’ great use was made. The ‘rubber’ was as important for
purposes of health as the ‘doctor,’ and an Athenian put aside a certain
proportion of his time every day for his duties in this respect. In
connection with rubbing comes the universal use of olive oil as an
external application; the oil flask--_lecythus_--was as indispensable to
a Greek as an umbrella is to an Englishman; and as a consequence the
Athenians seem to have been seldom troubled with those coughs and colds
which so harass modern men. Under the stimulus of the bath and frequent
massage the skin performed its natural cleansing functions, and the oil
served as an invisible protection against sudden chills, while from one
of our greatest dangers, the hot polluted air of a crowded room followed
by the cold dampness of a raw February evening, the Greeks were free,
for artificial heating and lighting were little used and all gatherings
of people took place in the open. By constant exposure to sun and air,
by massage, by regulated exercises, and by rubbing with oil the Greek
gained an elasticity of skin which meant health, vigour and beauty. A
large proportion of our community take an interest in their complexions
and spend a considerable amount of effort in trying to produce an
artificial softness of face tissue, but to the far more important task
of stimulating and strengthening the skin of the body and larger limbs
they give scarcely any time at all. A delicate skin is not the
essential, either from the point of view of health or real beauty; for
though it may render details visible in an elegant fashion, only a skin
that is well knit to the subjacent tissues shows the true configuration
to advantage. This firm elasticity cannot be obtained except by
attention, and in this respect we are inferior, not only to the Greeks,
but to such different and widely separated modern peoples as the Red
Indians of North America, the Malays of the Eastern Archipelago, and the
Kanakas of the South Seas. A very large number of our minor maladies and
disabilities come to us from our closed pores and our flabby epidermis,
and from all these the Greeks escaped, owing to the care they gave to
the outer surface of the body.
In the day-time a Greek was usually to be found upon his feet. Of the
value of walking as the best of all the more gentle forms of exercise he
was well aware, and he normally took a brisk walk in the early morning,
another before the mid-day meal, another in the late afternoon, and
another before he went to bed. Fortunately for him cycles and motor-cars
were not yet invented. When he was not walking he usually stood, for the
sitting position was regarded as more appropriate to slaves than to free
men, and in any case he knew that sitting tends rather to cramp than to
invigorate the body. If he wanted to relieve his leg muscles for a
moment, which he seldom did, he dropped down easily into the squatting
position, which those other scientific gymnasts, the Japanese, now use,
a mode of resting especially valuable for women, as it strengthens all
the muscles about the pelvis and gives vigour to the most vital portions
of the female anatomy. When the time for a complete rest came he lay
down, either propped upon one elbow or at full length, and allowed all
his muscles to relax. If ever it was necessary to sit--in the theatre of
Dionysus, for example, where an audience sat attentive in the open air
for hours together--he sat on a plain flat seat without a back, his legs
straight down in front of him, his feet resting on the floor. He did not
loll or lounge, and when he was sitting he did not have that
round-shouldered appearance, which is now so noticeable in a room full
of people: he kept his diaphragm firm with the upper part of his body
correctly balanced, the centre of gravity being exactly over the base of
the spine; and in this position he was able to remain for long periods
without effort or fatigue.
But as we have said sitting to a Greek was not a matter of choice, and
was for him the exception rather than the rule; he preferred an erect
position. The chief reason for this very considerable difference between
his custom and ours is to be found in a simple fact: he was taught in
childhood how to stand and how to walk _properly_, so that both actions
were to him a pleasure and not a labour.
It may seem strange at first sight, but as an actual fact the operations
of standing erect and walking straight are not in the strict sense of
the word ‘natural’ to creatures like ourselves who have painfully
evolved from a lower form of life. The awkward hesitations of the baby
learning to walk are natural; the supple activity of the athlete is the
result of art. To stand gracefully and easily is an accomplishment that
must be acquired; it does not come to us of itself.
If a man stand erect, firmly planted on both feet at the same time,
exerting as little muscular effort as possible, the hip joint is always
a little overextended; the body would fall backward were it not for the
ilio-femoral ligament which suspends the body to the hip joint. On the
length and strength of this ligament depends both the position of the
pelvis in relation to the thigh and also eventually the graceful
carriage of the whole body. A lack of strength in this ligament and in
the muscles of the abdomen means that the pelvis is too much inclined,
the abdomen projects forward, and in the back there is a deep hollow:
results unsightly and unhealthy enough, but unfortunately with us far
too common, for we do not take means, as did the Greeks by a scientific
system of gymnastics, to strengthen all these body muscles in early
youth. Jumping with dumb-bells (performed in squads to music), throwing
the diskos, and casting the javelin were exercises expressly designed
for this purpose, and combined with daily practice in the wrestling
school they gave the ancient Greek a different and a superior body to
ours, a body which in outward contour and muscular development was much
further removed from the ancestral ape than is that of the ordinary
middle-aged citizen of to-day. A Greek could ‘stand at ease’ without any
difficulty: the attempts that may be seen on any drill ground now when
recruits attempt to carry out the order would be ludicrous if they were
not so painful.
In order to stand correctly the legs and feet must be of a proper shape;
a man must not be knock-kneed or splay-footed. When the legs and feet
are close together, the two legs should be in contact at four points: at
the upper part of the thigh, between the knees, at the point where the
calves come furthest inwards, and at the inner ankle bones. The body
muscles also must be well developed and under control, and the stander
should know exactly where the centre of his body’s gravity is and how to
obtain correct poise. Our drill-book advises that the weight of the body
be balanced on both feet and evenly distributed between the fore part of
the feet and the heels. With our present type of boot this represents
probably the best position possible, but it should be remembered that it
is not the best that can be devised. The perfect position for standing
is this: the heels should just touch the ground, but there must be no
weight on them; the feet should be close together so that the heels and
the whole of the inside line of the feet are touching; the whole weight
of the body should be got well forward _over the ball of the foot_.
Right standing is as essential to beauty as is the care of the skin, but
most women now, like most men, stand wrongly. The head is not held in
its right position by the neck muscles but hangs negligently forward, so
that eventually the beauty of the nape of the neck is destroyed. The
back muscles of the neck, thus overstretched, cause the large chest
muscle, on which the breast is supported, to sink, and then the abdomen
is forced upward and forward. Body poise is thus completely lost, the
weight of the upper trunk is left to be supported by the legs alone, and
all the conditions of unnecessary fatigue, weariness, and lack of vigour
come into existence. The whole art of standing consists in the knowledge
of body poise, and this has to be learned.
Even when we have acquired that knowledge we are still at a
disadvantage. We stand upon our feet, and under modern conditions our
feet do not have a fair chance. Sculptors know that it is possible to
get living models for other parts of the body, even though those models
rarely approximate to perfection; but for the foot the only safe method
is to copy direct from the antique. The Greek sandal was in every way
superior to our boot: it protected from injury and yet did not hinder
movement: it was easily taken off and when in use left all the top part
of the foot exposed to the light and air. Our feet, imprisoned from
early childhood in closely fitting socks and in boots that impede the
play of the toe muscles, can hardly be said to be alive. The great toe
is usually twisted towards the median line, and the joint consequently
has an ugly knotted appearance: all five toes are crushed together, and
lose their natural shape, while the last, and often the last but one, is
altogether distorted and deformed. Nor is the mischief confined to the
toes: the whole foot, so seldom exposed to the open air, has a dry,
lean, ill-nourished look. It shows itself the starved captive that it
really is, and, as our modern schools of dancing and eurhythmic have
discovered, the first condition of beauty and of graceful movement is
that the foot should be free.
The Greeks were too sensible and too well aware of the importance of
securing true body poise to deprive of its vitality that part of the
body which is the chief factor in balance, as being the main point of
contact between ourselves and the solid ground. As a result the Greek
foot was in some important respects differently shaped from ours. The
first three toes were longer and were thin and nervous like fingers; the
second toe was often the longest of the three; the fourth and fifth toes
were little used and were usually off the ground, being thus raised by a
pad of firm fleshy tissue, spreading under the foot, on which all
movement centred. The instep was not quite so high as with us, but the
tendon Achilles was finer, the heel considerably smaller and much less
used, for a Greek child was trained to dispense with it as a security
for balance and to keep the centre of gravity over the forward part of
the foot.
All these points of difference are perfectly well known to modern
artists and can be observed in most ancient statues. It rests with
ourselves, if we wish it, to recover the combination of beauty and
strength which the Greek foot possessed; and if the attempt be made it
will be found that it is not impossible even for us soon to approach
with some closeness to that desirable ideal.
Let us suppose then for a moment that our feet are sensibly shod and
that their muscles are properly exercised: let us suppose also that we
have learned enough of the principles of body poise and balance to be
able to ‘stand at ease.’ With the next order ‘Quick march!’ a new series
of difficulties will begin. Correct walking requires that the centre of
gravity of a moving weight should be kept constant over its base, and to
do this the muscles must be in a state of elastic tension. If the
diaphragm is not doing its work, the act of passing the weight of the
body from one foot to another results in an effort to feel forward for a
new base, and movement proceeds in jerks. The way to avoid this jerky
movement is to carry the whole weight forward at the same time as the
advancing foot, and this can only be done if mind and muscle work
together. The essential difference between a soldier’s march, if it be
properly performed, and the civilian’s walk, degenerating into a slouch,
is that the first calls for a definite mental effort; the second is mere
mechanical habit. As soon as men march mechanically they cease to march,
and that is the value of a regimental band: it stimulates the connection
between mind and muscle that centres round our diaphragm.
Unfortunately, very few men know where their diaphragm is, or what
purpose it serves. They think they know the position of their heart and
their liver (although experience on the drill ground shows that they are
generally wrong), but as regards their diaphragm, their ignorance is
even as the night. As they plaintively remark, ‘How should they know?
They have never been taught.’ And that is really the mischief. As
children they were laboriously instructed in the anatomy of the world:
they knew what a promontory and a peninsula were, and could tell you the
names of the principal rivers from China to Peru. But as for the anatomy
of their body they were left in almost complete darkness. Many people
cannot even spell the word diaphragm correctly; the ancient Greeks were
so convinced of the influence of the diaphragm on mental and physical
conditions that in their language the same word ‘phrenes’ stood for
diaphragm and mind. It is a fact that if the diaphragm muscles are
flabby and loose (as with undrilled men they almost invariably are), the
whole mental system becomes infected with the resultant slackness. An
alert mind is only secured by an alert body, and the call, ‘Attention!’
is, in fact, a stimulus to the abdomen muscles, which spring up
vigorously and raise the weight of the body from the centre. A
heightening of vitality and a sense of spiritual power follow as surely
as it did on the ancient hymn--‘Sursum corda’--‘We lift up our hearts
unto the Lord.’
Walking is of all forms of exercise the best for women; but it loses its
value if a woman’s gait is radically wrong. Instead of walking from the
hips, most women walk from the knees: the result is a strut, a shuffle,
a stamp, a shamble, a waddle, or a hobble, never a true walk. To walk
correctly, feet, legs and body must be under control. The feet must be
allowed to keep their proper shape and position, and while the inside
of the foot is used the toes should be planted in a straight line with
the heel, never turned outwards. Uncertain balance produces bent knees,
and one of the first results of a true walk is an increase of beauty in
all the leg muscles, an increase of strength in the knees and in the
deep-set muscles of the lower back. A woman’s knees, which nature meant
to be strong and elastic, are now, with the abdomen, the weakest part of
the female frame. There is nothing that women fear so much as a jump,
and this timidity is purely the result of knee weakness, and the
consequent inability to distribute body weight correctly. In the
interests of health, beauty and comfort, correct walking is essential
for women, and yet not one woman in a thousand would satisfy an expert.