292 Dr. Charles Waldstein [April 13, 



his riglit heel. Such representations are inconceivable in the time of 

 Pheidias. 



The history of the Greek boxing-gloves, the t/xavre?, typifies and 

 illustrates the three chief phases in the history of the palaestra, from 

 its height to its decline. The earliest form were the /xetXt^^ai, which 

 were to soften the blow to the striker and the one struck, and were 

 thus subservient to the exercise. The second form was the t/>tas 6$v^, 

 a leather thong wound round the hand, protecting the hand of the 

 striker, but increasing the severity of the blow ; this belongs to the 

 period when professional athleticism was beginning to be introduced. 

 The tliird form, marking the period of decline, the Graeco-Eoman and 

 Eoman age, was the brutal c^estus, garnished with leaden balls, 

 which produced disfiguring blows, sometimes leading to death. 



As in the decline of Greek religious art, when practically the faith 

 in the great gods was shaken, we have the introduction of genre and 

 comic elements, such as putti or little cupids carrying the attributes 

 of the gods, the thunderbolts of Zeus, the trident of Poseidon, or the 

 club of Herakles, so in the last stages of the palaestra, when its 

 dignity had vanished along with that of the gods, we see the sacred 

 games robbed of all solemnity and transposed into the comic genre, 

 in the form of little cupids, undergoing athletic hardships in quaint 

 mock solemnity and exertion. The diagram before you shows one out 

 of a large number of late reliefs, with chubby children hurling the 

 discus, boxing, wrestling, running, jumping, racing in chariots and on 

 horseback. Here is one led away after a defeat in the jpygme ; here 

 another miniature Diadumenos fixes the victor's wreath to its brow ; 

 here are chariots colliding and crashing asunder, horse and driver over- 

 throwTi, and so on — all scenes of the great palasstra made quaint and 

 comical. Surely all solemn or religious associations must have left 

 the games when once they could be represented in this form. Such 

 representations, too, are utterly inconceivable in the age of Pheidias. 

 The real death of all great institutions has set in when once the ridi- 

 culous side is brought out. The most notable instance of this is the 

 final death-blow administered to chivalry by Cervantes in ' Don 

 Quixote.' When once the Greek games are made the subjects of 

 these comic scenes their end is reached, and they die with the extinc- 

 tion of Greek political freedom and the fall of Greek literature and art. 



I have brought before you the influence of the Greek athletic 

 institutions upon art in the effect they produced, leading the Greek 

 artist to nature and the ideal in the representation of man. This 

 applies chiefly to the single figures in sculpture. There is one more 

 great achievement of Greek art, in which it has supplied all ages with 

 an artistic principle as fundamental as the ideal of the human form ; 

 and this again, I hold, is chiefly due to the influence which the athletic 

 games had upon the development of Greek art. 



The masterpieces of Greek painting have all been destroyed, and 

 our information concerning them is derived from the numerous accounts 

 of ancient authors, and from their feeble reflexion in the works of the 



