Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. E. Norman Gardiner

and ordinary exercise were no longer sufficient to secure success without long and careful training. Hence there arose a class of professional trainers. These men, who were often old athletes, acquired considerable repute, and doubtless were handsomely rewarded by the rich individuals or states that employed them. In their hands athletics became scientific; instead of being regarded as a recreation and a training for war they became an end in themselves. One state alone, Sparta, held aloof from the new athletics and competitions. At Sparta the one object was to produce a race of hardy soldiers, and the new science, which aimed at producing athletes, could find no place there. No Spartan was allowed to employ a trainer in wrestling. Boxing was said to have been introduced by the Spartans, but though they recognized the value of boxing as a sport, they realized the dangers of it as a competition, and forbade their citizens to take part in competitions for boxing or the pankration, on the ground that it was disgraceful for a Spartan to acknowledge defeat. Hence the disappearance of Sparta from the list of the Olympic victors which has already been noticed. Sparta in athletics fell behind the rest of Greece, and Philostratus, comparing them with the more scientific athletics, describes them as somewhat boorish.^[94] Yet perhaps the Spartans and Xenophanes were right.

      The new training required no little expenditure of time and money. The would-be victor at Olympia must have lived in a constant state of training and competition, which left time for little else. Theagenes of Thasos, who lived at the time of the Persian wars, is said to have won no less than fourteen hundred crowns.^[95] To such men athletics were no longer a recreation, but an absorbing occupation. The professional amateur is but a short step removed from the true professional. For a time wealth and leisure gave a great advantage to the wealthy individual, and the wealthy city. In the sixth century the most successful states are the rich cities of Sicily and Italy. The sons of noble families still figure prominently in the epinikia of Pindar and Bacchylides. But the increase of rich prizes was soon to put the poor man on a level with the rich. Before the close of the fifth century we shall find athletics left to the professional, while princes and nobles compete only in the chariot-races and horse-races. For this result states like Sybaris and Croton were hugely responsible. They thought to encourage athletics by offering large money prizes; in reality they killed the spirit of sport. Sybaris indeed—or, according to another account, Croton—endeavoured to outshine Olympia by holding a festival of her own at the same time as the Olympia, and attracting away the pick of the athletes by the magnificence of the prizes.^[96] When such an attempt was possible, professionalism was near at hand.

      These evils, however, did not yet exist in the sixth century, though implied already in that excessive love of athletics which aroused the indignation of Xenophanes. The nation had become a nation of athletes, and not the least important characteristic which distinguished the Greek from the barbarian was henceforth his athletic training. The result was a standard of athletic excellence never again perhaps equalled. Most of the athletes whose names were household words for centuries, belong to the sixth and the first half of the fifth centuries. Such were Milo of Croton, Glaucus of Carystus, Theagenes of Thasos. Though we occasionally find distinguished runners, such as Phanas of Pellene, who, by winning three races at Olympia in one day, won the title of triple victor (τριαστής), or a little later Astylus of Croton, of whom we have heard already, the typical athlete of the sixth century was the strong man—the boxer, the wrestler, or the pankratiast. The object of the old gymnastic was to produce strength only, says Philostratus,^[97] contrasting the ancient athletes with their degenerate successors, and the success of the old training was shown in the fact that these old athletes maintained their strength for eight or even nine Olympiads. There was nothing artificial or unnatural about their training: the careful dieting, the elaborate massage, the rules for exercise and sleep introduced by later trainers were unknown. The trainers of those days confined themselves to actual athletics, to the art of boxing or wrestling especially, and the athletes owed their strength to a healthy, vigorous, out-of-door life.

      This fact is illustrated by the legends that sprang up about the famous athletes of this age, which, amid much invention and exaggeration, probably contain some substratum of truth. The father of Glaucus discovered his son’s strength from seeing him one day hammer a ploughshare into the plough with his naked fist. Theagenes first displayed his strength at the age of nine in a youthful escapade. Taking a fancy to a certain bronze statue in the market-place, he one day shouldered it and carried it off. The exploits of Samson with wild beasts find many parallels in the stories of Greek athletes; but the most characteristic exercise of the sixth century was weight-lifting. Milo practised weight-lifting on most scientific principles with a young bull calf, which he lifted and carried every day till it was fully grown. A still more famous weight-lifter was Titormus, a gigantic shepherd who lived in Aetolia, and did not, as far as we know, compete in any competitions. Challenged by Milo to show his strength, he took him down to the river Euenus, threw off his mantle, and seized a huge boulder which Milo could hardly move. He first raised it to his knees, then on to his shoulders, and after carrying it sixteen yards, threw it.^[98] He next showed his strength and courage by seizing and holding fast by the heels two wild bulls.

      These stories of weight-lifting have been strangely confirmed by discoveries in Greece. At Olympia a block of red sandstone was found, bearing a sixth-century inscription to the effect that one Bybon with one hand threw it over his head.^[99] The stone weighs 143–½ kilos (315 lbs.), and measures 68 × 33 × 38 cms. A one-handed lift of such an object is clearly impossible, and I can only suggest that Bybon lifted the weight with both hands in the manner described above, then balanced it on one hand and threw it. At Santorin another such block has been found, a mass of black volcanic rock, weighing 480 kilos. The inscription on it, which belongs to the close of the sixth century, runs as follows: “Eumastas the son of Critobulus lifted me from the ground.” To lift such a weight from the ground, though possible, is quite a good performance.

      Swimming, too, was a favourite exercise, and Philostratus tells us that Tisander, a boxer of Naxos, who lived, on a promontory of the island, kept himself in training by swimming out to sea. These old athletes, says the same author, hardened themselves by bathing in the rivers, and sleeping in the open air on skins or heaps of fodder. Living such a life they had healthy appetites, and were not particular about their food, living on porridge and unleavened bread, and such meat as they could get. The strong man is naturally a large eater, and all sorts of tales were current as to the voracity of these athletes. Milo, according to an epigram, after carrying a four-year-old heifer around the Altis, ate it all on the same day; and a similar feat is ascribed to Titormus and Theagenes.^[100] These tales are clearly the invention of a later age, when the strong man trained on vast quantities of meat; and as Milo excelled all men in strength, it followed that he must also have excelled them in voracity. But whatever the truth of these stories, it is certain that the athletes of those times were healthy and free from disease, preserved their strength, and lived long. If athletic training did occupy an undue share of their time, it did not unfit them for the duties of ordinary life and military service. Many of them won distinction as soldiers and generals, while the effects of athletic training on the nation were shown in the Persian wars.

      When we turn to the records of art we still find strength the predominant characteristic of the period. We see this in those early nude statues, so widely distributed throughout Greece and the islands, which are generally classed under the name of Apollo. In all we see the same attempt to render the muscles of the body, whether we regard the tall spare type of the Apollo of Tenea, or the shorter heavier type of the Argive statues. It is in the muscles of the trunk rather than of the limbs that real strength lies, and it is the careful marking of these muscles that distinguishes early Greek sculpture from all other early art, and the sculpture of the Peloponnese in particular from the softer school of Ionia. Perhaps the most characteristic figure of the sixth century is that of the bearded Heracles, not the clumsy giant of later days, but the personification of endurance and trained strength, a man, as Pindar says, short of stature, but of unbending soul. So we see him on many a black-figured vase of the sixth century, and the type survives in the pediments of Aegina or the Metopes of Olympia in the next century. Matched against giants and monsters he represents the triumph of training and endurance over mere brute force. If we compare the figures of athletes on these vases with those on the red-figured vases of the next century, we find the same result; the ideal of the fifth century is the grace