Next to the elaiothesion comes the frigidarium, a term usually denoting the cold bath, but here apparently corresponding to the tepidarium of the Roman baths, a room kept at a moderate temperature, heated if necessary by a brazier, where bathers were oiled and scraped and massaged before or after the bath.^[832] A passage separates this room from the propnigeion, a hot-air chamber connected with the furnace, and adjoining this is the large vaulted sweating-room (concamerata sudatio) which contains the hot-water bath (calda lavatio) and the hot-air bath (laconicum). It is curious to find one of the principal parts of those luxurious hot baths bearing a name which denotes its Spartan origin. Perhaps the Spartans employed this means of reducing weight in training. Exposure to the heat of the sun’s rays was a recognized part of athletic training, and helped to give the skin the rich brown tone which the Greeks so greatly admired. Philostratus in the chapter in which he deals with this point ridicules the use of the sweating-bath (πυριατήριον) and rubbing with oil without a bath (ξηραλοιφεῖν) as parts of the unscientific system of training adopted by the Spartans, the object of which was merely to produce the power of endurance.^[833]

On the other side of the ephebeion are three rooms, the korykeion, the konisterion, and the cold bath. The korykeion can hardly mean anything else than the room of the korykos, or punch-ball. Some writers have objected to this interpretation on the ground that the korykos was not of sufficient importance to have a room especially allotted to its use, and they have therefore suggested that the korykos referred to in this term was not a punch-ball but a basket or string bag, in which visitors to the palaestra brought their luncheon. The explanation is ingenious, but hardly satisfactory. The punch-ball, as we have seen, was known in the fifth century, and is represented on works of art. It was used by boxers and pankratiasts, and, as has been made clear in the first part of this work, boxing and the pankration were by far the most popular events, especially in Hellenistic and Roman times. Hence it is not evident that the korykos was of secondary importance. Moreover, it is a most significant coincidence that the chapter in Philostratus describing the korykos follows immediately on the chapter on the various kinds of konis, and in Vitruvius the korykeion and konisterion are next to one another.

If the above view is correct, the konisterion of Vitruvius is obviously the powdering-room, where athletes powdered themselves before exercise. This powder (κόνις) which they used must not be confused with the lye (κονία) which was used in washing to form a lather. Indeed, its effects were just the opposite; instead of forming a lather with the oil it helped to dry it, and thus counteracted the excessive slipperiness which the oil produced. Its effects on the body were regarded as no less beneficial than those of the oil. It closed the pores of the skin, checked excessive perspiration, and kept the body cool, thus protecting it from chills and rendering it less susceptible to fatigue.^[834] There were also special sorts of powder credited with special virtues.^[835] One of a clayey nature (πηλώδης) was supposed to be particularly cleansing; another resembling brick dust (ὀστρακώδης) produced perspiration in bodies which were over-dry; a third of bituminous character (ἀσφαλτώδης) warmed the skin. Two sorts, a black and a yellow, both of an earthy character, were especially prized for making the body supple and sleek, the yellow in particular imparting to the skin the glossiness which was the sign of good training. The powder was kept in baskets (σπυρίδες). Philostratus describes how it should be applied, thrown on with a supple wrist and the fingers slightly opened so as to fall like fine dust. But these are refinements for the few. The ordinary youth contented himself with the ordinary earth or sand. Lucian in his Anacharsis describes the youths in the court of the gymnasium picking up the sand and throwing it over one another. Sometimes it seems the earth was mixed with water into a sort of mud, and then the simplest plan was to roll in it. Under the Empire a special sort of ointment (κήρωμα) was used, and the term ceroma was applied to part of the palaestra; but the ceroma belongs to Rome, not to Greece.

The gymnasium of Vitruvius occupies an intermediate position between the true Greek gymnasium and the type which was prevalent under the Empire. The prominent feature of the latter is the elaboration of the buildings, especially of those connected with the warm baths. Indeed, as every bath had its court for exercise, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether some particular building was a bathing establishment or a gymnasium. The most familiar example of these later gymnasia is that at Ephesus; but as the plans of it are to be found in every text-book it is unnecessary to discuss it at length. It consists of a rectangular block of buildings some 80 by 100 metres, standing in the centre of a large enclosed court. Of this outer enclosure very few traces are left, and the imaginary restoration of its courts commonly reproduced rests on no other foundation than the desire of early archaeologists to accomplish the absolutely impossible task of reproducing in it all the features of the Vitruvian gymnasium. The central block of buildings, however, which we may call the palaestra, is fairly well preserved, although the identification of most of the rooms is extremely doubtful. Its plan is almost exactly the reverse of the earlier palaestra. Round three sides of the interior, if not all four sides, there runs a vaulted colonnade (cryptoporticus), while the great central courtyard is almost entirely occupied by the hot baths and buildings connected with them, the ancient wrestling ring being reduced to a narrow strip along one side.

The two gymnasia excavated by the Germans at Priene^[836] illustrate the earlier and the later types. The lower gymnasium (Fig. 187) which adjoins the stadium near the south wall of the town appears to have been built between the years 130 and 120 B.C. It is very similar in plan to the Vitruvian palaestra, consisting of a court about 35 metres square surrounded by a colonnade. On the north side, facing south, the colonnade is double, as recommended by Vitruvius. On this side and on the west a number of rooms open into it; on the other two sides there are none. The entrance is in the centre of the west side, and is in the form of an Ionic propylaion. To the north of it is an exedra fitted with stone benches, and in the north-west corner is the Loutron or bathroom, which is in excellent preservation and extremely interesting. Along the north side is placed a row of stone troughs into which water flows from a row of lions’ heads about 3 feet from the ground (Fig. 188). On either side of the doorway in the south wall are remains of stone benches, in front of which are troughs in the floor, so that people could sit there and bathe their feet. There is no trace of any hot baths in this gymnasium. In the centre of the north wall is the ephebeion, a large lofty room, open in front save for two massive pillars. There are stone benches round the walls, the upper part of which was decorated by an elaborate arrangement of half pillars and architraves, on either side of a round arched niche containing a large statue of a draped man. The walls and pillars are covered with names of those who used the hall, usually in the form ὁ τόπος Νέστορος τοῦ Νέστορος, “the place of Nestor, the son of Nestor.” Another large hall at the north-east corner has some traces of shelves, and may have been used as a place for undressing and leaving clothes. The northern side of the gymnasium is cut out of the slope of the hill, and was evidently two-storied. Above the ephebeion seems to have been a large square room cut still farther back into the hill. Perhaps there was an entrance from the street above into this upper story. These upper rooms may have served as class-rooms. In Hellenistic times the gymnasium was often a school where training was given for mind as well as body.

The upper gymnasium at Priene stood in the middle of the town. It was the older of the two, for we learn from an inscription that it already existed at the time when the lower gymnasium was being built. In its original plan it seems to have been very similar; but so many alterations have been made in it, and so much subsequent building has taken place on the site, that we cannot be certain of its details. What is certain is that in Roman times it was provided with hot baths. These baths are referred to in an interesting inscription detailing the services rendered by one Zosimus, who lived perhaps in the first century B.C. “From a desire that every young man might attend the gymnasium for the culture of his body, he had the furnace lighted all through the winter.”^[837]

Zosimus seems to have been an enthusiastic educationalist. Not only did he provide for the physical training and recreation of the young “a punch-ball, and hoops, and also balls and weapons,” he also provided for the students a teacher in literature. He instituted competitions in all accomplishments of mind and body, and showed the most lavish generosity in furnishing oil and unguents in the gymnasium and in the bath, for all visitors to the festivals of Priene. Among the competitions which he instituted were a “squill fight” (σκιλλομαχία), and boxing in clothes (ἐν εἵμασι). For the former he gave a heifer as a prize, while each successful boxer received a golden fillet. The precise meaning of the “squill fight” is uncertain; it was perhaps some sort of ceremonial contest connected with the worship of Pan. The wearing of clothes in boxing was possibly a concession to the Roman prejudice against nudity.

Equally interesting are the extensive remains of the gymnasia at Pergamum recently excavated by the German archaeologists.^[838] These remains belong mostly to the second century A.D., but many traces of earlier buildings survive. Built originally in the second century B.C., or earlier, under the early kings of Pergamum, the gymnasia underwent various modifications and reconstructions in the succeeding centuries, and may be regarded as typical of the gymnasia existing in Hellenistic and Roman times in these rich cities of the East, which, after the loss of Greek independence, became the chief centres of athletic activity. Like the gymnasium at Delphi, they bear witness to the ingenuity of the Greeks in adapting their buildings to the exigencies of the ground, while the magnitude of the work involved is a striking proof of the wealth of the Attalidae. They were built on a series of three terraces cut out of the steep face of the hill above the road which led up to the upper city. The lowest terrace at its western end is some twelve metres above the road, and the other terraces are about the same height above one another. The terraces are supported by numerous retaining walls, strengthened by buttresses and cross walls forming a series of compartments filled up with earth and rubble. Each terrace formed a separate gymnasium, devoted respectively to the use of boys, epheboi, and young men. It seems that there were originally four terraces, corresponding perhaps to the four gymnasia mentioned in an inscription of the time of Attalus III. (146 B.C.).^[839] In the time of Tiberius, Pergamum possessed five gymnasia, and at a later period six, but the site of these additional gymnasia is unknown at present. Elder men, and foreigners too, had the privilege of using the gymnasia. An inscription in honour of Metrodorus,^[840] a gymnasiarchos who lived at the close of the second century B.C., records that besides offering prizes for boys and epheboi he spent a considerable sum in providing “elder men” with “all things necessary for their health.” The generosity of these gymnasiarchoi is frequently recorded in inscriptions. The office seems to have been held by the most distinguished citizens. The general direction of education was in the hands of four Paidonomoi.

The general arrangement of the buildings will be sufficiently clear from the accompanying plan (Fig. 189). The lowest terrace, which was the gymnasium of the boys, consists of a narrow triangle, about 80 metres long and 25 broad at its widest point, divided into two parts by a wall. Its northern side is formed by the retaining wall of the middle terrace, the buttresses of which form niches containing long stone bases on which were placed statues and stelai. One of these stelai contains a list of boys who have passed out into the ranks of the epheboi. The middle terrace forms the gymnasium of the latter. It measures 150 by 36 metres, and contains at its eastern end a small Corinthian temple, the walls of which seem to have been covered with lists of epheboi. The northern side is formed by a long double colonnade, and beyond it to the east a series of rooms, one of which is an exedra open to the front. This double colonnade, which is two metres above the level of the court, seems to have replaced an earlier single colonnade.

The upper terrace is far the most extensive. It contains the gymnasium of the young men, and to the east the thermae or hot baths. This gymnasium is identified on account of its size with what is called in an inscription “The Panegyric Gymnasium,” where doubtless public festivals and competitions were held. It consisted of an open court 36 by 74 metres, surrounded by a Corinthian colonnade of the time of Hadrian, which replaced an earlier Doric building. In front of the pillars are bases on which statues were placed. Numerous rooms opened on to the colonnade, those on the north being especially spacious. One of these, a large hall with an apse at either end, is named by the excavators the Imperial Hall, on account of an inscription which it has on the architrave, “To the Emperors and the Fatherland.” The floor of the court is unpaved, but at the north-east corner is a small circular pavement which may mark the site of a washing-fountain. Along the south side of the gymnasium is a long corridor extending a considerable distance beyond the gymnasium on either side to a total length of 200 metres, which was obviously the xystos or running track, and behind this track are some thirty or more small rooms which may have served as lodgings for competitors. These rooms must have been a late addition; for in the original building there ran underneath the half-open corridor a second vaulted corridor, the windows of which must have been blocked by the later buildings. This covered running track (crypto-porticus) seems originally to have looked out on a fourth terrace dividing the upper and middle terraces, the northern half of which was subsequently occupied by the foundations of the rooms described, while the southern half was dug away so as to form part of the new double colonnade of the middle terrace. From this date the vaulted corridor became useless for athletic purposes. The eastern half of the terrace is occupied by the thermae, with the details of which we are not concerned.

Pending the final publication of the results of the excavations, it is useless to try to determine the uses of the various buildings. Some of these are mentioned in inscriptions. Diodorus, the son of Heroidas,^[841] a distinguished citizen who filled the office of gymnasiarchos about the year 127 B.C., restored the gymnasium of the young men, and repaired the covered colonnade, περίπατος, surrounding the court. Further, finding that the konisterion or dusting-room was quite unworthy of the gymnasium, he built another at his own expense with a marble exedra in front, and rebuilt in marble the cold bath adjoining it. Metrodorus, whom we have already mentioned, placed several public basins (ληνοί) in the bathroom and improved the water-supply. He placed in the sphairisterion two public basins described as λουτῆρας, which seem to have been used to hold oil, and he also made suitable provision for the safe keeping of clothes. In recognition of these gifts his statue was erected in the paradromis of the gymnasium.

Athletics being an essential part of Greek education, the gymnasia were naturally under the control of the various magistrates charged with the education and discipline of the young. The titles and functions of these magistrates and also of the officials who formed the staff of the gymnasia varied considerably at different times and places, and the differences between them are therefore very ill-defined. To discuss them fully is impossible within the limits of this book, nor would it be profitable, most of the details which we know about them belonging to Hellenistic and Roman periods. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a brief general account of the most important of these officials, referring the reader for fuller details to special works dealing with the subject.

The gymnasiarchos^[842] must have been originally the magistrate in charge of the gymnasium, and it can only be an accident that the earliest officials of this name whom we know of, the gymnasiarchoi of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries, had no such general control of the gymnasia and were little more than lampadarchoi, responsible for the training of teams for the various torch-races which were one of the favourite amusements of the Athenian populace. Perhaps the reason for this narrow use of the term was that from the time of Solon, the discipline and education of the young, and consequently the supervision of the gymnasia, was in the hands of a board of ten called sophronistai, while at the close of the fourth century we find a single magistrate, the kosmetes, apparently taking over their functions and exercising supreme control over the epheboi. Hence there was at Athens no room for a special gymnasiarchos such as we find in many Greek states from the third century onwards, and such as must undoubtedly have existed at a much earlier date, if we may trust the obvious meaning of the title.

The gymnasiarchia at Athens was one of the regular leitourgiai or public services exacted from rich citizens for the benefit of the sovereign people. The duty of the gymnasiarchos in early days was to train a team of youths or of boys, or sometimes two teams, for one of the many torch-races. These teams represented the different tribes, each one of which selected a certain number of names of rich tribesmen and submitted them to the King Archon to make the final choice. The selected gymnasiarchos had to collect and train a team, find their instructors, provide oil and torches, and pay for all other expenses. If his team was successful he dedicated a memorial of the victory to the gods, and in return for all his trouble his name figured alone or at the head of his epheboi in the official list of victors, and in records of the victory. He doubtless exercised some authority over the epheboi in his tribe, or at least over those in his team, but had no general control over the public gymnasia.

In Hellenistic and Roman times the gymnasiarchos appears as a sort of minister of education, maintaining discipline among the young, exercising control over the gymnasia, and generally providing out of his own pocket many of the expenses incurred. Sometimes the gymnasiarchia is still a voluntary service. Such was the case at Athens, and in many other states especially in Asia Minor under the Empire. Among the distinguished men who undertook this office we find Marcus Antonius at Athens and at Alexandria, Tiberius and Germanicus at Salamis in Cyprus, Titus at Naples, Hadrian at Eleusis, and, needless to say, Herodes Atticus at Athens. The office was usually held for a year, but was sometimes voluntarily renewed and even continued for life and handed down from father to son. We even hear of women serving as gymnasiarchoi.

Generally in the last three centuries B.C. the gymnasiarchia is not a leitourgia but a public magistracy. The gymnasiarchos is appointed by the assembly and holds office for one year. At Ceos^[843] he has to be over thirty years of age. An inscription from Phintia^[844] tells us that he has charge of the epheboi, the neoteroi, and generally of those who use the gymnasia, and of all business connected with the gymnasia. He is assisted by subordinates, sometimes by a hypogymnasiarchos, sometimes by a paidonomos who looks after the younger boys, sometimes by other gymnasiarchoi responsible for youths of different ages. At Teos^[845] he is charged with the appointment and payment of the hoplomachos and the instructor in the use of the bow and the javelin. He is responsible for the discipline of the young, checks rioting or disorder among them, supervises their education in literature as well as athletics, above all he personally superintends the military training of the epheboi, and organises competitions to test their efficiency, He maintains discipline sometimes with the rod, sometimes by means of fines.

Whether the gymnasiarchia was a leitourgia or a public magistracy it involved considerable expense. The sums allotted by the state for the service of the gymnasia were often ludicrously inadequate, and the gymnasiarchos had usually to supplement them out of his own pocket; often indeed, disdaining to use the public money at all, he provided for all expenses himself. The chief expense was the provision of oil. Even in a small state like Iasos the supply of oil for a single gymnasium cost 450 denarii a month.^[846] During the Empire the number of competitions, and consequently the expenses for oil and other purposes, were multiplied at an extraordinary rate. At Tauromenium the number of competitions rose from twenty-four a year in A.D. 69 to eighty-one in A.D. 92.^[847] Sacrifices, processions, feasts, prizes afforded ample scope to the liberality of the gymnasiarchos, which often took a more permanent form in costly repairs and additions to the buildings of the gymnasia and baths.

The gymnasiarchoi described above must not be confused with the ephebic gymnasiarchoi at Athens, officers elected by the epheboi from their own ranks. The expenses of training were borne to a great extent by the epheboi themselves, and they seem, therefore, often to have elected as captains rich youths who were willing to provide wholly or in part for the public expenses, for any period from a month to a year.

The actual teachers were the paidotribes and the gymnastes. The paidotribes, as his name denotes, was properly the teacher of boys, who trained their bodies as the schoolmaster did their minds; the gymnastes was the trainer of athletes for athletic competitions. This is the original distinction between the two, and though in practice their functions often overlapped, and though in Plato the terms are practically synonymous, the original distinction never entirely disappeared.

The paidotribes existed long before the gymnastes, for athletic exercises formed part of the national education long before the demand for specialised athletic training arose. From the time of Solon education was in the hands of the paidotribes and the schoolmaster.^[848] In most states education was voluntary, and the paidotribai were usually private teachers, who received fees for their services. In the fourth century the fee seems to have been a mina (about £4) for the whole course.^[849] Many of the paidotribai had palaestrae of their own; failing that, they must have taken their pupils to the public palaestrae and gymnasia, which they must in any case have used for such exercises as required more space than could be found in the ordinary palaestra.^[850] Besides those private paidotribai who took pupils from the age of seven upwards, there were others who were paid by the state to superintend the training of the epheboi. At Teos the paidotribes received in the third century 500 drachmae a year.^[851] The training of the epheboi was practical and military and had no connexion with professional athletics, and the paidotribes regularly figures in the ephebic inscriptions down to the latest times.

Thus the paidotribes had charge of boys from their seventh to their twentieth year. But the training which he gave was not of course sufficient for those who aspired to win prizes in the great games. These required special natural abilities and special practice for the development of their natural abilities; and the special practice they required was supplied by the gymnastai.^[852] There was, however, nothing to prevent a successful paidotribes if he possessed the necessary skill and knowledge employing them in training athletes. It was not every one who could afford the services of a champion boxer or wrestler. Further, the paidotribes might also devote himself to medical gymnastics.^[853] Herodicus of Selymbria, the founder of medical gymnastics, is said to be have been a paidotribes who suffered from ill-health, and discovered from personal experience the means of treating disease by diet and exercise. Hence the paidotribes might be also a gymnastes. But such training and such knowledge were really outside his sphere, which was that of the drill sergeant, whose duty it is to teach certain definite movements and exercises to boys of various ages. As athletics became more and more professional, and medical gymnastics developed, the difference between the paidotribes and the gymnastes increased, till in Galen and Philostratus we find the paidotribes subordinated to the gymnastes as the mere drill sergeant to the professor of physical culture. Galen compares them respectively to the cook and the physician.^[854]

The gymnastes can hardly have come into existence much before the beginning of the fifth century.^[855] His work consisted partly in perfecting his pupils in some particular form of athletics, partly in developing their strength and training them into proper condition. The earlier gymnastai, such as those whom we read of in Pindar and Bacchylides, devoted themselves chiefly to practical instruction. They were often themselves successful athletes, especially boxers and wrestlers, who having retired from competition took to teaching, and were doubtless richly rewarded by their patrons. Such was Melesias the trainer of thirty victors in wrestling and the pankration;^[856] Iccus of Tarentum, a winner in the pentathlon at Olympia in Ol. 76, the most celebrated trainer of his day; Dromeus of Stymphalus and Pythagoras of Samos, to whom were attributed the introduction of a meat diet. These trainers, like other teachers, went wherever they could find a market. Menander of Athens trained Pytheas of Aegina to victory.^[857] We cannot for a moment suppose that men like these descended to the work of the ordinary paidotribes, though, as I have suggested, the reverse must often have been the case. It was an age of science, and in the hands of gymnastai and paidotribai there arose in the middle of the fifth century a new science of gymnastic which aimed not at the performance of particular exercises but at the production of certain physical conditions (ἕξις),^[858] especially the condition required for athletic success. Its professors in the fourth century are in ordinary speech called paidotribai, and Isocrates^[859] describes it as a branch of the art of the paidotribes, undoubtedly because so many paidotribai professed it. The new science was closely allied to medicine. The trainer, like the doctor, required some knowledge of diet and the effects on the body of different kinds of food;^[860] he required, too, some knowledge of the body itself, and the effect on it of various exercises; he required, too, to be a judge of the human animal, and to be able to tell in what form of athletics any individual had most chance of excelling, and what particular form of training he required.^[861] The ideal gymnastes, according to Aristotle,^[862] should know what is the ideally best condition for the ideally best man, what is the best for the average man, and what is the best for any particular man. Unfortunately the art of the gymnastes was almost from the first connected with the training of professional athletes, and the condition which they aimed at was that artificial condition required for success in some particular form of athletics. At the same time medical gymnastics was corrupted by the quackery which from the fourth century was rampant in all departments of knowledge.^[863]

There were also other officials connected with the gymnasia. The xystarches was the president of one of those guilds of professional athletes which we find under the Empire. The aleiptes was properly the person who oiled and rubbed people who exercised in the gymnasia. This was part of the work of the paidotribes or the gymnastes, and it is doubtful whether there were special officials for the purpose. In Aristotle aleiptes is merely another name for gymnastes.^[864] In Roman times we find slaves (unctores) performing this work in the public baths, and possibly these existed in the Greek gymnasia. Subordinate officials are also mentioned, the hypopaidotribes or assistant, and others who had charge of the palaestra and its contents, variously described as palaistrophylax, epimeletes, epistates. Besides these there were in Hellenistic times special instructors for special exercises, the sphairistes who taught ball-play, the akontistes and toxotes who gave instruction in the use of the javelin and the bow, and the hoplomachos who gave lessons in the use of arms.

Of the special training prescribed for athletes little is known beyond a few details as to diet which have been noticed in the earlier chapters of this book, and a few other details noticed under the special exercises with which they are connected. There were manuals of athletic training, but all are lost except the late treatise by Philostratus to which we have so often referred. With regard to athletics as a branch of education we are somewhat better informed, and it is instructive to compare the physical training given in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. with the system described by Galen in the second century A.D.

The training given in the earlier period was based on those athletic exercises which at all times formed the programme of Greek athletic meetings. To these we may add ball-play, which is enumerated by Plautus among the exercises which formed a young Greek’s training till the age of twenty.^[865] These exercises were taught progressively, at first the simple movements or positions (σχήματα) separately, then combinations of these movements which involved more exertion.^[866] Many of these movements admitted of being taught to classes as drill to the accompaniment of music. Such drill, especially with halteres, is sometimes represented on vases.^[867] The various holds and throws of wrestling were taught in this way, and we possess on the Oxyrhynchus papyrus, to which we have already referred, a portion of such a wrestling lesson.^[868] Dances could be utilised in the same way: the movements of wrestling were imitated in a dance performed by Spartan boys called the gymnopaidike^[869] just as the movements of war were imitated in the Pyrrhic and other war dances. In the fourth century particular attention was given to exercises of a military character, the use of weapons of all sorts, and riding, but these exercises must have been confined chiefly to older pupils of the age of the epheboi. Proficiency in all the various exercises taught was encouraged by numerous festivals and local competitions where prizes were offered for boys of various ages. The training of teams for the torch-races and choirs for dancing competitions, though not formally a part of the education given by the paidotribes, must have afforded those who took part in them a considerable amount of healthy and agreeable exercise.

Life in this period was spent mostly in the open air, and the formal training of the palaestra was supplemented by hunting, swimming, rowing, and other forms of exercise. Cities in Greece were small, and hunting was as a rule easily obtainable. In Attica, owing to the increase of population and the spread of cultivation, game was scarce, and sport had therefore declined in Xenophon’s time; but the red-figured vases prove its popularity in the fifth century. Swimming and diving were common recreations. Every Greek could swim, and not to know how to swim was as much a sign of an uneducated person as ignorance of letters.^[870] Rowing must also have been a universal accomplishment, at least among the Greeks who lived near the sea; but we know nothing of the teaching of rowing or swimming. Probably the Greek boy taught himself to swim and row or picked it up from his fellows.

Here too the element of competition came in. At Hermione we hear of a competition in diving (or perhaps swimming^[871]), and also boat-races.^[872] We have seen that boat-racing took place at the Isthmia and at various Athenian festivals. There was also a boat-race at the Actian festival in the time of Augustus; and Professor Percy Gardner has shown that there is a possible reference to this contest on the coins of Corcyra and Nicopolis, on which a victorious galley is sometimes represented. The coins suggest a race between galleys such as that described in the Aeneid, but the boats used in the Athenian races were probably not triremes, but small boats with a single bank of oars, tender-boats (ὑπηρετικά) such as always accompanied a fleet. A boat of this description is depicted on a stele in the Museum of Athens of Hellenistic or Roman period (Fig. 190). It is a long narrow boat with a pointed beak in front, and a curved aplustre at the stern, and in it there sit eight oarsmen. There is no sign of the oars. The men are naked and are sitting at ease, and bow, who is the smallest of the crew, holds a palm-branch. The number eight is of course a pure accident. There is no cox in the boat, but on the upper part of the stele are three figures standing, a draped figure in the centre, probably the gymnasiarchos who fitted out and trained the crew, on his left a naked youth bearing a palm, on his right a youth in a chlamys crowning the man in the centre. These two Professor Gardner identifies with the stroke and cox of the victorious crew.

When we come to Galen, we seem to pass from the free and open atmosphere of the playing-field and the country into the artificial air of the town gymnasium. The simple exercises of the earlier period, so inseparably bound up with the lives and habits of the people, have given place to a scientific system of physical training based on the teaching of generations of gymnastai. In his treatise on Health^[873] he describes at length the exercises suited for youths between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. He distinguishes exercises for the legs, the arms, and the trunk. He further classifies exercises into those which exert the muscles and give them tone without violent movement (τὰ εὔτονα), quick movements which promote activity (τὰ τάχεα), and violent exercises (τὰ σφόδρα). As examples of the first class he mentions digging, driving, carrying heavy weights, rope-climbing, and exercises of resistance such as holding the arms extended while another person tries to pull them down. Among quick exercises he enumerates running, sparring, the use of the korykos or punch-ball, ball-play, rolling on the ground “either alone or with others,” an exercise which seems to resemble “tackling” at football, and a variety of leg and arm movements. Many of these movements are well known in our modern physical drill. That known as ἐκπλεθρίζειν is the familiar running figure in which the runner runs in an ever-decreasing circle till he comes to the centre. Another exercise (πιτυλίζειν) consisted in marching on the toes, and at the same time swinging the arms. The leg exercises include jumping up and down, and raising the legs alternately backwards and forwards. The arm exercises are the usual dumb-bell movements performed rapidly without dumb-bells, with the hands either open or clenched. Finally, any of the exercises of the first class may become violent if practised rapidly and without interruption, and quick exercises become so if practised with weights or in heavy armour. Besides prescribing exercises Galen lays down elaborate rules for the time of exercise, and for massage both before and after exercise. The actual teaching of these exercises must have been in the hands of paidotribai, but the direction of the training and the arrangement of the exercises is, according to Galen, the work of the gymnastes, who alone has a scientific knowledge of physical training.

The details of this training are full of interest to the student of education and hygiene. There is, indeed, little in our modern systems of physical education which he will not find anticipated in Greek medical writings. We do not know how far Galen’s principles were ever carried into practice, though we may suspect that it was only in the case of individuals, and that they had little influence on the nation. But of this we may be certain, that physical training did not, and could not, do for Galen’s contemporaries what athletics had done for their ancestors. Nor can physical training ever take the place of our own games. For it lacks the element of competition and cannot inspire. There is no antagonism between the two. Both are valuable, but their spheres are different. Physical training is a branch of education—a most important branch, and one hitherto shamefully neglected in England—and it must therefore be carried out under discipline: it is a matter of compulsion. Athletics and games are, or ought to be, a matter of free choice, and compulsion tends to kill the spirit of joy which is their essence. Physical training develops the body and imparts habits of discipline, but it cannot impart those still higher qualities, courage, endurance, self-control, courtesy, qualities which are developed by our own games, or by such manly sports as boxing and wrestling when conducted in the true spirit of friendly rivalry: it cannot teach boys “to play the game” in the battle of life; it could never have inspired the poetry of Pindar, or the art of Myron.