De Gymnastica

Let us count as wisdom such things as these: to pursue philosophy and to speak with skill, to take up poetry and music and geometry and, by Zeus, astronomy too, so far as it is not excessive; and wisdom too is the marshalling of an army, and further such things as the whole of medicine and painting, and the modelling of figures and the various forms of statuary, and the cutting of gems and the engraving of iron. But as for the menial crafts, however many there are, let a skill be granted to them by which some tool or implement may be rightly produced; but let the name of wisdom be reserved for those alone which I have named. I make an exception of the helmsman among the menial trades, since he understands the stars and the winds and lays hold of things unseen. The purpose for which I have said all this will be shown; but concerning gymnastics, let us declare it a wisdom inferior to no other art, so that it may be set down in treatises for those who wish to train. For the gymnastics of old produced men like Milo and Hipposthenes, like Polydamas and Promachus and Glaucus the son of Demylus, and the athletes still before these, Peleus surely and Theseus and Heracles himself; the gymnastics of our fathers' time knew lesser men, yet men still admirable and worthy of remembrance; but the gymnastics now established has so altered the condition of athletes that the many are weary even of those who love athletics.

It seems good to me, then, to teach the causes through which these things have declined, to contribute to trainers and trainees all that I know, and to make a defence on behalf of Nature, who is ill spoken of because the athletes of today fall far short of those of old. For Nature still rears lions, and they are no whit baser now; the same holds of dogs and horses and bulls; and as for what belongs to her among trees, the vines are still alike and the gifts of the fig-tree; in gold and silver and gems nothing has changed, but, as she herself decreed, she produces all things like to those of former times. As for athletes, none of the excellences they once possessed has been taken from them by Nature, for she still brings forth men spirited, well-formed, and quick-witted, since these are gifts of nature; but training that is not sound, and practice that is not vigorous, has robbed Nature of her own mastery. How these things came about I shall show later; but first let us examine the origins of running and boxing and wrestling and the like, and from what each began and from whom. The practice of the Eleans will everywhere lie beside us as a standard, for such matters must be set forth from the most exact authorities.

Now of all contests the light events are these: the stade-race, the long-distance race, the race in armour, the double-stade, the jump, the javelin; the heavier are the pancratium, wrestling, boxing, the discus. The pentathlon was compounded of both: for in wrestling and discus-throwing its men are heavy, while in javelin-throwing, jumping, and running they are light. Now before the time of Jason and Peleus the jump was crowned by itself and the discus by itself, and the javelin sufficed for victory in the days when the Argo sailed; Telamon threw the discus best, Lynceus hurled the javelin, the sons of Boreas ran and jumped, and Peleus was second in these but surpassed all in wrestling. So when they held their contest in Lemnos, they say that Jason, to favour Peleus, joined the five events together, and that Peleus thus gathered the victory and was reckoned the most warlike of the men of his time, both through the valour he showed in battle and through his practice of the five events, which is so warlike a thing that men even hurl the javelin among its contests.

The cause of the long-distance race was this: runner-heralds used to come from Arcadia into Greece as messengers of matters of war, and it was forbidden them to ride, but they had to perform the course by their own labour. Thus the constant running, within a short part of the day, of as many stades as the long course contains, made the runner-heralds long-distance runners and trained them for war.

The stade-race was discovered thus. When the Eleans had sacrificed all that is their custom, the offerings lay upon the altar, but fire was not yet set to them. The runners stood a stade away from the altar, and before it stood a priest acting as umpire with a torch, and the one who won, having kindled the offerings, departed an Olympic victor.

And since the Eleans had sacrificed, the envoys of all the Greeks too had to sacrifice; and that their coming might not be idle, the runners ran a stade from the altar, as though summoning all Greece, and turned back again to the same point as though announcing that Greece would come rejoicing. So much, then, concerning the double-stade.

The races in armour are of various kinds, and especially those at Nemea, which they call the races in full armour and the cavalry-races, and these are dedicated to the Seven who fought with Tydeus. As for the Olympic race in armour, the Eleans say it was instituted for this reason: the Eleans had joined battle with the Dymaeans, a war so truceless that not even the Olympic festival was a season of truce; and when they were victorious, on the very day of the games, a man-at-arms is said to have run from the field of battle into the stadium, bringing the good news of the victory. These things are plausible; but I hear the same told by the Delphians, since they made war upon certain of the Phocian cities, and by the Argives, since they were worn down in continual war with the Lacedaemonians, and by the Corinthians, since they made war both within the Peloponnese and beyond the boundaries of the Isthmus. But concerning the race in armour I hold a different view. For I say that it was indeed instituted from a warlike cause, but that the runners come forward into the contests to mark the beginning of war, the shield signifying that the truce is ended and that arms are now required. And if you do not listen carelessly to the herald, you observe how at the end of all the games he proclaims that the steward of the contest brings it to a close, and that the trumpet sounds the call of Enyalius, summoning the young men to arms. This proclamation also bids them take up the oil and carry it off somewhere out of the way, not as though they were going to anoint themselves, but as having ceased from anointing.

The man-at-arms of Boeotia and Plataea was reckoned the best, both because of the length of the course and because of the armour, which reached to the feet and covered the athlete as though he were actually fighting, and because it commemorated the glorious deed against the Medes, and because the Greeks instituted these games against the barbarians; and further because of the law laid down for those about to compete, as Plataea has it: for a man already crowned among them, if he should compete again, had to provide sureties for his person, since death was the penalty appointed for the one defeated.

Boxing was a Laconian invention, and it once came among the barbarian Bebryces; and Polydeuces used it best, whence the poets sang of him from this. The ancient Lacedaemonians boxed for the following reason. The Lacedaemonians had no helmets, nor did they think it native to their land to fight under them, but the shield served instead of a helmet for the man who bore it with skill. Therefore, that they might both guard against blows to the face and endure them when struck, they practised boxing and trained themselves thus to protect their faces. But as they advanced, they gave up boxing and the pancratium alike, thinking it shameful to compete in contests in which, if a single man gave in, Sparta might be reproached as not high of spirit.

The ancient boxing-glove was armed in this fashion: the four fingers were inserted into a band, and they projected beyond the band only so far as, when closed, to form a fist; they were held together by a thong, which was thrown back from the forearm to serve as a support. But now this has changed, for they tan the hides of the fattest oxen and work them into a boxing-thong, sharp and striking out in advance; and the thumb does not join the fingers in striking, for the sake of measure in the wounds, that the whole hand may not fight. Hence they exclude from the stadia the thongs made from swine, holding the blows from these to be painful and hard to heal.

That wrestling and the pancratium were discovered as suited to war is shown first by the deed at Marathon, which was fought out by the Athenians so closely that it seemed near to wrestling, this being a feature of the action; and secondly by the deed at Thermopylae, when the Lacedaemonians, their swords and spears broken, achieved much with their bare hands. Of all things in athletic contest the pancratium has been honoured above all, though it is compounded of imperfect wrestling and imperfect boxing; and it has been honoured among others; for the Eleans have reckoned wrestling a strong and grievous thing, after the manner of the poets, not only on account of the intricacies of the holds, which require a body supple and pliant, but also because a man must compete three times in the preliminary contest, since so many falls are required. At any rate, holding it a terrible thing to crown an athlete in the pancratium or in boxing without his having had a contest, they do not turn the wrestler away, since the law declares that such a victory may be conceded only to the rounded and toilsome contest of wrestling. And the reason for which the law so ordains is at least clear to me: for, although to compete at Olympia is a hard thing, it seems harder still to train there. The light athletes train: the long-distance runner runs some eight or ten stades, the pentathlete some one of the three events, the runners the double-stade or the stade or both; what is hard in such things? Nothing; for the manner of their training is the same, whether the Eleans train them or others. But the heavier athlete is trained by the Eleans at the season of the year when the sun most scorches the mud in the hollow of Arcadia; he endures dust hotter than the sand of the Ethiopians, and holds out from midday onwards. And of these men, who are so sorely tried, the most laborious are the wrestlers. For the boxer, when the moment of the stadium comes, will be wounded and will wound and will set his foot against his opponent's shins, but in training he will show only a shadow of the contest; and the pancratiast will compete in every manner that belongs to the pancratium, but in training he practises now one thing, now another; but in wrestling the action is the same in the preliminary trial and in the contest itself. For wrestling gives proof of all that a man knows and all that he can do; and rightly is it called rounded, for even the upright form of wrestling is rounded; whence the Eleans crown the most thoroughly trained, and crown him for his training alone.

They say that these events did not all enter the games at once, but that one after another was discovered and brought to perfection by gymnastics. For in ancient times the Olympic games consisted of the stade-race alone down to the thirteenth Olympiad, and in them three Eleans won, and seven Messenians, a Corinthian, a Dymaean, a Cleonaean, each in a different Olympiad, but no one man twice. In the fourteenth the double-stade began, and the victory in it fell to Hypenus of Elis. In the Olympiad after that came the contest of the long course, and Acanthus of Sparta won. The eighteenth Olympiad introduced the men's pentathlon and the men's wrestling; in wrestling Eurybatus of Lusi won, in the five events Lampis the Laconian; though some write Eurybatus too as a Spartan. The twenty-third Olympiad now called for a man as boxer, and Onomastus of Smyrna prevailed, inscribing Smyrna with a fair achievement; for all the cities of Ionia and Lydia, and along the Hellespont and in Phrygia, and all the nations of men that are in Asia, all these together Smyrna surpassed, and was the first to obtain an Olympic crown. And this athlete wrote the laws of boxing, which the Eleans used because of the man's wisdom; nor were the Arcadians vexed that one come from luxurious Ionia had written for them the laws of their contests. In the thirty-third Olympiad the pancratium was instituted, and Lygdamis of Syracuse won. So great a man was this Sicilian that his foot was a cubit's length; at any rate he is said to have measured the stadium with as many of his own feet as the stadium is reckoned to have cubits.

They say that the boys' pentathlon also entered there in the thirty-eighth Olympiad, when Eutelidas the Lacedaemonian won, but that this event was no longer contested by boys at Olympia. The boy who won the boys' stade-race in the forty-sixth Olympiad—for then it was first instituted—was a handsome boy, Polymestor of Miletus, who by the swiftness of his feet outran a hare. As for the boys' boxing, some say it began in the forty-first Olympiad, and that Philytas of Sybaris won; others place it in the sixtieth and name Crius of the island of Ceos. Damaretus, in the sixty-fifth, is said to have been the first to win the race in armour, a Heraean, I believe. In the one hundred and forty-fifth Olympiad they enrolled a boy pancratiast, having, I do not know for what reason, been slow to conceive of him, though he was already in good repute among others; for it was late among the Olympiads, when Egypt was already being crowned, that he began, and that victory too belonged to an Egyptian; at any rate Naucratis was proclaimed when Phaedimus the Egyptian won. These things, I think, would not have entered the games thus one by one, nor would they ever have been pursued earnestly by the Eleans and by all the Greeks, if gymnastics had not advanced and practised them. For indeed the very victories of the athletes belong no less to the trainers than to the athletes.

What, then, must one understand concerning gymnastics? What else than to reckon it a wisdom compounded of medicine and of the art of the trainer, more complete than the one and a part of the other? How far it shares in both I shall make clear. The trainer will show what forms of holds there are, suggesting the right moments and the impulses and the measures, and how a man may either guard himself or, when guarding, overcome his opponent; and the gymnastic master too will teach the athlete these things, even when he does not yet know them. But there are occasions when one must handle wrestling or the pancratium well, or escape or strike out some advantage held by an opponent—none of which would come into the gymnastic master's mind unless he knew also the things belonging to the trainers. In this respect the two arts are equal; but to purge the humours, to remove what is superfluous, to smooth what has grown hard, to fatten something or change it or warm it—these belong to the wisdom of gymnastics. For these things the trainer either will not understand, or, if he knows something of them, he will use it ill upon the boys, torturing the freedom of unmixed blood. By so much, then, is gymnastics more complete than the aforesaid art; while with regard to medicine it stands thus: diseases such as we name catarrhs and dropsies and consumptions, and all the so-called sacred maladies, the physicians cure by pouring on something, or washing out, or applying plasters; but gymnastics restrains such things by regimen and by rubbing. But a man who has burst something, or is wounded, or whose sight in his eyes is clouded, or who has dislocated one of his joints, must be carried to a physician, since gymnastics is of no avail against such things.

Sufficiently, I think, I have shown how gymnastics stands in relation to each of the two sciences; and I seem to see in it this further point as well. No one man could comprehend the whole of medicine, but one understands ruptures, another fevers, another diseases of the eyes, another consumptions, all soundly; and though it is a great thing to accomplish even some small part of it rightly, the physicians say that he who does so knows the whole. But no one could profess the whole of gymnastics at once; for he who knows the events of running will not understand those of the wrestlers and pancratiasts, and he who trains the heavier athletes will lay hold of the rest of the science only without skill.

Such, then, is the share of wisdom in the art; but its origin is the natural fitness of man to wrestle, to box, and to run upright. For not one of such things could come to be unless that for the sake of which it comes to be already existed; and just as the origin of the smith's art is iron and bronze, and of agriculture the earth and the things from the earth, and of seafaring the existence of the sea, so let us hold that gymnastics too is most akin to man and grew up with him. And there is a tale that is sung, that gymnastics did not yet exist, but Prometheus existed, and Prometheus first trained himself; and Hermes in turn trained others, admired him for his discovery, and the first wrestling-school became Hermes'; and that the men moulded from clay by Prometheus were really these men who trained in the clay, whom they supposed to be moulded by Prometheus, since gymnastics made their bodies fit and well-compacted.

At Pytho and the Isthmus and wherever in the world contests were established, the trainer, wrapped in his cloak, anoints the athlete, and no one strips him against his will; but at Olympia he stands naked. According to the opinion of some, the Eleans put the trainer to the test by the season of the year, to see whether he can endure and be scorched; but according to what the Eleans say, there was Pherenice the Rhodian, daughter of Diagoras the boxer; and Pherenice was so strong in spirit that the Eleans at first took her for a man. At any rate she went about under a cloak at Olympia and trained her own son Peisirodus. Now he too was a boxer, skilful in the art and in no way inferior to his grandfather. But when they perceived the deceit, they shrank from putting Pherenice to death, mindful of Diagoras and the sons of Diagoras—for the house of Pherenice were all Olympic victors—but a law was enacted that the trainer must strip, and that he too should not go untested by them.

The trainer carries a strigil there, perhaps for this reason: the athlete at Olympia must of necessity be powdered in the wrestling-school and exposed to the sun; therefore, lest they spoil their condition, the strigil reminds the athlete of oil and declares that he must apply it so freely that, having anointed himself, he may also scrape it off. And there are some who say that a trainer at Olympia killed with a sharpened strigil an athlete who would not hold out for victory; and I grant the tale, for it is better to believe it than to disbelieve it. Let the strigil, then, be a sword against the base among athletes, and let the trainer at Olympia have some authority above the Hellanodikes.

The Lacedaemonians wished their trainers to know tactics also, holding both the practice of warlike exercises and the contests themselves to be one thing; and one need not wonder, since the Lacedaemonians referred even the dance—the most leisurely of the things of peace—wholly to warlike ends, dancing in a manner by which one may guard against a missile, or hurl it, or be lifted from the ground and use the shield handily.

Of all that trainers have contributed to athletes, whether by exhorting, or by rebuking, or by threatening, or by cunning, the instances are many and beyond telling; but let the more noteworthy be told. Glaucus the Carystian boxer, then, who was being given up for lost at Olympia to his opponent, Tisias the trainer led to victory by exhorting him to deliver "the blow from the plough"—and this was the bringing down of the right hand upon the opponent; for Glaucus was so strong in that hand that once in Euboea he straightened a ploughshare that had been bent, striking it like a hammer with his right hand.

Arrhachion the pancratiast, who had already won two Olympiads and was contending for the crown in a third after those, and was now on the point of giving in, Eryxias the trainer roused to a love of death by crying out from outside that to die at Olympia was a fair burial rather than to give in.

The trainer perceived that Promachus of Pellene was in love; and the Olympic games being near, he said, "Promachus, you seem to me to be in love"; and when he saw him blush, he said, "I did not ask this to expose you, but to help you in your love; for I might even speak with the woman on your behalf." And having spoken, he came to the athlete bringing a report that was not true, but most precious to the lover: "She does not think you unworthy," he said, "to be among her darlings, if you win at Olympia." And Promachus, taking breath again at what he heard, not only won, but also overcame Polydamas of Scotussa, after the lions which Polydamas had slain at the court of Ochus the Persian.

From Mandrogenes of Magnesia I myself heard the endurance which he had shown in his youth in the pancratium, attributed to his trainer. For he said that his father was dead, and that the household rested upon his mother, a vigorous woman and beyond what is usual for a woman; and that the trainer wrote to her a letter of this kind: "If you hear that your son is dead, believe it; but if that he is defeated, do not believe it." And he said that, admiring this letter, his mother displayed all courage, so that neither did the trainer prove false nor was the mother deceived.

Attalus the Egyptian won at Plataea his second prize when the trainer encouraged him, though there was a law among them that he who was defeated after a victory should be publicly put to death and be reckoned excluded, unless he had first provided sureties for his person. And when no one would guarantee so great a thing, the trainer pledged himself to the law and encouraged the athlete to a second victory; for to men who intend to undertake a greater task it is, I think, a thing full of good hope not to be distrusted.

But since a crowd of such tales flows in, while we mingle new things with old, let us consider the trainer himself—what manner of man he should be and how much he should know in order to stand over the athlete. Let the trainer be neither a babbler nor untrained in his tongue, so that neither may the efficacy of the art be relaxed by chatter, nor may it appear too boorish, being done without reason; and let him have studied the whole science of physiognomy. This I enjoin for the following reason. A boy athlete a Hellanodikes or an Amphictyon judges by such things as these: whether he has a tribe and a fatherland, whether a father and a family, whether he is of free birth and not base-born, and above all whether he is young and not past boyhood. But whether he is self-controlled or uncontrolled, whether he is a drunkard, whether a glutton, whether bold or cowardly, they neither know, nor, if they did know, do their laws make any provision for them concerning such matters; but the trainer must know these things thoroughly, being in a manner a judge of nature. Let him therefore know all the character that lies in the eyes, by which are revealed both the sluggish among men and the intense, the dissemblers and the less enduring and the uncontrolled. For the characters of dark eyes are one thing, of bright and grey and bloodshot eyes another, of tawny and dotted, prominent and hollow eyes yet another; for Nature signified the seasons by the stars, but characters by the eyes. And the proportion of the parts of the body, as in the making of statues, must be examined thus: the ankle should agree with the wrist, the forearm with the shin, the upper arm should be matched against the thigh and the buttock against the shoulder; the back should be viewed in relation to the belly, and the chest should project in like measure with the parts beneath the hip; and the head, being the crown of the whole, should be in due proportion to all these.

These things being thus said by me, let us not suppose that training follows immediately upon them, but rather that one must set the trainee apart and bring his nature to scrutiny, of what it is composed and for what. For why, pray, should huntsmen and horsemen take such account of dogs and horses—not using the same ones for every kind, nor for every quarry, but some dogs for this, others for that, and making some horses companions of the hunt, others racers, others chariot-horses, and not these simply, but as each is suited to a particular flank or trace of the chariot—why should this be, while men, whom one must lead to Olympia or Pytho to win the proclamations that even Heracles loved, are left unsifted? I bid him, then, both to have examined the proportion of all the things I have named, and, besides the proportion, the characters of the humours as well.

And yet there is something older than this, which seemed good also to Lycurgus the Spartan. For, arming Lacedaemon for war, he says, "Let the girls train as athletes and exercise to run in public," surely for the sake of good offspring and that they may bear better children through the strength of their bodies. For when she comes to a husband she will not shrink from carrying water, nor from grinding corn, because she has been trained from her youth; and if she is yoked with a young man who has trained alongside her, she will give back better offspring—tall and strong and free from disease. And Lacedaemon became so great in war because they ordered the matters of marriage in this way.

Since, then, it is fitting to begin from the begetting of man, let the trainer proceed to the boy athlete, looking at him first as sprung from his parents, whether they were joined young and noble and free from such diseases as fix themselves upon the sinews and the seats of the eyes, and pass out into the ears or the inward parts; for these diseases lurk in a manner within nature, and in childhood they have slipped in unseen, but break out when the blood has undergone its change in the turns of the years. The seed of the young, if both noble parents come together, contributes to the athlete strength and vigour and unmixed blood and mastery of bone and unsullied humours and even stature; and I would say further that they bring also bloom of beauty. But let the parents not be regarded as missing if they are not present at the boy's judgement, supposing we are to test the seed soundly; for the argument will fall into folly if, when the athlete is already standing in the stadium and longing for the wild olive and the laurel, we should put him off to his father and mother, who perhaps even died while he was an infant. We must walk by the decisive standard, by which, looking at the athlete naked, we shall seem not to be ignorant of his ancestors' condition either, how it stands with him. The reflection is hard and not at all easy, yet not beyond the art. This, then, I hand over for understanding.

What manner of men the noble and youthful seed produces I have shown; the seed of the elderly must be detected thus: their skin is thin, their collar-bones cup-like, their veins stand out as in men who have toiled, their hip is bloodless and their muscular parts weak. When they train, the proofs are more numerous: for they are sluggish and their blood is raw through coldness, and their sweats lie on the surface rather than rising from the convex and hollow parts; nor do these men bloom under their labours, unless we draw off the sweats. Some are not even fit for relaxation, but need intervals of rest, and are worn out even by labours beyond what they have laboured. These I judge unworthy of all things in athletic contest—for this does not establish a man—and most of all of the pancratium and boxing, since those whose very skin is not strong are easily taken by blows and wounds. Yet they must be trained, or rather flattered by the trainer, since they need this both in their toil and in their training. But if, in one of such a pair, the seed appears past its prime, the defects will be similar but less manifest. The diseased conditions the blood will expose, for it must needs appear turbid and sunk beneath the bile. Such blood, even if at some time it be made full of breath by the trainer, again shifts and grows turbid; for things ill-born come out hard.

Something is shown also by a prominent throat and wing-like shoulders and a neck that stands up too high and slips away too much at the point where the collar-bones meet. And indeed those whose ribs are closed in and those who are spread open beyond measure betoken much of the diseased; for in the former the inward parts must be compressed, and they neither send the breath out freely in their labours nor draw it in, and they are seized by continual corruption of food; while in the latter the inward parts are heavy and hung apart, so that the breath from them is dull and supine in its impulse, and the food is less distributed to them, passing into the belly rather than to the nourishment of the body. So much concerning the begetting of those who are to compete. But the man suited to each of the events must be examined thus.

Let him who is to compete in the five events be heavier than the light athletes and lighter than the heavy, tall, well-knit, upright, free of superfluous flesh in the muscular parts and not stunted. Let him have his legs rather long than merely proportionate, and his loins supple and easy, both for the turns of the javelin or the discus and for the jump; for he will leap with less hurt and break no part of his body if, lowering his hip, he presses it firmly into the step. And he must be long-handed and long-fingered, for he will throw the discus much better if, through the length of his fingers, the rim of the discus is sent up from a more hollow hand; and he will move the javelin more easily if his fingers, being not small, touch above the thong.

He who is to be the best long-distance runner should have his shoulders and neck strengthened much like the pentathlete, but his legs should be slender and light, like the runners of the stade; for those men move their legs with their hands toward the swift course, as though winged by their hands, whereas long-distance runners do this about the turning-post, but for the rest of the time they almost stride along, holding their hands extended before them; whence they need stronger shoulders.

As for the man-at-arms and the contestant of the stade and the double-stade, no one any longer distinguishes them from the times of Leonidas of Rhodes, who for four Olympiads won this triple set; yet they must be distinguished, both those who compete in these events singly and those who compete in all at once. For the man-at-arms, let long ribs be brought to bear, and a well-nourished shoulder and a snub knee-cap, that the shield may be well borne, these parts holding it up. The stade-runners, the lightest of those in the contest, are strongest when of due proportion; but better than these are those not over-tall, but a little taller than the proportionate, for excessive length lacks firmness, like plants that have grown up too high. Let them be well-knit, for the beginning of running well is to stand well. Their harmony is this: the legs balanced with the shoulders, the chest smaller than proportionate but with sound inwards, a light knee-cap, a straight shin, hands beyond what reason would require; and let their muscular part too be in proportion, for superfluous muscles are fetters upon speed. Let the contestants of the double-stade be equipped stronger than those of the stade and lighter than the men-at-arms. The contestants of the three races should be drawn up of the best, compounded of those advantages which these others have singly. And let no one count this among the impossible, for runners of this kind have arisen even in our own time.

Let the boxer be long-handed, with good forearms, his upper arm not swollen high, his shoulders well-crested, and his neck high. As for the wrists of the forearms, the thick are heavier for striking, while the less thick are supple and strike with ease. Let him be propped also by a well-knit hip, for the extension of the hands hangs the body down, unless it is carried upon a firm hip. Thick-shinned men I judge unfit for any other contest, and least of all for boxing; for indeed they are slow to set their feet against their opponents' shins and are easily taken by the one who comes on. Let him have a straight shin, the thighs duly parted and standing apart, for the boxer's posture is more impetuous if the thighs do not come together; and the best belly is the drawn-in one, for such men are light and good in wind. Yet there is some benefit to the boxer even from the belly, for such a belly wards off the blows to the face by throwing itself in advance against the rush of the striker.

Let us come to the wrestlers. The wrestler who is according to reason should be tall rather than proportionate, but framed like the proportionate, neither high-necked nor with his neck yoked to his shoulders; for this last, though it is connatural, is more like a stunted than a trained man, at least to one who understands; and of the statues of Heracles, by how much pleasanter and more godlike are those that are free and not bull-necked. But let the neck stand up, as in a fine horse conscious of itself, and let the base of the neck descend to each collar-bone, and let the shoulder-tops be drawn together and standing up, for these contribute to the wrestler both stature and nobility of form and strength and a better grip in wrestling; for such shoulders, even when the neck is bent and twisted by the wrestling, are good guards, propping the head out of the upper arms. A well-marked arm is an advantage in wrestling; and I call an arm well-marked of this kind: one whose broad veins, beginning from the neck and throat, one on either side mounting the shoulder, come down upon the hands and are conspicuous in the upper arms and forearms. For those in whom they are superficial and more apparent than is fitting gain no strength from them, and such veins are unpleasant to behold, like varicose veins; but those in whom they happen to be deep and gently swelling warm the calm blood of the hands and make the upper arm grow young again in those past their prime, and in the young make a man appear impetuous and full of the promise of wrestling. A projecting and prominent chest is better, for in such men the inward parts are seated as in a firm and well-shaped little house, noble, strong, free from disease, spirited at the right moment. Graceful too among chests are those moderately prominent but firmed up with sinewy lines; for these are strong and well-carrying, less good for wrestling than the projecting kind, but more apt for wrestling than the rest. Small and sunken chests, in whomever they happen to be, I judge fit neither to strip nor to train; for such men prove weak in the stomach and unsound in the inward parts and narrow in the breath. Let the belly be drawn in toward the lower belly, for the belly is no good burden to the wrestler; and let it be carried upon groins that are not empty, but let there be something well-nourished in them too; for such groins are able to bind fast whatever the wrestling delivers to them, and when bound fast they will give more pain than they receive. Backs that are upright are graceful, but those slightly rounded are more apt for wrestling, since they are also better suited to the carrying-load of the shoulder-blade, which is rounded and inclining forward. But let it not be a hollow spine that decides this, for that will lack marrow, and the vertebrae there might be bent and forced together by the wrestling-holds and at some time slip inward; but let such things be suspected rather than be present. The hip, like an axle inserted between the upper and lower limbs, must be supple and well-turning and well-revolving. This is wrought both by its length and, by Zeus, by a fleshiness fuller than reason requires. The parts beneath the hip should be neither too smooth nor superfluous, for the one is weak, the other untrained; but let them stand out vigorously and naturally in the wrestler. A flexible side that rouses up the chest makes men able both to wrestle and to be wrestled with; for, lying beneath their opponents, such men are hard to take and not easy for those beneath them to carry. As for the buttocks, the narrow are weak, the broader sluggish, but the well-led are sufficient for all things. A well-knit thigh, turned outward with grace, is strong and bears all things well, and the more so if the shin, nowhere inclining, is carried straight, but the thigh rides upright upon the knee-cap. Legs not straight from the ankles, but slanting and bent inward, make the body unsteady, just as bases that are not upright do to firm-set columns.

Such, then, is the wrestler; and such a man will also do the pancratium, the ground-pancratium, and will fight with the hands aloft no less. But the more complete pancratiasts are those compounded more in the wrestling manner than the boxers, and more in the boxing manner than the wrestlers. Noble too among athletes are those who are great in small compass; and let us reckon these to be men inferior in stature to the square and proportionate, but with bodies articulated on a grander and more extraordinary scale than their height, and the more so if they do not seem withered, but show some sign of good flesh. Wrestling proclaims these men most, for they are nimble and versatile and vehement and light and swift and steady, and they escape many of the difficult and hard-to-wrestle holds by propping themselves on the head as on a base; but they are not good champions of the pancratium and boxing, lying beneath the one who strikes and ridiculously raising themselves from the ground whenever they strike. Let us take as an example of these "great in small compass" the statues of the wrestler Maron, whom Cilicia once bore. We must also reject from among these the long-chested; for these too are able to escape the hard-to-guard holds of wrestling, but are useless for throwing down, because they sit upon their legs.

Lion-like and eagle-like men, and the "split" and the "thong-like," and those whom they surname "bears"—these are kinds of athletes. The lion-like have good chests and good hands, but are inferior behind; the eagle-like are similar to these in form, but hollow in the groins, like eagles when they straighten themselves up. Both kinds show men daring and vehement and impetuous, but rather faint-hearted at their failures; and one need not wonder, considering the characters of lions and eagles.

The "split" and the "thong-like" are both tall and long-legged and long-handed, but they differ from one another in small and greater ways. For the former appear firm and well-lined and much-divided, whence, I think, their name comes; the latter are loose and rather slack, and at the same time supple in their turns, like leather thongs. And of these, the one kind is more impetuous in the grapplings, while the thong-like are more retentive and binding.

Of enduring athletes the kinds are these: bilious, muscular, hollow in the belly, with a startled look; but the runners and broad-chested resemble the eagle, the phlegmatic the lion; for the bilious are inconspicuous, such as, through the readiness of their nature, to change with a kind of madness.

Those likened to bears are round and supple and well-fleshed and less articulated, and curved rather than upright, hard to wrestle and slippery, but binding strongly; and the breath will tear at these men, as it does at bears in the chase.

The equal-handed, whom they call ambidextrous, being a rare discovery of nature, are unbreakable in strength and hard to guard against and untiring. For the equal use of both hands gives them a body that has more strength than those of even-handed men. Whence I know this I shall tell. Mys the Egyptian, as I heard from my elders, was a youth not large, but he wrestled with skill beyond his years. When he fell sick, his right side gave way, but his left grew stronger; and when he had given up all hope of athletics, a dream came to him bidding him take courage at his disease, for he would have more strength in the maimed parts than in the whole and unhurt. And the vision was true; for, weaving the hard-to-guard wrestling-holds with the damaged limbs, he was a hard match for his opponents, and profited from his disease in that he was made strong in the parts that had been ruined. This is a marvel; yet let it be told, not as a thing that happens, but as a thing that happened, and let it be thought rather the act of a god showing forth something great to men.

Concerning the proportion of the body, and whether this kind or that is better, there are disputes among those who have considered these things without reason; but concerning the temperaments, how many there are, it has neither yet been contradicted nor could it be denied that the best of temperaments is the hot and moist, for it is compounded, like the costly statues, of pure and clean material. Such men are free of clay and mud and superfluous humours, on which the flood of phlegm and bile floats; they are tireless in what they must toil at, good eaters, seldom sick, and quick to recover from sicknesses, easily led and easily reined to be trained in various ways through the happy blend of their temperament. But the bilious athletes are hot, yet dry in temperament and unfruitful to their trainers, like hot sands to those who sow; nevertheless they are strong through the readiness of their resolve, for this they have in abundance, the hot condition in their bodies being blended with a cold. These men must be trained intensely, spurred on; but the bilious at a walk and breathing freely, for the one kind needs the goad, the other the rein. And one must close up the one kind with dust, but soak the other with oil.

Let this be said by me concerning temperament from the gymnastics of the present, since the ancient kind did not even recognise temperament, but trained strength alone. The ancients trained in this way: some carrying loads not easy to carry, some contending in speed against horses and hares, some straightening and bending iron beaten thick, some yoked with strong oxen and waggons, some forcing back the necks of bulls, others of very lions. Such were the Polymestors and the Glaucuses and the Alesinaeus and Polydamas of Scotussa. As for Tisandrus the boxer of Naxos, his hands escorted him over much of the sea as he swam round the headlands of the island, trained and training. Rivers bathed them, and springs, and they practised sleeping on the ground, some stretched out upon hides, others having reaped beds from the meadows. Their food was barley-cakes and the unleavened, unfermented loaves, and of meats the ox-flesh and bull's flesh and goat's flesh fed them, and the flesh of roe-deer; wild olive and oleaster oil anointed them; whence they trained free of disease and grew old late, and competed, some for eight Olympiads, some for nine, and were good men-at-arms. They fought before walls, not falling even there, but deemed worthy of prizes of valour and of trophies, making warlike deeds a practice of gymnastic exercises, and gymnastic deeds a practice of war.

But when these things changed, and men became, instead of fighters, unfit for war, instead of active, idle, instead of firm-fleshed, slack, and the Sicilian gourmandising prevailed, the stadia were unstrung—and far more so when flattery was enrolled in gymnastics. The first to flatter was medicine, standing by as a counsellor—a good art, but too soft to lay hold of athletes, and teaching them idleness besides, to sit before training packed full, like Libyan or Egyptian burdens; bringing forward pleasing cooks and caterers, by whom they are made gluttonous and hollow in the belly; feasting them on poppy-seed loaves and indigestible things; cramming them with the most lawless eating of fish; and discoursing on the nature of fish according to the districts of the sea—how those from the mud are fat, those from the rocks tender, those of the open sea fleshy, that lairs feed thin fish, and seaweeds fish that fade; and further leading in pork-flesh with marvel-mongering. For it bids them hold the herds of swine by the sea to be wretched, on account of the sea-garlic with which the beaches are full and the dunes are full, and to beware also of those near rivers, on account of their eating of crabs; and to be forced to eat only of those fed on cornel and acorn.

To live so luxuriously is keen also toward the impulse of love; and it began for athletes also the lawlessness over money and the selling and buying of victories. For some even sell their own good repute, because, I think, they have many needs; while others buy the right to win without toil, because they live delicately. And against a man who tears away a silver or golden offering, or who destroys it, the laws show their anger, as against one liable for sacrilege; but a crown of Apollo or Poseidon, for which the very gods contended greatly, men may with impunity sell and with impunity buy—save only that for the Eleans the wild olive remains inviolable, according to the ancient repute, while the other games have been maimed. Let one instance out of many be told by me, in which all are contained. A boy won the wrestling at the Isthmus, having agreed with one of his opponents on three thousand drachmas for the victory. So when they came on the next day to the gymnasium, the one demanded the money, and the other said he did not owe it, for he had won against the other's will. As nothing was settled, they referred it to an oath; and the one who had sold the victory, going into the temple of the Isthmian god, swore publicly, and that too before the eyes of Greece, that he had verily sold the contest of the god, for three thousand drachmas had been agreed with him; and he swore this in a clear voice, fearing lest anything be obscure. What would not happen in Ionia, what would not happen at Olympia, to the shame of such a contest? For by how much the truer it is, even if it is without witnesses, by so much the more unhallowed and infamous. I do not acquit the trainers of this corruption; for they come to their training with money, and lending to the athletes at greater interest than merchants borrow at sea, they care nothing for the athletes' good name, but become counsellors of selling and buying, looking to their own gain. And let this be said by me against the hucksters, for in a manner they huckster the excellences of athletes, setting their own affairs well.

They err in this too: stripping a boy athlete, they train him as though already a man, bidding him weigh down his belly and walk about between exercises and belch; whereby, like bad teachers, they take from the boy his youthful gambolling, training him in idleness and delays, to be sluggish and more timid than his vigour warrants. They ought to train him in relaxation, as the wrestling-school does—and by relaxation I mean both that of the legs, which comes from those who soften them, and that of the hands, which comes from those who rub them—and let the boy clap in time, since the exercises of these things are more spirited. This kind of training trained Helix the Phoenician, not only among the boys, but also when he had come to manhood; and he became more wonderful than report among all whom I know who have practised this method of ease.

Nor must one attend to the "tetrads" of the trainers, by which all that is in gymnastics has been ruined. Let us understand the tetrad to be a cycle of four days, each accomplishing a different thing; for one prepares the athlete, another intensifies, another relaxes, another holds the middle course. The preparatory exercise is an intense but brief and rapid movement, rousing the athlete and setting him keen for the toil to come; the intensifying is an inexorable test of the strength stored up in his condition; the day of relaxation is a movement recovering his vigour with reason; and the middle day of the days teaches him to escape his opponent and, as the other flees, not to relax. And training every such method harmoniously and revolving these tetrads thus, they take from the science the power to understand the naked athlete—and all that food distresses, and wine grieves, and the condition from love and from nocturnal emissions harms, and anxieties and fatigues and many other things, some voluntary, some involuntary. How shall we heal this man by reckoning him in tetrads and casting lots?

Those who have overeaten a heavy brow will reveal, and a hollow panting and the cups of the collar-bones standing up and the side flanks showing some swelling; those who are full of wine a superfluous belly will betray, and a more cheerful blood, and moisture, here of the flank, there of the knee-cap; those who come from love, when they train, more things will expose—for their strength has sunk and they are narrow in the breath and timid in their impulses and fade under their labours and are easily taken in such things—and when they strip, a hollow collar-bone will betray them and a bloodless hip and a side showing furrows and coldness of blood; and if we lay hold of these things, the contest would not be crown-bearing. Their bruises are slight, slight the throbbing of the heart, slight the vapours of their sweats, slight their sleeps, that order the food, and the glances of their eyes wander and betray men who fancy themselves loved.

Those who have nocturnal emissions are a purging of the good condition that lies on the surface; yet they are seen pale-faced and bedewed and somewhat inferior in strength, but well-fleshed through sleeping and unaccountable in the hip and sufficient in the breath; and being in the same place as those who indulge in love, they are not the same, but the one kind purge their condition, the other melt it. Of fatigues the external covering of the body is a good witness, seeming thinner than itself, and a swollen vein and a downcast arm and the muscular parts withered.

Those, then, who have overeaten, whether they happen to be contestants of the light or of the heavier events, must be handled with rubbings toward the lower parts, that the superfluities may be drawn away from the more vital parts; and the pentathletes must be trained in some one of the light events, but the runners not straining themselves, but at leisure and striding somewhat wider, and the boxers must spar light and "airy." Wrestling and the pancratium upright—these too; but it is necessary to roll. Let them roll, then, but lying on top rather than underneath, and nowhere turning somersaults, that they may not maim the body with some incurable sore. And let the trainer handle the light and the heavy alike with rubbings of moderate oil, especially of the lower parts, and let him wipe this off.

Wine that has grown superfluous in the bodies of athletes, so that all is full of much sweat, let it be called out by moderate exercises. For one must neither over-train such men nor relax them, since it is better to drain off the corrupt moisture, that the blood may not be harmed by it. And let the trainer wipe and scrape him off, using moderate clay, that the outlets of the sweat may not be blocked.

Those who come from love it is better not to train at all—for those who have exchanged the shameful pleasure for crowns and heralds, where are they men? But if indeed they are to be trained, let them be trained for admonition's sake, being tested in their strength and their breath, for these especially the pleasures of love cut short. The condition of those who have nocturnal emissions is also a thing of love, but involuntary, as I said. They must be trained with care and their strength rather nourished up, since it clearly fails, and their sweats must be drawn off, since these are superfluous in them. And let their exercises be more yielding, but extended to length, that they may train the breath. They need oil of moderate quantity, thickened with dust; for this remedy both holds the body together and relaxes it moderately.

Athletes who are anxious must be tended both as to their resolve, by a word that encourages and steadies them, and let them be trained in the same place as the sleepless and those who do not eat well. The harmonious exercise suits these men well, for minds full of fear are more eager to learn what they ought to guard against. As for fatigues, the spontaneous ones are beginnings of diseases, and it suffices to relax moderately, as I said, those who have toiled in the clay and the wrestling-school, but to train further on the next day, in the clay with a slight intensification, those who have toiled in the dust; for the sudden relaxation after the dust is a bad physician of fatigues, since it does not tend the strength but hangs it up. Such, then, would be the wiser gymnastics, that also intensifies the athlete.

A proof against the tetrads, which I have rejected, is the mistake made with Gerenus the wrestler, whose tomb is at Athens on the right of the road to Eleusis. This man happened to have won at Olympia, and on the third day after that, drinking to his own victory and feasting some of his acquaintances, he used unaccustomed dainties and was carried away from sleep. Coming, then, on the next day to the gymnasium, he confessed to his trainer that he was crude in his stomach and somehow ill at ease; but the trainer grew savage and listened with anger and was harsh, as toward one relaxing and breaking up the tetrads; and so he killed the athlete in the very training, through ignorance, not understanding what he had foretold, the things he ought to have known, even when he was silent. The tetrads, then, being of such a sort and so untrained under an uneducated trainer, no moderate sufferings result; for how is it not a grievous thing that such an athlete should miss the stadia? And those who embrace the tetrads, what use will they make of them when they come to Olympia? There the dust is of the kind I have described, the exercises are prescribed, and the Hellanodikes trains not by previous announcement, but all things improvised to the moment, with the whip held over the trainer too, if he should do anything contrary to what they command. And they command things inexorable, since for those who plead exception against them it is ready at hand to be barred from the Olympic games. So much, then, concerning the tetrads. . . . Following these things, we shall both display the wisdom of gymnastics and strengthen the athletes, and the stadia will grow young again through good training. . . .

The jumping-weight is a discovery of the pentathletes, and it was discovered for the jump, from which indeed it took its name; for the laws, holding the leap harder than the other things in the contest, both rouse the jumper with the flute and lighten him with the weight, for it is a sure guide of the hands, and brings the step down firm and well-marked to the ground. How much this is worth the laws make plain; for they do not allow the leap to be measured unless the footprint is exact. The long jumping-weights train the shoulders and the hands, the ball-shaped ones the fingers also. They must be taken up by the light and the heavy alike for all exercises except the resting one.

As for dust, the clayey kind is good to cleanse and to give proportion to the superfluous parts; the potsherd kind is fit to open and to bring to sweat what is closed up; the bituminous to warm gently the parts that are chilled; and the black and tawny dust, both earthy, are good to soften and to nourish up, while the tawny dust also makes men gleaming and pleasanter to behold, as befits a noble and well-trained body. One must scatter the dust with a supple wrist and parted fingers, sprinkling rather than strewing it, that the fine powder may fall upon the athlete.

The punch-ball must be hung up for boxers also, but much more for those who come to the pancratium. Let the boxer's ball be light, since the boxers' hands alone train at the ball; but that of the pancratiasts heavier and larger, that they may train the footing, resisting the rush of the ball, and may train the shoulders and the fingers by striking it as at an opponent. Let the head dash against it, and let the athlete submit to all the upright forms of the pancratium.

As for sunning, those who do it ignorantly do it in any and every sun and all of them, but those who do it with science and reason do it neither always nor for all to whom it is better. For the northern suns and the windless ones are clear and good for sunning, since they cast off a white air; but the southern and the cloudy ones are moist and over-scorching, such as to enervate the trainees rather than warm them. The sunny days, then, I have spoken of; and the phlegmatic should rather be sunned, that they may be drained of their superfluity, but the bilious one must lead away from this, that fire be not poured upon fire. And let the older men be sunned lying idle and exposed, like things being roasted, but the vigorous be active and trained in all things, as the Eleans are accustomed. As for steam-bathing and anointing dry, since these belong to the more boorish gymnastics, let us leave them to the Lacedaemonians, whose exercises resemble neither the pancratium nor boxing. The Lacedaemonians themselves say that they do not train this kind for the sake of contest, but for endurance alone, which is the way of men being scourged, since it is a law among them to be flogged at the altar.