Popular Sports and Exercises, 175 



introduced by Themistocles, as a religious fes- 

 tival : — it soon degenerated into a sport for 

 the gratification of avarice and cruelty. The 

 latter had its rise in Thessaly, and was 

 afterwards transported to Rome by Julius 

 Cicsar.* 



To Greece, Rome was indebted for almost 

 every institution of popular sports and bodily 

 exercises ; — but the Romans carried them to a 

 height of splendour and magnificence un- 

 known to their first inventors. The Circus 

 and Amphitheatre of Rome, exhibited, on a 

 scale proportioned to the immense extent and 

 power of the nation, all the popular sports f 

 celebrated at Grecian solemnities. In their 

 gymnasia, youth were likewise carefully in- 

 structed in the gymnic exercises, and likewise 

 the athletic combatants trained up for public 

 exhibition : — But the barbarous policy of the 

 state, or rather the rude and ferocious manners 



* Sec Peggc's Dissertalion on Cock-fighting in 

 the ArchoEoIugia — Briltan and Poller's Antiquities of 

 Greece. 



f The Lucli circenses, or circensian gTmes, included 

 nil the diversions of the rir«:'., viz. — The Pentalhlum,|Or 

 Quinquertium, chariot l^yrrhic dance of Ihe 



Gj'eekf, to which were a»idcd sports of Roman origin. — 

 The Naumachia« or sea fighN, and bloody combats of 

 gladiators, and the contests of ferocious animals with 

 each other and with roan. 



