The Afternoon at the Gymnasia.
137. The Gymnasia. Places of General Resort.—The market is thinning
after a busy day; the swarms of farmer-hucksters with their weary asses
are trudging homeward; the schoolrooms are emptying; the dicasteries or
the Ecclesia, as the case may be, have adjourned. Even the slave
artisans in the factories are allowed to slacken work. The sun, a ball
of glowing fire, is slowly sinking to westward over the slopes of
Ægaleos; the rock of the Acropolis is glowing as if in flame; intense
purple tints are creeping over all the landscape. The day is waning,
and all Athenians who can possibly find leisure are heading towards the
suburbs for a walk, a talk, and refreshment of soul and body at the
several Gymnasia.
Besides various establishments and small “wrestling schools” for the
boys, there are three great public Gymnasia at Athens,—the Lyceum to
the east of the town; the Cynosarges[*] to the southward; and last, but
at all least, the Academy. This is the handsomest, the most famous,
the most characteristic. We shall do well to visit it.
[*] The Cynosarges was the only one of these freely opened to such
Athenians as had non-Athenian mothers. The other two were reserved for
the strictly “full citizens.”
138. The Road to the Academy.—We go out toward the northwest of the
city, plunging soon into a labyrinth of garden walls, fragrant with the
fruit and blossoms within, wander amid dark olive groves where the
solemn leaves of the sacred trees are talking sweetly; and presently
mount a knoll by some suburban farm buildings, then look back to find
that slight as is the elevation, here is a view of marvelous beauty
across the city, the Acropolis, and the guardian mountains. From the
rustling ivy coverts come the melodious notes of birds. We are glad to
learn that this is the suburb of Colonus, the home of Sophocles the
tragedian, and here is the very spot made famous in the renowned chorus
of his _Œdipous at Colonus_. It is too early, of course, to enjoy the
nightingale which the poet asserts sings often amid the branches, but
the scene is one of marvelous charm. We are not come, however, to
admire Colonus. The numerous strollers indicate our direction.
Turning a little to the south, we see, embowered amid the olive groves
which line the unseen stream of the Cephissos, a wall, and once beyond
it find ourselves in a kind of spacious park combined with an athletic
establishment. This is the Academy,—founded by Hipparchus, son of
Peisistratus the tyrant, but given its real embellishments and beauty
by Cimon, the son of Militiades the victor of Marathon.
139. The Academy.—The Academy is worthy of the visit. The park itself
is covered with olive trees and more graceful plane trees. The grass
beneath us is soft and delightful to the bare foot (and nearly
everybody, we observe, has taken off his sandals). There are marble and
bronze statues skillfully distributed amid the shrubbery—shy nymphs,
peeping fauns, bold satyrs. Yonder is a spouting fountain surmounted by
a noble Poseidon with his trident; above the next fountain rides the
ocean car of Amphitrite. Presently we come to a series of low
buildings. Entering, we find them laid out in a quadrangle with
porticoes on every side, somewhat like the promenades around the Agora.
Inside the promenades open a series of ample rooms for the use of
professional athletes during stormy weather, and for the inevitable
bathing and anointing with oil which will follow all exercise. This
great square court formed by the “gymnasium” proper is swarming with
interesting humanity, but we pass it hastily in order to depart by an
exit on the inner side and discover a second more conventionally laid
out park. Here to right and to left are short stretches of soft sand
divided into convenient sections for wrestling, for quoit hurling, for
javelin casting, and for jumping; but a loud shout and cheering soon
draw us onward. At the end of this park we find the stadium; a great
oval track, 600 feet (a _stadium_) for the half circuit, with benches
and all the paraphernalia for a foot race. The first contests have just
ended. The racers are standing, panting after their exertions, but
their friends are talking vehemently. Out in the sand, near the statue
of Hermes (the patron god of gymnasia) is a dignified and
self-conscious looking man in a purple edged chiton—the gymnasiarch,
the official manager of the Academy. While he waits to organize a
second race we can study the visitors and habitués of the gymnasium.
140. The Social Atmosphere and Human Types at the Academy.—What the
Pnyx is to the political life of Athens, this the Academy and the other
great gymnasia are to its social and intellectual as well as its
physical life. Here in daily intercourse, whether in friendly contest
of speed or brawn, or in the more valuable contest of wits, the youth
of Athens complete their education after escaping from the rod of the
schoolmaster. Here they have daily lessons on the mottoes, which (did
such a thing exist) should be blazoned on the coat of arms of Greece,
as the summing up of all Hellenic wisdom:—
“Know thyself,”
and again:—
“Be moderate.”
Precept, example, and experience teach these truths at the gymnasia of
Athens. Indeed, on days when the Ecclesia is not in session, when no
war is raging, and they are not busy with a lawsuit, many Athenians
will spend almost the whole day at the Academy. For whatever are your
interests, here you are likely to find something to engross you.
It must be confessed that not everybody at the Academy comes here for
physical or mental improvement. We see a little group squatting and
gesticulating earnestly under an old olive tree—they are obviously
busy, not with philosophic theory, but with dice. Again, two young men
pass us presenting a curious spectacle. They are handsomely dressed and
over handsomely scented, but each carries carefully under each arm a
small cock; and from time to time they are halted by fiends who admire
the birds. Clearly these worthies’ main interests are in cockfighting;
and they are giving their favorites “air and exercise” before the
deadly battle, on which there is much betting, at the supper party that
night. Also the shouting and rumbling from a distance tells of the
chariot course, where the sons of the more wealthy or pretentious
families are lessening their patrimonies by training a “two” or a
“four” to contend at the Isthmian games or at Olympia.
141. Philosophers and Cultivated Men at the Gymnasia.—All these things
are true, and Athens makes full display here of the usual crop of
knaves or fools. Nevertheless this element is in the minority. Here a
little earlier or a little later than our visit (for just now he is in
Sicily) one could see Plato himself—walking under the shade trees and
expounding to a little trailing host of eager-eyed disciples the
fundamental theories of his ideal Commonwealth. Here are scores of
serious bearded faces, and heads sprinkled with gray, moving to and fro
in small groups, discussing in melodious Attic the philosophy, the
poetry, the oration, which has been partly considered in the Agora this
morning, and which will be further discussed at the symposium to-night.
Everything is entirely informal. Even white-haired gentlemen do not
hesitate to cast off chiton and himation and spring around nimbly upon
the sands, to “try their distance” with the quoits, or show the young
men that they have not forgotten accuracy with the javelin, or even,
against men of their own age, to test their sinews in a mild wrestling
bout. It is undignified for an old man to attempt feats beyond his
advanced years. No one expects any great proficiency from most of
those present. It is enough to attempt gracefully, and to laugh
merrily if you do not succeed. Everywhere there is the greatest good
nature, and even frolicking, but very little of the really boisterous.
142. The Beautiful Youths at the Academy.—Yet the majority of the
visitors to the Academy have an interest that is not entirely summed up
in proper athletics, or in the baser sports, or in philosophy. Every
now and then a little whisper runs among the groups of strollers or
athlete “There he goes!—a new one! How beautiful!”—and there is a
general turning of heads.
A youth goes by, his body quite stripped, and delicately bronzed by
constant exposure to the sun. His limbs are graceful, but vigorous and
straight, his chest is magnificently curved. He lifts his head
modestly, yet with a proud and easy carriage. His hair is dark blonde;
his profile very “Greek”—nose and forehead joining in unbroken straight
line. A little crowd is following him; a more favored comrade, a
stalwart, bearded man, walks at his side. No need of questioning now
whence the sculptors of Athens get their inspiration. This happy
youth, just out of the schoolroom, and now to be enrolled as an armed
ephebus, will be the model soon for some immortal bronze or marble.
Fortunate is he, if his humility is not ruined by all the admiration
and flattery; if he can remember the injunctions touching “modesty,”
which master and father have repeated so long; if he can remember the
precept that true beauty of body can go only with true beauty of soul.
Now at least is his day of hidden or conscious pride. All Athens is
commending him. He is the reigning toast, like the “belle” of a later
age. Not the groundlings only, but the poets, rhetoricians,
philosophers, will gaze after him, seek an introduction, compliment him
delicately, give themselves the pleasure of making him blush
deliciously, and go back to their august problems unconsciously
stimulated and refreshed by this vision of “the godlike.”[*]
[*]For pertinent commentary on the effect of meeting a beautiful youth
upon very grave men, see, _e.g._, Plato’s _Charmides_ (esp. 158 a) and
_Lysis_ (esp. 206 d). Or better still in Xenophon’s _Symposium_ (I.9),
where we hear of the beautiful youth Autolycus, “even as a bright light
at night draws every eye, so by _his_ beauty drew on him the gaze of
all the company [at the banquet]. Not a man was present who did not
feel his emotions stirred by the sight of him.”
143. The Greek Worship of Manly Beauty.—The Greek worship of the
beautiful masculine form is something which the later world will never
understand. In this worship there is too often a coarseness, a sensual
dross, over which a veil is wisely cast. But the great fact of this
worship remains: to the vast majority of Greeks “beauty” does not imply
a delicate maid clad in snowy drapery; it implies a perfectly shaped,
bronzed, and developed youth, standing forth in his undraped manhood
for some hard athletic battle. This ideal possesses the national life,
and effects the entire Greek civilization. Not beauty in innocent
weakness, but beauty in resourceful strength—before this beauty men bow
down.[*]
[*] Plato (_Republic_, p. 402) gives the view of enlightened Greek
opinion when he states “There can be no fairer spectacle than that of a
man who combines the possession of _moral_ beauty in his soul, with
_outward_ beauty of body, corresponding and harmonizing with the
former, because the same great pattern enters into both.”
It is this masculine type of beauty, whether summed up in a physical
form or translated by imagery into the realm of the spirit, that
Isocrates (a very good mouthpiece for average enlightened opinion)
praises in language which strains even his facile rhetoric. “[Beauty]
is the first of all things in majesty, honor, and divineness. Nothing
devoid of beauty is prized; the admiration of virtue itself comes to
this, that of all manifestations of life, virtue is the most beautiful.
The supremacy of beauty over all things can be seen in our own
disposition toward it, and toward them. Other things we merely seek to
attain as we need them, but beautiful things inspire us with love,
_love_ which is as much stronger than _wish_ as its object is better.
To the beautiful alone, as to the gods, we are never tired of doing
homage; delighting to be their slaves rather than to be the rulers of
others.”
Could we put to all the heterogeneous crowd in the wide gymnasium the
question, “What things do you desire most?” the answer “To be
physically beautiful” (not “handsome” merely, but “beautiful”) would
come among the first wishes. There is a little song, very popular and
very Greek. It tells most of the story.
The best of gifts to mortal man is health;
The next the bloom of beauty’s matchless flower;
The third is blameless and unfraudful wealth;
The fourth with friends to spend youths’ joyous hour.[*]
[*] Translation by Milman. The exact date of this Greek poem is
uncertain, but its spirit is entirely true to that of Athens in the
time of this sketch.
Health and physical beauty thus go before wealth and the passions of
friendship,—a true Greek estimate!
144. The Detestation of Old Age.—Again, we are quick to learn that
this “beauty” is the beauty of youth. It is useless to talk to an
Athenian of a “beautiful old age.” Old age is an evil to be borne with
dignity, with resignation if needs be, to be fought against by every
kind of bodily exercise; but to take satisfaction in it?—impossible.
It means a diminishing of those keen powers of physical and
intellectual enjoyment which are so much to every normal Athenian. It
means becoming feeble, and worse than feeble, ridiculous. The
physician’s art has not advanced so far as to prevent the frequent loss
of sight and hearing in even moderate age. No hope of a future renewal
of noble youth in a happier world gilds the just man’s sunset. Old age
must, like the untimely passing of loved ones, be endured in becoming
silence, as one of the fixed inevitables; but it is gloomy work to
pretend to find it cheerful. Only the young can find life truly happy.
Euripides in _The Mad Heracles_ speaks for all his race:—
Tell me not of the Asian tyrant,
Or of palaces plenished with gold;
For such bliss I am not an aspirant,
If _youth_ I might only behold:—
Youth that maketh prosperity higher,
And ever adversity lighter.[*]
[*] Mahaffy, translator. Another very characteristic lament for the
passing of youth is left us by the early elegiac poet Mimnermus.
145. The Greeks unite Moral and Physical Beauty.—But here at the
Academy, this spirit of beautiful youth, and the “joy of life,” is
everywhere dominant. All around us are the beautiful bodies of young
men engaged in every kind of graceful exercise. When we question, we
are told that current belief is that in a great majority of instances
there is a development and a symmetry of mind corresponding to the
glory of the body. It is contrary to all the prevalent notions of the
reign of “divine harmony” to have it otherwise. The gods abhor all
gross contradictions! Even now men will argue over a strange breach of
this rule;—why did heaven suffer Socrates to have so beautiful a soul
set in so ugly a body?—Inscrutable are the ways of Zeus!
However, we have generalized and wandered enough. The Academy is a
place of superabounding activities. Let us try to comprehend some of
them.
146. The Usual Gymnastic Sports and their Objects.—Despite all the
training in polite conversation which young men are supposed to receive
at the gymnasium, the object of the latter is after all to form places
of athletic exercise. The Athenians are without most of these
elaborate field games such as later ages will call “baseball” and
“football”; although, once learned, they could surely excel in these
prodigiously. They have a simple “catch” with balls, but it hardly
rises above the level of a children’s pastime. The reasons for these
omissions are probably, first, because so much time is devoted to the
“palæstra” exercises; secondly, because military training eats up about
all the time not needed for pure gymnastics.
The “palæstra” exercises, taught first at the boys’ training
establishments and later continued at the great gymnasia, are nearly
all of the nature of latter-day “field sports.” They do not depend on
the costly apparatus of the twentieth century athletic halls; and they
accomplish their ends with extremely simple means. The aim of the
instructor is really twofold—to give his pupils a body fit and apt for
war (and we have seen that to be a citizen usually implies being a
hoplite), and to develop a body beautiful to the eye and efficient for
civil life. The naturally beautiful youth can be made more beautiful;
the naturally homely youth can be made at least passable under the care
of a skilful gymnastic teacher.
147. Professional Athletes: the Pancration.—Athletics, then, are a
means to an end and should not be tainted with professionalism. True,
as we wander about the Academy we see heavy and over brawny individuals
whose “beauty” consists in flattened noses, mutilated ears, and mouths
lacking many teeth, and who are taking their way to the remote quarter
where boxing is permitted. Here they will wind hard bull’s hide thongs
around their hands and wrists, and pummel one another brutally, often
indeed (if in a set contest) to the very risk of life. These men are
obviously professional athletes who, after appearing with some success
at the “Nemea,” are in training for the impending “Pythia” at Delphi.
A large crowd of youths of the less select kind follows and cheers
them; but the better public opinion frowns on them. They are denounced
by the philosophers. Their lives no less than their bodies “are not
beautiful”—_i.e._ they offend against the spirit of harmony inherent in
every Greek. Still less are they in genteel favor when, the
preliminary boxing round being finished, they put off their boxing
thongs and join in the fierce _Pancration_, a not unskillful
combination of boxing with wrestling, in which it is not suffered to
strike with the knotted fist, but in which, nevertheless, a terrible
blow can be given with the bent fingers. Kicking, hitting, catching,
tripping, they strive together mid the “_Euge! Euge!_—Bravo! Bravo!” of
their admirers until one is beaten down hopelessly upon the sand, and
the contest ends without harm. Had it been a real Pancration, however,
it would have been desperate business, for it is quite permissible to
twist an opponent’s wrist, and even to break his fingers, to make him
give up the contest. Therefore it is not surprising that the
Pancration, even more than boxing, is usually reserved for professional
athletes.
148. Leaping Contests.—But near at hand is a more pleasing contest.
Youths of the ephebus age are practicing leaping. They have no
springboard, no leaping pole, but only a pair of curved metal
dumb-bells to aid them. One after another their lithe brown bodies,
shining with the fresh olive oil, come forward on a lightning run up
the little mound of earth, then fly gracefully out across the soft
sands. There is much shouting and good-natured rivalry. As each lad
leaps, an eager attendant marks his distance with a line drawn by the
pickaxe. The lines gradually extend ever farther from the mound. The
rivalry is keen. Finally, there is one leap that far exceeds the
rest.[*] A merry crowd swarms around the blushing victor. A grave
middle-aged man takes the ivy crown from his head, and puts it upon the
happy youth. “Your father will take joy in you,” he says as the knot
breaks up.
[*] If the data of the ancients are to be believed, the Greeks achieved
records in leaping far beyond those of any modern athletes, but it is
impossible to rely on data of this kind.
149. Quoit Hurling.—Close by the leapers is another stretch of yellow
sand reserved for the quoit throwers. The contestants here are
slightly older,—stalwart young men who seem, as they fling the heavy
bronze discus, to be reaching out eagerly into the fullness of life and
fortune before them. Very graceful are the attitudes. Here it was the
sculptor Miron saw his “Discobolus” which he immortalized and gave to
all the later world; “stooping down to take aim, his body turned in the
direction of the hand which holds the quoit, one knee slightly bent as
though he meant to vary the posture and to rise with the throw.”[*]
The caster, however, does not make his attempt standing. He takes a
short run, and then the whole of his splendid body seems to spring
together with the cast.
[*] The quotation is from Lucian (Roman Imperial period).
150. Casting the javelin.—The range of the quoit hurlers in turn seems
very great, but we cannot delay to await the issue. Still elsewhere in
the Academy they are hurling the javelin. Here is a real martial
exercise, and patriotism as well as natural athletic spirit urges young
men to excel. the long light lances are being whirled at a distant
target with remarkable accuracy; and well they may, for every
contestant has the vision of some hour when he may stand on the poop of
a trireme and hear the dread call, “All hands repel boarders,” or need
all his darts to break up the rush of a pursuing band of hoplites.
151. Wrestling.—The real crowds, however, are around the wrestlers and
the racers. Wrestling in its less brutal form is in great favor. It
brings into play all the muscles of a man; it tests his resources both
of mind and body finely. It is excellent for a youth and it fights
away old age. The Greek language is full of words and allusions taken
from the wrestler’s art. The palæstras for the boys are called “the
wrestling school” par excellence. It is no wonder that now the ring on
the sands is a dense one and constantly growing. Two skilful amateurs
will wrestle. One—a speedy rumor tells us—is, earlier and later in the
day, a rising comic poet; the other is not infrequently heard on the
Bema. Just at present, however, they have forgotten anapests and
oratory. A crowd of cheering, jesting friends thrusts them on. Forth
they stand, two handsome, powerful men, well oiled for suppleness, but
also sprinkled with fine sand to make it possible to get a fair grip in
the contest.
For a moment they wag their sharp black beards at each other defiantly,
and poise and edge around. Then the poet, more daring, rushes in, and
instantly the two have grappled—each clutching the other’s left wrist
in his right hand. The struggle that follows is hot and even, until a
lucky thrust from the orator’s foot lands the poet in a sprawling heap;
whence he rises with a ferocious grin and renews the contest. The
second time they both fall together. “A tie!” calls the long-gowned
friend who acts as umpire, with an officious flourish of his cane.
The third time the poet catches the orator trickily under the thigh,
and fairly tears him to the ground; but at the fourth meeting the
orator slips his arm in decisive grip about his opponent’s wrist and
with a might wrench upsets him.
“Two casts out of three, and victory!”
Everybody laughs good-naturedly. The poet and the orator go away arm in
arm to the bathing house, there to have another good oiling and rubbing
down by their slaves, after removing the heavily caked sand from their
skin with the strigils. Of course, had it been a real contest in the
“greater games,” the outcome might have been more serious for the rules
allow one to twist a wrist, to thrust an arm or foot into the foeman’s
belly, or (when things are desperate) to dash your forehead—bull
fashion—against your opponent’s brow, in the hope that his skull will
prove weaker than yours.
152. Foot Races.—The continued noise from the stadium indicates that
the races are still running; and we find time to go thither. The simple
running match, a straight-away dash of 600 feet, seems to have been the
original contest at the Olympic games ere these were developed into a
famous and complicated festival; and the runner still is counted among
the favorites of Greek athletics. As we sit upon the convenient benches
around the academy stadium we see at once that the track is far from
being a hard, well-rolled “cinder path”; on the contrary, it is of soft
sand into which the naked foot sinks if planted too firmly, and upon it
the most adept “hard-track” runner would at first pant and flounder
helplessly. The Greeks have several kinds of foot races, but none that
are very short. The shortest is the simple _stadium_ (600 feet), a
straight hard dash down one side of the long oval; then there is the
“double course” (_diaulos_) down one side and back; the “horse
race”—twice clear around (2400 feet); and lastly the hard-testing “long
course” (_dolichos_) which may very in length according to
arrangement,—seven, twelve, twenty, or even twenty-four stadia, we are
told; and it is the last (about three miles) that is one of the most
difficult contests at Olympia.
[Illustration: The Race in Armor]
At this moment a party of four hale and hearty men still in the young
prime are about to compete in the “double race.” They come forward all
rubbed with the glistening oil, and crouch at the starting point behind
the red cord held by two attendants. The gymnasiarch stands watchfully
by, swinging his cane to smite painfully whoever, in over eagerness,
breaks away before the signal. All is ready; at his nod the rope
falls. The four fly away together, pressing their elbows close to
their sides, and going over the soft sands with long rhythmic leaps,
rather than with the usual rapid running motion. A fierce race it is,
amid much exhortation from friends and shouting. At length, as so
often—when speeding back towards the stretched cord,—the rearmost
runner suddenly gathers amazing speed, and, flying with prodigious
leaps ahead of his rivals, is easily the victor. His friends are at
once about him, and we hear the busy tongues advising, “You must surely
race at the Pythia; the Olympia; etc.”
This simple race over, a second quickly follows: five heavy, powerful
men this time, but they are to run in full hoplite’s armor—the
ponderous shield, helmet, cuirass, and greaves. This is the exacting
“Armor Race” (_Hoplitodromos_), and safe only for experienced soldiers
or professional athletes.[*] Indeed, the Greeks take all their foot
races seriously, and there are plenty of instances when the victor has
sped up to the goal, and then dropped dead before the applauding
stadium. There are no stop watches in the Academy; we do not know the
records of the present or of more famous runners; yet one may be
certain that the “time” made, considering the very soft sand, has been
exceedingly fast.
[*] It was training in races like these which enabled the Athenians at
Marathon to “charge the Persians on the run” (Miltiades’ orders), all
armored though they were, and so get quickly through the terrible zone
of the Persian arrow fire.
153. The Pentathlon: the Honors paid to Great Athletes.—We have now
seen average specimens of all the usual athletic sports of the Greeks.
Any good authority will tell us, however, that a truly capable athlete
will not try to specialize so much in any one kind of contest that he
cannot do justice to the others. As an all around well-trained man he
will try to excel in the _Pentathlon_, the “five contests.” Herein he
will successfully join in running, javelin casting, quoit throwing,
leaping, and wrestling.[*] As the contest proceeds the weaker athletes
will be eliminated; only the two fittest will be left for the final
trial of strength and skill. Fortunate indeed is “he who overcometh”
in the Pentathlon. It is the crown of athletic victories, involving, as
it does, no scanty prowess both of body and mind. The victor in the
Pentathlon at one of the great Pan-Hellenic games (Olympian, Pythian,
Isthmian, or Nemean) or even in the local Attic contest at the
Panathenæa is a marked man around Athens or any other Greek city.
Poets celebrate him; youths dog his heels and try to imitate him; his
kinsfolk take on airs; very likely he is rewarded as a public
benefactor by the government. But there is abundant honor for one who
has triumphed in ANY of the great contests; and even as we go out we
see people pointing to a bent old man and saying, “Yes; he won the
quoit hurling at the Nema when Ithycles was archon.”[+]
[*] The exact order of these contests, and the rules of elimination as
the games proceeded, are uncertain—perhaps they varied with time and
place.
[+] This would make it 398 B.C. The Athenians dated their years by the
name of their “first Archon” (_Archon eponymos_).
…The Academy is already thinning. The beautiful youths and their
admiring “lovers” have gone homeward. The last race has been run. We
must hasten if we would not be late to some select symposium. The birds
are more melodious than ever around Colonus; the red and golden glow
upon the Acropolis is beginning to fade; the night is sowing the stars;
and through the light air of a glorious evening we speed back to the
city.