ATHLETICS 



459 



ATHOS 



Historical. The recent renewal of the 

 Olympian games serves to show the great 

 antiquity of many of the athletic contests of 

 to-day, while expressing in a definite way the 

 indebtedness of the modern world to Greece 

 (see OLYMPIAN GAMES). The Greeks were the 

 first people of antiquity to organize sports. 

 The Greek athlete was as conspicuously hon- 

 ored by the citizens as the tragic poet or the 

 : r in battle. The victor in the Olympian 

 games was crowned with a wreath of wild olives 

 in front of the temple of Zeus ; poets celebrated 

 him in verse, and his triumphal return to his 

 native city was marked by songs and proces- 

 sions. Greek sculpture preserves for us the 

 comely bodies of the athletic youth of the best 

 period, bodies in which grace and strength are 

 marvelously blended (see SCULPTURE). The 

 Romans, who learned much from the Greeks, 

 imitated them also in their games, but without 

 that moderation which was the ideal of the 

 Greek philosophy and which was reflected in 

 detail in the daily lives of the people of Athens. 



Chivalry carried on the tradition of bodily 

 prowess, the knightly jousts corresponding 

 somewhat to the games of the classic world (see 

 CHIVALRY). Later on, however, in the refine- 

 ments of court life and in their zest for social 

 pleasures, the Latin peoples of the south of 

 Europe neglected athletic sports, and their 

 interest in them has only recently been revived. 

 In the North the case was different. For a 

 short period only did interest in sports languish 

 in England, for the athletic tradition is very 

 strong among Anglo-Saxon peoples, and boxing 

 and wrestling are regarded almost as English 

 sports. The Scandinavians and the Germans 

 have also cultivated sports with great zeal. w.c. 



Consult Spaulding's editions of rules and games 

 of all kinds ; Barbour's Book of School and Col- 

 lege Sports; Anderson's The Making of a Perfect 

 Man, 



*Mi.i.-fis. In the following Index are 

 listed the athletic sports which are discussed in 

 these volumes. Many closely related topics are 

 fflven In the list under GAMES AND PLATS and 

 AMUSEMENTS. 



Archery 

 Aquaplaning 

 Baseball 

 Baseball, Indoor 



I'.ask. t P...1I 



Battledore and 

 Shuttlecock 

 Bowling 

 Boxing 

 ket 



Curling 

 Discus, Throwing the 



Dumb-bells 



ing 

 Fives 

 Football 



Football, Association 

 Golf 



Hammer, Throwing the 

 H.m.l Ball 

 Hockey 

 Hurdling 



Lawn Tennis 



Olympian Games Skates and Skating 



Pole Vault Ski 



Polo Swimming 



Raoe Tennis 



Rowing Wrestling 



Shot, Putting the 



ATHOR, ah' thor, or HATHOR, the Egyp- 

 tian goddess of music and the dance, of joy 

 and love, corresponding to the Aphrodite of 

 the Greeks. In early times the Egyptians used 

 a buffalo's skull raised on a pole in connection 

 with her worship, and from this came the 

 sacred Athor column of Egyptian architecture, 

 which has on the top a female head with the 

 ears of a cow. Athor, the third month of the 

 Egyptian year, was named for her. 



ATHOS, ath' os, MOUNT, a mountain peak 

 on the northeast coast of Greece, of special 

 interest because of the monasteries on its 

 slopes, which date from the Middle Ages. 

 Mount Athos is on the southern point of the 

 most eastern of the three peninsulas that pro- 

 ject, like the prongs of a fork, into the Aegean 

 Sea. Its summit of shining white marble, 6,350 

 feet above the plain, can be seen from a great 

 distance; from the sea, the view of the "holy 

 mountain," with its picturesque dwellings of a 

 noted community of monks is wonderfully at- 

 tractive. The name properly applies to the 

 entire peninsula, which is joined to the main- 

 land by a neck of land only a mile and a half 

 wide. On this isthmus are yet traces of the 

 canal that the Persian king Xerxes had con- 

 structed in 480 B.C., just before he invaded 

 Greece. 



The religious community, occupying botli the 

 peninsula and mountain, consists of twenty 

 monasteries of the Order of Saint Basil, and a 

 number of monastic settlements, farms and 

 hermitages. Most of the monasteries are occu- 

 pied by Greek monks, but there are a number 

 of Russians, Serbs and Bulgarians. For many 

 hundreds of years, it is asserted, no woman 

 has been allowed to approach this great monas- 

 tic community, because under a constitution 

 granted by the emperor Constantino Mono- 

 machos in 1045, women are barred from the 

 "holy mountain." which at the present time 

 has a population of 6,000 to 7,000. About one- 

 half of this number are monks, while the rest 

 are lay brothers. The monks engage in farm- 

 ing. fi>hiMK and various trades, but are not 

 remarkable for intellectual culture. The monas- 

 teries, however, contain many manuscripts of 

 historic interest, besides paintings, mosaics and 

 golden ornaments that are interesting examples 

 of the art of the Eastern Roman Empire. 



