ABSTRACT
The monuments of pre-Hellenic Greece already have on them pugilists (the Hagia Triada vase with boxers), and acrobats vaulting over a bull (Tiryns fresco, Knossos ivory statuette, gems), showing active muscles; they show that the iEgeans attached a certain importance to bodily exercise and that the subject inspired artists. But it was reserved for Greece to bestow on this culture of the human body a care unknown elsewhere, and to her artists to obtain from it new effects. Gymnastics 2 for the Hellenes were an indispensable preparation for the social life of the soldier-citizen; they moulded body and mind alike, since a strong and noble spirit could exist only in a robust and healthy body. As artists they admired this healthy body, but the aesthetic interest was grafted on to the utilitarian and derived from a social necessity. The Greeks said that it was gymnastics which enabled the Athenians to win Marathon and the Thebans Leuctra. Socrates counselled the young Epigenes to cultivate his neglected body: “What a strange body hast thou, Epigenes!… Is that combat valueless to thee whose prize is life, should the Athenians come and propose it? Yet many men, owing to their bad condition, perish in the dangers of war and often at the cost of their honour; many, for the same reason, are taken alive; and others gain a bad reputation, founded on the feebleness of their body, which causes them to pass for cowards…. For my part, I think it easier and more agreeable to submit to the fatigues necessary in order to obtain a vigorous body. All is different to him whose body is in good condition from him in whom it is unfit; health and vigour fall to the lot of those whose bodily condition is good; many there are who, by this means, come through a soldier’s dangers with honour; others help their comrades, render service to their country and achieve fame. Know well that there is no struggle, no single act of thy life, for which thou wilt ever repent having trained thy body; indeed, in all the actions of mankind the body hath its uses, and in every use to which we put it it is necessary that it should be as fit as may be. Furthermore, even in those functions in which thou thinkest it has least part, in those of the mind, who knows but that great errors are often made in thinking because the body is indisposed? Bad memory, a laggard mind, sloth and folly are ofttimes the result of a vicious disposition of our body injuring the mind to such degree as to make us forget that which we know. If, on the other hand, the body is healthy, it is quite certain that there is no risk of a man coming to such a pass as the result of not having a sound constitution…” 1
