The athletes of the second century must at least be credited with a certain amount of brute strength, but in the generation which succeeded Galen even their strength fell off, if we may believe the statement of Philostratus, who wrote in the first half of the third century. His work on the art of gymnastic reads like an answer to Galen’s attack on athletics, and is marked by a strong bias against the medical profession, whom he holds responsible for enervating athletics by the introduction of ridiculous and effeminate rules of diet.^[281] By gymnastic, he understands the art of training athletes, which in opposition to Galen he describes as an art inferior to no other and akin to the arts of the doctor and paidotribes. The latter is concerned merely with actual exercises and movements, while the trainer requires a knowledge of the human body which may enable him to prescribe in each case the diet and training necessary to correct any defect. Thus the gymnastes cures by exercise and massage diseases for which the doctor employs potions, plasters, and fomentations. The decline in the athlete’s physique Philostratus ascribes to a vicious system of training due in the first instance to the quackery of doctors. The valetudinarianism of the second century had produced, as it always does, a host of impostors with quack systems and rules for health, some of which were imported into athletics. Medicine, says Philostratus, has pampered athletics, and rendered athletes dainty and luxurious. They are told to remain seated, stuffed with food, for a long time before taking exercise. Their diet consists of seasoned breads, of fish, and pork. Different kinds of fish are credited with different qualities; their pork must come from pigs fed only on cornel nuts and acorns and not reared in the neighbourhood of the sea or of rivers. We all know this sort of fad; our own age has produced by the score systems no less absurd. The inventors of such systems always insist that their patients must follow their rules without deviating from them a hairbreadth. So the Greek trainers developed hard-and-fast systems of training which they applied indifferently to all alike, to boys as well as men, without any regard to the individual’s needs. Boys trained on the same principles as men lost all the buoyancy and activity natural to their age and became lazy, heavy, and sluggish. The most absurd of these systems was that known as the Tetrad, a scheme of work for four days, by which the athlete’s life was regulated. Each day had its own work. The first day’s work, consisting of light and quick movements, “prepared” the athlete; the second “extended” him and tested all his powers of endurance; the third “relaxed” him by means of gentle movements; the fourth, consisting apparently of movements of defence, left him in a middle state.

Such is the somewhat obscure account given of the tetrad.^[282] It was intended clearly for pankratiasts and boxers who practically formed the whole class of professional athletes. The principle of the gradual increase and diminution of work on which it is founded is absolutely sound, and is one of the essential principles of the “Ling” system of physical training. The fault lay in the ignorant and pedantic application of the principle. No deviation from its routine was permitted, and no account was taken of the individual’s actual condition. Philostratus tells a story of a contemporary athlete, Gerenius, who three days after winning an Olympic victory celebrated his success by a banquet at which he ate and drank things to which he was not accustomed. The next day, suffering from indigestion and want of sleep, he repaired to the gymnasium as usual, and being put through a more than usually severe course of exercise by his irritated trainer, actually died under the treatment. The tetrads, says Philostratus, have ruined all athletic training; and the purpose of his book is to show the absurdity of such artificial systems, and by introducing sounder principles of athletics to restore the glory of the stadium. The main principle which he inculcates is the necessity of a thorough knowledge of the human body, and of suiting the training to the individual’s requirements. He discusses at length the various physical qualities which are best for different sports,—the qualities of the boxer, the wrestler, or the runner,—and gives a fanciful classification of the different types of athletes, the lion type, the eagle type, the bear type, the plank type, the rope type! He has a profound reverence for the traditions of Olympia, and regards the Eleans as the sole repositories of athletic lore, accepting all that they tell him with childlike simplicity. With much common sense he mingles an amount of rhetoric and fancifulness such as we should expect from the credulous biographer of Apollonius of Tyana, which seriously diminishes the practical value of his work.^[283]

With Philostratus our history draws to a close. The Olympic records of Africanus end with Ol. 249 (A.D. 217); the last victor recorded on Olympic Inscriptions is the herald Valerius Eclectus of Sinope, who won the heralds’ competition in Ol. 256 and the three succeeding Olympiads; the lists of Olympic officials cease almost at the same time. The Roman empire was now engaged in a desperate struggle with hordes of invading Goths, and in the struggle the Greeks were once more called upon to fight for their country. The Goths were repulsed, but the silence which ensues tells but too clearly of the effects of their ravages. The end was close at hand. Hitherto the Greeks had preserved some semblance of political liberty; but the policy of centralization and unification introduced by Constantine stamped out the last vestiges of the city state. The ancient festivals of Greece were the stronghold of paganism, and therefore recognized as the greatest obstacle of Christianity, now adopted as the Imperial religion. Delphi was dismantled by Constantine, and its treasures removed to adorn his new-built Hippodrome at Constantinople, and in the time of Julian its site was desolate. The Olympic festival was abolished by the emperor Theodosius, though whether by Theodosius I. or Theodosius II. is not certain. The generally received tradition is that it was abolished in 393 by Theodosius I. The emperor had set himself to sweep away all vestiges of paganism, but in 390 he had incurred the displeasure of the all-powerful St. Ambrose by his cruel massacre of the Thessalonians, and had been forced to do public penance for his sin. Was the edict that abolished the Olympia a token of his new-born zeal for righteousness? Be this as it may, the last Olympic victor whose name we know was the Armenian prince Varazdates, who won the boxing-match in Ol. 291 (A.D. 385). Varazdates traced his descent from the Arsacidae, and was subsequently placed by Theodosius on the throne of Armenia. There is a pathetic irony in the circumstance that, at the festival linked beyond all others with the cause of Hellenism at war with barbarism, the last-recorded victor came not from Hellas but from the land of her hereditary foes.