A T H L E T M. 



47 



A-!i!ets. ] s t, Leaping. Those who contended in this an- 



if ' cient sport had weights attached to their bodies, to 



give a greater momentum to their exertion, and to 

 swin<r them forward. The weight was sometimes 

 attached to the head, or shoulders, but generally car- 

 ried in the hand, when it had holes for the admission 

 of the fingers. We are not informed that height was 

 aimed at in the leap, which was directed to a hole, 

 or ditch, in the ground ; and into this it was some- 

 times the grand object to alight. 



2d, The Foot-Race. Swiftness of foot was one 

 of the most enviable qualities in the eyes of the an- 

 cients. Homer uniformly ascribes it to his great 

 hero Achilles, and elsewhere praises it as one of the 

 most valuable endowments of nature : 



No greater glory can be e'er attain'd, 

 Than what strong hands or nimble feet have gain'd. 

 N - 



David praises Saul and Jonathan on the same prin- 

 ciple : " they were swifter than eagles." Those who 

 professed this sport had short buskins, or sandals, to 

 protect their feet ; and they sometimes ran in com- 

 plete armour. They are said to have found means 

 to contract, by the actual cautery, the size of the 

 spleen, which was deemed an impediment to velocity. 

 The perfection to which some of the champions at- 

 tained in this game, is described by the Greek bards 

 with the most poetical extravagance. In an epigram 

 in the Anthologia, the racer is feigned to have be- 

 come invisible from his excessive swiftness, and to 

 have only reappeared when he halted at the end of 

 his course. 



3d, Darting. The instrument generally employ- 

 ed here was a javelin, or pole. These were dischar- 

 ged sometimes from the naked hand, and sometimes 

 with the help of a thong tied about the middle of 

 the weapon. This exercise also included archery, 

 and perhaps slinging. 



4th, Quoiting, or throwing the Disc. Here the 

 instrument was a heavy mass of stone, brass, or iron. 

 It was taken up in one hand, between the thumb 

 and fingers ; was thrown under the arm like our com- 

 mon quoit ; and being, in general, exceedingly smooth, 

 and convex on both sides, was grasped and retained 

 with considerable difficulty. In this game, as in our 

 putting-stone, there was but one disc to a company ; 

 and the contest was, not as in our quoits, who should 

 hit a particular object, but who should throw to the 

 greatest distance. 



5th, Wrestling. Previously to this exercise, which 

 was carried to the utmost perfection by the Greeks, 

 the naked combatants were rubbed all over with oil, 

 or with a composition called ceroma, consisting of 

 oil, wax, and dust. This, while it secured the skin, 

 by making it soft and pliant, and also prevented ex- 

 cessive perspiration, occasioned, at the same time, a 

 degree of lubricity, which greatly increased the diffi- 

 culty and the variety of the contest. To correct, 

 however, in some degree this inconvenience, the cham- 

 pions rolled themselves in the dust of the palasstra. 

 When they were people of condition, they used odori- 

 ferous unguents instead of oil, and were sprinkled 

 with a fine sand, or dry earth, brought from Egypt 

 and Italy. In wrestling, every stratagem was allow- 



ed for throwing down the antagonist : such as trip- Atldetas. 

 ping up his heels, twining round his limbs, and squeez- '" v - ' 

 ing his rib3 together ; but kicking and boxing were 

 strictly prohibited. A victory was obtained by 

 giving three falls ; but if, in falling, the vanquished 

 drew down his opponent along with him, the contest 

 was either begun anew, or continued on the ground, 

 when he who got uppermost was the conqueror. 



6th, The Pentathlon. In addition to the five 

 simple exercises which we have now shortly descri- 

 bed, there was another called Jive-games, consisting 

 of all these in close succession, in the order in which 

 they are mentioned in the following line : 



AhfM, TUdUKHYiV, glCKiV, xovt, 5rA. 



The leap, race, disc, the dart, and wrestling play. 



Some authors believe boxing to have been sometimes 

 introduced into the pentathlon, and that this was a 

 name for a series of any five games. This opinion, 

 however, is not generally adopted. As a peculiar 

 course of training was necessary for this game, a 

 pentathlete seldom succeeded in any of the simple 

 contests of which it was composed. It is spoken of 

 by the ancients as being a very tedious and difficult 

 contest. 



7th, The Ccestus. The games of which we have 

 hitherto treated were common to all Greece ; but 

 the two sports which follow were prohibited by the 

 Lacedemonians, not, however, on account of their 

 cruelty, but by reason of a condition imposed upon 

 the vanquished, that they must declare themselves 

 worsted. This ignominious confession was deemed 

 inconsistent with the Spartan character. The first 

 of these exercises was what we may term boxing, a 

 game which, in its original state among the Greeks, 

 was, like that practised among ourselves, a contest of 

 bare fists ; but which, by gradual improvements, and 

 the introduction of the ccestus, assumed an aspect pe- 

 culiarly frightful. In this advanced stage of the 

 science, the fingers and hand were wound up in 

 thongs of raw bull-hide, which were sometimes con- 

 tinued up to the elbow ; and to this offensive and de- 

 fensive contrivance were often added pieces of lead or 

 iron ; so that the .human hand was thus converted in- 

 to a species of hammer. In the first edition of Dry- 

 den's Virgil, there is a print representing the castus 

 in a different manner ; for there each of the comba- 

 tants holds by the end a long tapering bag of lea- 

 ther, supposed to be stuffed with lead or iron ; and, 

 with these massy sacks, in the form of a Hercules's 

 club, the heroes are belabouring each other with alter- 

 nate strokes. The armed glove, however, seems to be 

 the true idea of the caestus, which, when wielded by 

 a brawny arm, must have produced dreadful devasta- 

 tion in the physiognomy of the antagonist. To close 

 up an eye, or derange a little the structure of the 

 nose, were in those days but trifling exploits, when 

 men got their jaws demolished at a single blow, their 

 ears torn off their heads, and every frontal protube- 

 rance converted into a depression. The heroes in 

 this contest, it is true, wore a stiff cap to protect 

 their heads, and were generally swelled, by feeding, 

 to an enormous size, for the purpose of shielding 

 their bones from injury ; but, with all these precau- 



