Man’s earliest endeavor to perfect the body, discipline the mind, and mold the character of the young by means of selected forms of physical activity and special regimen could doubtless be traced back to a prehistoric age. The study of ancient customs of China and India, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the Persians, and the Hebrews might also yield some curious facts. But if one’s purpose is to follow the evolution of modern forms of physical education in Europe and America and to note the significant contributions and modifications introduced at various stages, it is sufficient to begin with Greece as it was in the century and a half whose middle point is the year of Salamis and Thermopylæ (480 B.C.). There we find “gymnastics” generally adopted as a necessary part of education, provision everywhere made for the exercise of youths and grown men in establishments supported and administered by the state, great national festivals at which the chief attractions were contests in physical prowess, and at a later day sculptors able to reproduce from the types presented to them in the gymnasia ideal human figures which have never been excelled in beauty.

Several things must be borne in mind when one thinks of Greece in the period of the Persian Wars. It was not a nation in the modern sense of a political unit with a central government and circumscribed territory, but a group of independent states and cities in European Greece, on the islands of the Ægean Sea, along the west coast of Asia Minor, and wherever else the Greek language was spoken by persons who felt the tie of a common descent, common religious beliefs, and common customs.

These customs, furthermore, were not uniform. For example, education embraced two subjects of instruction and training, gymnastics and “music.” The former reached primarily the body and the will; the latter, which included literary studies as well as music in the narrower sense, affected the intellect and the emotions. Sparta, surrounded by an unfriendly and subject people, was little more than an organized camp, in which self-preservation required a form of training designed to mold every citizen into the best possible weapon of defense. Individual welfare was therefore strictly subordinated to that of the community. Education was viewed as a function of the state, and physical hardihood, skilful use of weapons, self-reliant courage, and iron discipline were developed by a type of education which was chiefly gymnastic and military. Literary training was neglected, and music, in the form of religious and patriotic hymns, war songs, and ballads recounting the deeds of heroes, was valued solely for its stimulating effects. At Athens, on the other hand, we find a much broader type of education, which came more and more to dominate the practice of her sister states and cities. Complete and harmonious development of the individual was the object sought, and the schools were private affairs, over which the state exercised nothing more than police supervision. Gymnastics was hardly less essential than at Sparta, but literary training occupied a prominent place, and music was esteemed for its refining influence on character and its contribution to social enjoyment.

A third point to be noted is that whatever may be said of Greek education applies to free citizens only, and hence takes no account of slaves and the foreign-born, who made up possibly as much as three-fourths of the total population—at least in the case of the larger cities. And even within these limits it is usually boys alone for whom provision was made.

Turning first to physical education at Sparta, the earlier type, we find that the state began its efforts to secure a sound body of citizens by carefully regulating the life of the women, and formed an exception to the statement just made in that it prescribed for girls a course of gymnastic exercise. There was need of vigorous mothers for the sturdy race which public welfare demanded. As a further precaution, the new-born infant was brought before a council of old men, whose decision whether or not he should be raised was based upon his physical condition and promise, and was final. The first six years were passed in the home, but at the age of seven the boy was taken away from his parents, to be placed in public quarters. Here he slept and ate in company with a large number of other boys, and shared with them a common discipline at the hands of state officials who shaped every detail with reference to his future career as a citizen-warrior. He spent the night in a room open to the sky, without the luxury of bedclothes, on a pallet of hay or straw, exchanged when he was older for one of rushes which he had gathered himself along the river banks. He went summer and winter clad in a single scanty garment, unshod, bare-headed and with close-cropped hair. The food, of the plainest sort, was hardly sufficient to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The amount might be eked out by theft, however, but with the understanding that anyone so indiscreet or maladroit as to be detected in the act would receive prompt and severe punishment. Indeed, the rod and lash were freely applied, by public officers or by any offended citizen, upon the least provocation, and as a necessary part of the regular discipline, since it accustomed the future soldier to the endurance of pain. There were even what might be considered periodical tests of this capacity to endure, for at one of the annual festivals the flogging of youths was an essential feature, often carried to the drawing of blood, it is said. Like the Indian under torture, the victim was expected to give no signs of suffering.

For the gymnastic instruction which occupied the greater part of their time the boys were arranged in squads or “packs” according to age, and these in turn were combined into companies. Each division had its young leader, chosen on the score of ability and longer experience, but all were subject to the direction of special state officers. The course of training included practice in wrestling, running, jumping, throwing the javelin and the discus, marching in time to music, together with other military exercises, swimming in the Eurotas, riding on horseback, hunting, and certain rough games. There was also practice in choral dances, for use on religious occasions, and in the war dance, representing the movements of attack and defense. This latter, the so-called Pyrrhic dance, was sometimes executed in armor, and by whole companies moving together in rhythm to the accompaniment of music. Occasional public exhibitions and contests acted as incentives to improvement and furnished opportunity to test it, satisfying at the same time the general fondness for such displays.

With the advent of his eighteenth year the youth left the common training quarters of the boys and entered upon a second stage of discipline. During the next two years his preparation took more and more the form of scouting in outlying districts of the state, and might involve actual warfare. His understanding had been matured meanwhile by constant intercourse with grown men in the affairs of daily public life.

Not much is known of the training imposed upon the Spartan girls; but it included both gymnastics and music, and among the exercises practised were running, jumping, throwing the spear and the discus, dancing, swimming, and even wrestling.

In Athens, as at Sparta, weak, deformed or sickly infants were sometimes put out of the way (“exposed”), but in this case the decision rested with the father. Here, too, the first six years were spent at home, under the charge of the women of the household. The play of childhood took most often the form of active exercise and games, and in the list of amusements, under the thin disguise of strange names, we discover many varieties which have survived to the present day with undiminished popularity: The small box of metal or wood containing stones which rattled when it was shaken; hobby-horses, swinging and seesaw, walking on stilts, trundling hoops, kite-flying; spinning tops, whipping the humming top, and a game resembling our peg-top, but played with sharpened sticks; shooting or tossing smooth stones or nuts and the like, as in some of our modern games with marbles; tossing up and catching jackstones, in the shape of pebbles or small bones; making flat stones skip along the surface of the water, various exercises and games with balls, hide-and-seek, blindman’s buff, games like our drop-the-handkerchief, and others in which sides were chosen and one side then chased its opponents in the attempt to make them prisoners. Besides a share in the less violent of these sports, the little girls had, of course, their dolls, made of clay or wax and sometimes painted. They seldom left the women’s quarters, but acquired there whatever training was considered necessary for their later life.

The school age for the boy began with his seventh year. Custom required that each son of a free citizen should be given instruction in gymnastics and music, but beyond keeping an eye on the morals of teachers and the conduct of their charges the state did not concern itself with education. It rested with the parent alone to decide how much schooling his boy should receive, and the schools were in all cases private institutions, supported by the fees of pupils. The status of the teacher was not an exalted one—the pay was small, and the position was often the last resort of the unsuccessful. We may be certain, therefore, that the results of education, even at Athens, too often fell far short of the exalted ideal cherished by many of her foremost citizens. The general features of the system are sufficiently clear, but many details of instruction, including the amount of time devoted to different branches, and the age at which they were begun, remain to be discovered. The literary training comprised reading and committing to memory selections from the poets, especially Homer and Hesiod, writing, and the elements of arithmetic. For musical training there was practice not only in singing selections from the great lyric poets, but also in the use of stringed instruments—the seven-stringed lyre, or the later cithara—as an accompaniment to the voice. The flute, as an instrument for ordinary use, was held in less esteem.

Games and gymnastics, however, seem to have occupied the larger part of the boy’s time. The private school where these were practised was known as a palæstra, a name derived from the Greek word for wrestling. The exercises must have been given out of doors originally, and whatever structures were used for them in later times can hardly have contained more than an open court for wrestling, with one or more small rooms adjoining, where clothing might be laid aside or put on and where oil and sand were kept, and some provision for bathing in case there was no stream close at hand. No clothing of any sort was worn during the exercises. These seem to have included most of the forms practised in later life—running, the broad jump with and without weights in the hands, throwing the javelin and the discus for distance, and above all, wrestling, besides the rudiments of boxing, and a form of the pancratium, a struggle which combined certain features of both boxing and wrestling with others of its own.⁠[1] Mention is also made of simple exercises to develop correct carriage and a graceful step in walking, and it is said that the art of swimming was early acquired, and that games, especially those in which the ball was used, were by no means forgotten. Dancing, at least in its more advanced forms, was not a regular subject of instruction at Athens, but was left to choral bands which received special training for their appearance before the public on festal occasions.

Upon reaching the age of eighteen the youth, now known as an ephebe, passed under state control for a two-year period of discipline comparable to the enforced military service in modern continental Europe. He first took a solemn oath of allegiance, and was then sent to join the garrisons at the neighboring harbor of the Piræus, for training in the use of weapons and the performance of a soldier’s duties. At the end of the first year he received from the state a shield and spear, and might now be employed at other garrison ports or as a frontier patrol. Hunting afforded additional preparation for active warfare. Meanwhile the former gymnastic exercises were continued, but for these, instead of visiting the palæstra, he now joined the grown men in the city gymnasia. The ephebes were conspicuous figures in the numerous local festivals held at Athens, taking part in processions like that represented on the frieze of the Parthenon, and in various athletic events. Aside from this later gymnastic and military training there was no higher education in Greece until the rise of the sophists, or professional lecturers on rhetoric and philosophy, after the middle of the fifth century before Christ.

The Greek gymnasium, unlike the palæstra, was intended for ephebes and for grown men who had finished their schooling. It was a state institution maintained at public expense and administered by public magistrates and other functionaries. Structures of this sort began to be built, or, more properly, laid out, as early as the sixth or seventh century before Christ, and by the end of the fifth century B.C. there was probably no important Greek town, at home or in the colonies, that did not possess at least one of them. Almost any open spot would serve the purpose at the start, but, as population increased and civilization advanced, buildings of special design became necessary, and these grew in size and splendor with the addition of new features from time to time. Exact information with regard to the different parts and their arrangement is almost wholly lacking for the period under review. Descriptions which have come down to us, and the remains discovered at Olympia, Delphi, and other places belong to later centuries. The same general plan seems to have been followed, however, but with considerable variation in details. Originally, we may suppose, as in the case of the palæstra, there was only an open space for wrestling, running, and the other exercises, and surrounding or adjoining this covered colonnades, into which various rooms opened. The essential features at a later stage seem to have included, besides this spacious court or course and its colonnades, a room where clothing might be taken off and left, others for the oil with which visitors rubbed the body before exercising, and for the dust or fine sand with which the wrestlers were then sprinkled, and some sort of baths, either basins set on high supports, or running water issuing from outlets under which one might stand, as in a modern shower-bath. Before washing himself the gymnast removed the oil, sand, and dirt from his body with a scraper of metal, bone, or reed, hollowed out somewhat like a spoon and furnished with a handle, but concave along one edge. Some provision was usually made for playing at ball and for running under cover, in addition to the open spaces intended for wrestling, running, and throwing the discus and the javelin. The whole might be enclosed in spacious grounds, as was the case with the three ancient gymnasia outside the walls of Athens, and these were laid out like public parks, shaded with trees and planted with shrubs and flowering plants, watered by streams or fountains, and further adorned with statues of favorite gods, legendary heroes, and eminent citizens.

The position of general superintendent of the gymnasium was one of great dignity. Other officials were charged with enforcing good order and decorous behavior, and there was a variety of trainers and servants who gave assistance in one way or another. Like the boys in the palæstra, those who were about to exercise stripped themselves entirely naked before commencing—a practice which must have stimulated each to make himself an object worth beholding, and gave to the sculptor unparalleled opportunities for study of the human body in action and repose. Among the favorite occupations were running, wrestling, the broad jump with stone or metal weights in the hands, throwing the heavy stone or metal discus for distance, and throwing the javelin by means of a leather thong wound about it near the center and ending in a loop for one or two fingers. The javelins commonly used in practice were blunt rods about a man’s height in length, and thrown for distance more often than at a mark. A combination of these five exercises, known as the pentathlon, or five-fold contest, furnished a popular form of gymnastic competition. Another exceedingly popular sport was boxing, with the knuckles protected by long, thin, leather thongs wrapped about the hand and wrist, and there was also the pancratium, a sort of rough-and-tumble fight reduced to orderly form. In this the hands were left bare, and the struggle was continued until one of the contestants acknowledged himself defeated.

Besides answering the original purpose for which they were laid out, the gymnasia came to be more and more the centers of Greek social and intellectual life, a gathering place of citizens for conversation and amusement which combined some of the features of a modern clubhouse with those of a city park. Philosophers and rhetoricians found a general audience or met their special pupils there, and thus it happened that each of the three great gymnasia at Athens became associated with a particular school of philosophy—the Academy, on the banks of the river Cephissus about a mile to the northwest of the city walls, with Plato, whose followers assembled in a small garden which he owned within the enclosure, and were therefore dubbed the “Academic sect;” the Lyceum with Aristotle, whose favorite walk was here, whence he and his disciples were known as “Peripatetics;” and the Cynosarges with the school of the Cynics, or followers of Antisthenes, who frequented that spot. It is these later and secondary uses of the gymnasium that alone give significance to such modern words as the German gymnasium and the French lycée (secondary schools), and to our own “academy” and “lyceum.”

The most striking illustration of the important place accorded to physical training among the Greeks is found in their great national festivals. The very beginnings of recorded history show that in every town there were periodic religious festivals, where sacrifices to some hero or divinity were followed by feasting, dancing, choral songs to the accompaniment of the lyre or the flute, and exhibitions of bodily agility, strength, and skill in the form of competitive exercises. Gradually, in the case of certain localities, the importance and attractiveness of the festival increased and the circle from which visitors were drawn grew wider, until four of them, all in or near the Peloponnesus, finally developed into national occasions—first and foremost of the number, and as far back as the end of the eighth or very early in the seventh century before Christ, that held at Olympia, and in the first half of the sixth century before Christ three others, the Pythia, the Nemea, and the Isthmia. During three centuries in particular, from 600 to 300 B.C., the service they rendered as common centers of interest, binding together the politically distinct members of the Greek race in the parent land and in the far-scattered colonies that dotted the borders of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, was of the greatest value.

Olympia lies in a plain near the western limits of the Peloponnesus, about ten miles from the Ionian Sea. The sacred enclosure, some ten acres in extent, contained a grove in the center of which stood a great altar to Zeus, and near it his temple, wherein was a wonderful statue of the god in ivory and gold, the most famous work of Phidias and one of the greatest triumphs of Greek sculpture. Besides other temples, there were numerous altars, votive offerings, statues of gods, heroes, and victors in the games, and treasure houses erected by cities which had sent gifts to the shrine. Just outside the enclosure, to the east, were the stadium and the hippodrome. The stadium, to which most of the contests seem to have been transferred after the middle of the fifth century B.C., was at first merely a stretch of level ground overlooked from the north by spectators who stood or sat on the slope of the Hill of Cronus. Afterwards an artificial embankment was raised along the opposite side and straight across the ends of a parallelogram, completely enclosing it, so that 40,000 persons or more might find standing-room, but no permanent seats. Modern excavations have allowed exact measurements of the race course, from the starting to the finish line, and it is found to be just 192.27 m., or a trifle over 210 yards in length. No trace remains of the neighboring hippodrome, intended for chariot races, but it is supposed to have resembled the stadium in general plan, although much longer. A gymnasium, to the northwest of the enclosure, belongs to a much later date.

The festival was held at intervals of four years, at the time of the second or third full moon after the summer solstice, coming therefore in the late summer. During the lunar month in which it occurred a truce of the god was observed throughout Greece. For an armed force to set foot on the soil of the district of Elis within that period, or for anyone to do violence to travellers on their way to or from Olympia, was considered sacrilege. Heralds were sent to announce the coming celebration through all the states of Greece and to carry the news to the Greek colonies which had been established on the islands of the Ægean Sea, in southwestern Italy and Sicily, and along the shores of the Black Sea and the coast of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Gaul, and Spain. From the whole of this wide area deputations and private citizens made their way to the sacred spot. It was essentially a Greek gathering, though many foreigners were doubtless present in the throng, and except the priestess of Demeter, who occupied a conspicuous seat in the stadium, no women were allowed to view the exercises.

In the games which followed the sacrifices on the altar of Zeus none but free-born Greek citizens, of pure Hellenic descent and untainted by civil or religious crime, were allowed to have a share. Each contestant had passed through a long period of preliminary training, the last thirty days of which were spent in the gymnasia at Elis, thirty miles away to the northwest, or in later years the one at Olympia itself. Originally a single day had sufficed for the festival, but from time to time, as the occasion grew in importance, new features were added until finally the program required five days for its completion. Interest centered chiefly on the competitive exercises, which consumed the greater part of the time. The list of these varied in the course of years, with the addition or dropping out of one item or another, but in general they included the foot race—a single course (210 yards), or down and back, or back and forth a number of times, or a race in armor; the pentathlon; wrestling; boxing and the pancratium; races between men on horseback; and the chariot race, commonly with four horses, less frequently with two. As far back as the seventh century B.C. separate contests for boys in running, the pentathlon, wrestling, and boxing were introduced.

So much importance was attached to the games in the popular mind, and the fame of the winner spread so widely over the Hellenic world, that to wear the victor’s wreath on such an occasion became one of the highest honors a Greek could covet. At first the prizes offered possessed intrinsic value; but as victory became more and more a sufficient recompense in itself, they were restricted to the simple crown of sacred wild olive, placed upon the brow of the successful athlete. There were other rewards than this, however. In recognition of the honor done to them the citizens of the victor’s town sometimes received him with extraordinary demonstrations. It might be that, clad in purple, he entered the gates in a chariot drawn by white horses, and made his way through singing and cheering throngs to hang his wreath as an offering in the principal temple. We even hear of city walls torn down to make a passage, as though where such a citizen dwelt there was no need of other defense. The choral ode which greeted him might have been composed for the occasion by lyric poets like Pindar and Bacchylides.⁠[2] His statue would be set up in the home city, or placed within the sacred enclosure at Olympia. He was perhaps granted a seat of honor in the theater, and provided with board at the public table for the rest of his life. Solon, at Athens, is said to have offered five hundred drachmæ to an Olympian victor, and one hundred in the case of other national festivals.

At Olympia the gymnastic competitions were the only ones. There were many among the visitors, however, who did not fail to take advantage of the great crowds to advance some private interest. Historians, philosophers and rhetoricians, poets, painters, and sculptors found listeners and patrons. The occasion was also one of commercial interchange, like the great fairs of the middle ages, or the religious gatherings at Mecca and Medina. To other proofs of the wide influence exerted by the games are to be added the facts that the length of the race course in the stadium at Olympia was adopted as the standard unit for measuring distances, and that in the third century before Christ Greek historians began generally to employ as a unit of time the Olympiad, or four-year period including one celebration and extending to the next, designating each by the name of the victor in the foot-race at its particular festival. The first recorded Olympic festival was held in 776 B.C., and they were not finally abolished till 394 A.D.—a period of 293 Olympiads.

Next to the Olympic festival in importance was the Pythia, in honor of Apollo, celebrated near the famous shrine of the god at Delphi, a few miles north of the Corinthian Gulf. It was quadrennial, like its greater rival, falling in the third year of each Olympiad. In the case of the two remaining national festivals the contests took place at intervals of only two years. The Nemea, in honor of Zeus, was held in Argolis, in a valley near Cleonæ where there was a grove containing a temple of the god. The Isthmia was celebrated on the isthmus of Corinth, in a grove of pines sacred to Poseidon. They fell in the second and fourth years of the Olympiad, one occurring in the summer and the other in the following spring. A general truce of the gods was observed during the progress of all three of these festivals. Unlike the Olympia, they added musical and literary competitions to the usual gymnastic contests and chariot races. The victor’s reward, at first substantial, was afterwards reduced to a wreath of sacred laurel at the Pythia, and to one of wild celery (“parsley”) at the Nemea and the Isthmia, replaced at the latter by one of pine in later times.