THE ATHLETIC TRAINING OF THE GREEKS.

Harvard College appears to have carried athletic training to its farthest extent, but when we consider that the Greeks spent years, nay lives, to win a race or throw a wrestler, we seem, in comparison, to have paid but little attention to the training of our bodies. To the Greeks, especially, of all people, the primary requisite for success in public and private life was a corpus sanum, without which the use to them of the mens sana was gone. Thus, in training their bodies, did Pericles, Demosthenes and nearly every Greek whose name and fame have been handed down to posterity, begin their work in life.

The instructors of the youths were divided into two classes, and all had an equal social position in the democracy. Their places of instruction were built together and there the youth of Athens spent their days; one class taught how to search for the beautiful, the other taught beauty itself. The young men arrived in the morning early and soon were engaged in the forenoon bath, which is, perhaps, too much neglected by our trainers. This occupied over an hour, for they took hot and cold baths, then a swim, and finally the more fastidious youths appointed themselves for the day. After this the morning was spent in study, and the afternoon, until the evening bath, was passed in athletic exercises. We find the character of the exercises much the same as at present. The discus throw was much practised, and, although there were no parallel bars, they had an apparatus corresponding to our horizontal bar and also flying rings. However, the Greeks did not strive to excel in these gymnastic tricks as much as in boxing, wrestling and running. The boxing of the ancients, as we know from Virgil, was of a very cruel nature, the principal idea being not to kill a man, for that was prohibited by law, but to come as near to that as possible. They usually wore what, in the present parlance of the prize ring, would be termed "bard" gloves, often with the addition of brass knuckles. The wrestling was correspondingly rough, and, in regard to the running, we have often heard of the men who dropped dead at the end of their race. The Greeks used to run at an alarming speed. As far as we can tell from the records, they made their longest run, three miles, in about ten minutes, and they were accustomed to make a running jump, with dumb-bells, off a spring board of between forty and fifty feet. Possibly such deeds might kill a man.

The Greeks paid especial attention to food and the question of diet in training. They used to run very long distances, retire early and rise with the sun, and thus, till twenty-five years of age, they were in continual training. This system, so completely carried out, accounts, perhaps, for many of the great feats and remarkable records reported as having been made by the Greeks. If our knowledge of their sports and methods of training were more accurate and comprehensive, it is not to be doubted that we could gain many valuable hints therefrom.

M., '86.