ABSTRACT
IN the ancient Greek city-states, citizenship and civilization I were closely connected. Civilization implied class societies, Abased on the exploitation of slave and serf labour, which afforded citizens their means of leisure. The citizens were themselves differentiated into richer or poorer groups, the more and the less leisured. Leisure was devoted, in varying degrees, to civic duties, peaceful and warlike, which, in more advanced communities, demanded qualifications which could only be provided by organized educational systems. These systems were developed from traditional, often quite primitive, forms which survived from tribal times; so that they included, from the beginning, physical education in varying degrees—from the almost exclusively physical education of Sparta to the more sophisticated and balanced composition of the Athenian system. Moreover, physical education continued to be closely connected with military training, so long as the city-state form of organization survived. Hence, physical education was considered to be of great importance by the various communities, so much so that the study of its composition and function cannot properly be understood apart from the study of its social environment.
