Part 5
The popularity of a private palæstra, especially if it were intended chiefly for the instruction of boys, depended largely on the personality of the pædotribe who there gave instruction, and Athenian fathers were as fond of expounding the merits of their own favourite teacher as Englishmen are of singing the praises of their old school. The pædotribe was usually assisted by subordinates--_gymnastæ_, who coached pupils in special exercises and prepared them for competitions, and _aleiptæ_ who undertook for boys the actual rubbing down and massaging which men and youths performed for themselves; but he alone was the directing spirit of the place. He required to have considerable medical knowledge, and held a rank in popular estimation of equal importance with a physician. His business was to prevent, the doctor’s only to cure, disease. He had to know what exercises would suit what constitutions; he was called on frequently to prescribe in matters of diet and sometimes must advise a strengthening and sometimes a lowering regime. Besides giving his pupils health, he was expected also to increase their beauty and their strength. Finally, according to Plato, a good pædotribe was able to produce by his teaching firmness of character and strength of will: therefore he must know exactly how much training to administer to each boy, for too much of these qualities is as bad as too little. It will be seen that a successful pædotribe combined in his person most of the capacities and duties which in our educational institutions are shared among the headmaster, the games master, the school doctor, the drill sergeant and the cricket professional; with the additional responsibility of having frequently to teach both parents and children.
But the larger palæstræ, as we have said, were usually public and free, and it may be useful to give here a brief account of their arrangements. On entering from the street the visitor passed down a short passage into the _‘Apodyterion_,’ the undressing room, a large hall with one side opening directly on to the cloisters which surrounded the central court. His first business was to strip; for all the exercises of the palæstra were performed naked; and then to anoint himself all over, and carefully rub the oil into his skin. As Lucian says again in the _Anacharsis_, speaking now through the mouth of the great law-giver, Solon:
‘When their first pithless tenderness is past, we strip our youths and aim at hardening them to the temperature of the various seasons till heat does not incommode them nor frost paralyse them. Then we anoint them with oil by way of softening them into suppleness. It would be absurd that leather, dead stuff as it is, should be made tougher and more lasting by being softened with oil, and the living body get no advantage from the same process.’
Another room, the ‘_Konisterion_,’ was set apart for athletes to powder themselves with dust before exercise. The effects on the body of powder were regarded as no less beneficial than those of oil. It closed the pores of the skin, checked excessive perspiration, and kept the body cool, thus protecting it from chills and rendering it less susceptible to fatigue. Special sorts of powders were supposed to have special virtues; those of a clayey nature were particularly cleansing, those that were gritty stimulated perspiration if the skin was inclined to be over-dry, the yellow earthy kind made the body supple and sleek, and gave that glossy appearance which was the sign of good condition and training.
Yet another apartment was the ‘_Korykeion_,’ where the punch-balls hung; some of them large skins filled with sand hanging about waist-level and used by wrestlers who would try and check their rebound, others smaller and lighter filled with fig seeds or meal, hanging as high as the athlete’s head and used by boxers as a mark for their blows.
And, lastly, there was the bathroom, a severely simple place with a large stone basin on a stand as its chief feature. Bathing establishments with hot and vapour baths existed in Athens, but they were discouraged by manly folk as corrupting athletic vigour and considered only truly suitable for the old and feeble. In the palæstra cold water was used alone, and the bath was either taken direct from the basin or else the athlete stood while a friend swilled him down from a bucket. Before the actual washing a flesh scraper was used to remove the dust and dirt from the skin, and a sort of lye obtained from wood ashes took the place of soap.
All this at Athens, as befits a true democracy, was open without restriction and without payment to every citizen. In the palæstra rich and poor met on equal terms without regard for rank or position. A strigil and an oil flask were the only implements that were needed, and on occasions the State even supplied the oil. We have scarcely anything like it in modern days; perhaps a racecourse, in its mingling together of all classes for sport, is the nearest equivalent. But our racecourses have some peculiar features that need not now be specified, from which the Greek palæstra was free.
4
Health and Bodily Exercise
For the attainment of the perfect health which is one of the highest goals of human endeavour, the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. in comparison with ourselves were placed under some disadvantages. Firstly, their racial stock, a difficult blend of the old Mediterranean people with central European immigrants, was not so good, for purposes of active strength, as our mixture of Saxon, Norman and Dane: the inhabitants of Attica claimed with some reason to be autochthonous, but in historical times they were already showing plain signs of race decay. Secondly, their climate on the whole was inferior to ours, the summer too hot and enervating, the winter dank and depressing rather than sharp and bracing: Attica in this respect also was more favoured than many states, and Athenian authors are very fond of contrasting the clear brilliance of their native air with the heavy dullness of the Bœotian plain. Thirdly, they lacked most of those sanitary appliances without which life in our cities now would seem almost impossible, and their doctors and surgeons had not that wealth of drugs and instruments which we possess.
On the other hand the Greeks, or at least the Athenians, had some points in their favour. Of all the people that we know the citizens of Attica did the highest thinking on the lowest feeding. They were naturally temperate both in food and drink, and a very great contrast both to the Romans and such other Greeks as the Bœotians and Thessalians. In this, at any rate, they were feminists; like most women they did not pay much regard to their stomachs, and made their meals not the most important but the least important thing in their lives, so that a Greek banquet was a very simple affair, compared with an English or a Roman repast, and its chief attraction was the music and conversation which followed the mere eating and drinking. The ordinary diet of the Athenians consisted almost entirely of cereals; porridge and bread were the staples, and although sometimes a little salt fish, cheese, honey or olives might serve as a relish, yet porridge in various forms was the staff of life. Their drink was usually water; a good supply was brought in to the city by pipes dating apparently from the time of Pisistratus, and the big fountain of the nine springs is mentioned by Thucydides. They realized all the benefits that come from a copious use of nature’s chief medicine: ‘best of all things is water’--such is the motto on the entrance portal to the great temple of Pindar’s poems, and the Athenians, knowing the truth, acted on their knowledge. Wine, of course, they drank and enjoyed--there were teetotalers amongst them, Demosthenes, for example, and they were regarded as crabbed, unpleasant fellows--but they enjoyed in moderation, and always diluted their wine copiously with water. To drink wine neat was to be a barbarian, and the story of the Spartan king who was driven mad by his unmixed potations was often repeated at Athens. The typical citizen was a thin wiry person, active and restless, and the highest praise you could give to an Athenian was to call him εὐτράπελος, ready to turn his hand to anything. As Aristophanes says, the Athenians were wasplike, thin-waisted and ready to sting--while one of commonest terms of political approbrium was παχύς--‘fat’--the word applied by the democrats to the idle rich.
Again, as we have said, the Athenians were autochthonous--such was their favourite boast--sprung from the land, born from the actual womb of mother Attica. Without examining too closely the exact truth of their claim, or accepting the origin of their grasshopper king, we may regard it as an historical fact that the Athenian stock remained undisturbed and without admixture for a very long period in Attica. They had therefore all the advantages which are derived from a pure and an old race; they were thoroughly suited to their environment, and had developed strong special characteristics. They were fully conscious of this themselves, never admitted aliens to Athenian citizenship, and took the most careful precautions to see that all citizens on the roll should be of pure Athenian parentage. In its relation to general health this steady continuity of race and domicile is more important than is often recognized. Only long centuries of undisturbed habitation can bring man into real harmony with nature, and this is one reason why the English peasant is so much finer a man, physically and intellectually, than the mixed breed of a great town. Half the diseases of our time are of nervous origin, caused ultimately by a feverish attempt to adapt oneself too rapidly to a new environment.
Moreover, the chief means whereby we stave off for the moment the results of this strain, drugs and stimulants of every kind, were unknown to the Greeks, and they were all the better for their ignorance. Tea, coffee, tobacco, opium; all these poisons are among the blessings of modern civilization, and in the fifth century B.C. were as unfamiliar to the Greeks as the countries from which they come. Here again the Greeks were closer to nature than we are. When they needed a stimulant--and stimulants are on occasion a real necessity--they took wine, the natural product of their own country, not something only to be found among totally different conditions. They knew nothing of the poisons of tropical countries, and nothing of the diseases which we have imported from the tropics. Asiatic fever, smallpox, cholera, syphilis, typhus were diseases of which the Greeks had neither knowledge nor experience, and even from our milder infectious complaints, such as measles and scarlatina, they were immune. Until the advent of malaria during the Peloponnesian War their most common malady seems to have been ophthalmia in its various forms, and consumption was their only serious scourge.
This would seem to be a fair statement of our respective advantages and disadvantages; and on the whole perhaps the balance of the account is in our favour. But all these considerations are counterbalanced and more than counterbalanced by one fact: an ancient Greek took a lively and intelligent interest in his own physical condition, and devoted most of his time, not to making money, or reading books or playing cards, but to what is a more remunerative investment than any of these, to the care of his health.
The most precious thing that a Greek possessed was not his soul, the existence of which he doubted, but his body. He took an interest in his body; he was not afraid of it in any of its parts, and he was not always trying to cover it up as something of which he was ashamed. He had none of those curious and morbid feelings that still linger on amongst us as an inheritance from Syrian conventicles and Egyptian monasteries. He stripped himself freely and often, in public as in private, and he allowed the sunlight, the fresh air, and the running water to reach every limb. Dirt was not to a Greek a proof of holiness, nor neglect of one’s person the sure sign of a love of learning. Cleanliness was not merely next to godliness; it was godliness itself. To be χαθαρός--clean, pure, free from defilement--was the ideal, and an ideal generally attained.
A Greek concentrated his attention on the care of his skin by means of baths, massage, and external applications. Bathing with the Greeks of the classical period was not the elaborate function that it became with the Romans, who used it indeed, as we use drugs, to correct the results of their own follies and self-indulgence; but it was thorough and it was constant. Moreover they knew the value of sun and air baths, a thing almost unattainable in England, and their dress allowed the free-play of air round the body. Hats, stockings, and gloves were practically unknown, and the feet were usually bare.
Of massage, both by the hand and by the instrument, which they called a ‘strigil,’ great use was made. The ‘rubber’ was as important for purposes of health as the ‘doctor,’ and an Athenian put aside a certain proportion of his time every day for his duties in this respect. In connection with rubbing comes the universal use of olive oil as an external application; the oil flask--_lecythus_--was as indispensable to a Greek as an umbrella is to an Englishman; and as a consequence the Athenians seem to have been seldom troubled with those coughs and colds which so harass modern men. Under the stimulus of the bath and frequent massage the skin performed its natural cleansing functions, and the oil served as an invisible protection against sudden chills, while from one of our greatest dangers, the hot polluted air of a crowded room followed by the cold dampness of a raw February evening, the Greeks were free, for artificial heating and lighting were little used and all gatherings of people took place in the open. By constant exposure to sun and air, by massage, by regulated exercises, and by rubbing with oil the Greek gained an elasticity of skin which meant health, vigour and beauty. A large proportion of our community take an interest in their complexions and spend a considerable amount of effort in trying to produce an artificial softness of face tissue, but to the far more important task of stimulating and strengthening the skin of the body and larger limbs they give scarcely any time at all. A delicate skin is not the essential, either from the point of view of health or real beauty; for though it may render details visible in an elegant fashion, only a skin that is well knit to the subjacent tissues shows the true configuration to advantage. This firm elasticity cannot be obtained except by attention, and in this respect we are inferior, not only to the Greeks, but to such different and widely separated modern peoples as the Red Indians of North America, the Malays of the Eastern Archipelago, and the Kanakas of the South Seas. A very large number of our minor maladies and disabilities come to us from our closed pores and our flabby epidermis, and from all these the Greeks escaped, owing to the care they gave to the outer surface of the body.
In the day-time a Greek was usually to be found upon his feet. Of the value of walking as the best of all the more gentle forms of exercise he was well aware, and he normally took a brisk walk in the early morning, another before the mid-day meal, another in the late afternoon, and another before he went to bed. Fortunately for him cycles and motor-cars were not yet invented. When he was not walking he usually stood, for the sitting position was regarded as more appropriate to slaves than to free men, and in any case he knew that sitting tends rather to cramp than to invigorate the body. If he wanted to relieve his leg muscles for a moment, which he seldom did, he dropped down easily into the squatting position, which those other scientific gymnasts, the Japanese, now use, a mode of resting especially valuable for women, as it strengthens all the muscles about the pelvis and gives vigour to the most vital portions of the female anatomy. When the time for a complete rest came he lay down, either propped upon one elbow or at full length, and allowed all his muscles to relax. If ever it was necessary to sit--in the theatre of Dionysus, for example, where an audience sat attentive in the open air for hours together--he sat on a plain flat seat without a back, his legs straight down in front of him, his feet resting on the floor. He did not loll or lounge, and when he was sitting he did not have that round-shouldered appearance, which is now so noticeable in a room full of people: he kept his diaphragm firm with the upper part of his body correctly balanced, the centre of gravity being exactly over the base of the spine; and in this position he was able to remain for long periods without effort or fatigue.
But as we have said sitting to a Greek was not a matter of choice, and was for him the exception rather than the rule; he preferred an erect position. The chief reason for this very considerable difference between his custom and ours is to be found in a simple fact: he was taught in childhood how to stand and how to walk _properly_, so that both actions were to him a pleasure and not a labour.
It may seem strange at first sight, but as an actual fact the operations of standing erect and walking straight are not in the strict sense of the word ‘natural’ to creatures like ourselves who have painfully evolved from a lower form of life. The awkward hesitations of the baby learning to walk are natural; the supple activity of the athlete is the result of art. To stand gracefully and easily is an accomplishment that must be acquired; it does not come to us of itself.
If a man stand erect, firmly planted on both feet at the same time, exerting as little muscular effort as possible, the hip joint is always a little overextended; the body would fall backward were it not for the ilio-femoral ligament which suspends the body to the hip joint. On the length and strength of this ligament depends both the position of the pelvis in relation to the thigh and also eventually the graceful carriage of the whole body. A lack of strength in this ligament and in the muscles of the abdomen means that the pelvis is too much inclined, the abdomen projects forward, and in the back there is a deep hollow: results unsightly and unhealthy enough, but unfortunately with us far too common, for we do not take means, as did the Greeks by a scientific system of gymnastics, to strengthen all these body muscles in early youth. Jumping with dumb-bells (performed in squads to music), throwing the diskos, and casting the javelin were exercises expressly designed for this purpose, and combined with daily practice in the wrestling school they gave the ancient Greek a different and a superior body to ours, a body which in outward contour and muscular development was much further removed from the ancestral ape than is that of the ordinary middle-aged citizen of to-day. A Greek could ‘stand at ease’ without any difficulty: the attempts that may be seen on any drill ground now when recruits attempt to carry out the order would be ludicrous if they were not so painful.
In order to stand correctly the legs and feet must be of a proper shape; a man must not be knock-kneed or splay-footed. When the legs and feet are close together, the two legs should be in contact at four points: at the upper part of the thigh, between the knees, at the point where the calves come furthest inwards, and at the inner ankle bones. The body muscles also must be well developed and under control, and the stander should know exactly where the centre of his body’s gravity is and how to obtain correct poise. Our drill-book advises that the weight of the body be balanced on both feet and evenly distributed between the fore part of the feet and the heels. With our present type of boot this represents probably the best position possible, but it should be remembered that it is not the best that can be devised. The perfect position for standing is this: the heels should just touch the ground, but there must be no weight on them; the feet should be close together so that the heels and the whole of the inside line of the feet are touching; the whole weight of the body should be got well forward _over the ball of the foot_.
Right standing is as essential to beauty as is the care of the skin, but most women now, like most men, stand wrongly. The head is not held in its right position by the neck muscles but hangs negligently forward, so that eventually the beauty of the nape of the neck is destroyed. The back muscles of the neck, thus overstretched, cause the large chest muscle, on which the breast is supported, to sink, and then the abdomen is forced upward and forward. Body poise is thus completely lost, the weight of the upper trunk is left to be supported by the legs alone, and all the conditions of unnecessary fatigue, weariness, and lack of vigour come into existence. The whole art of standing consists in the knowledge of body poise, and this has to be learned.
Even when we have acquired that knowledge we are still at a disadvantage. We stand upon our feet, and under modern conditions our feet do not have a fair chance. Sculptors know that it is possible to get living models for other parts of the body, even though those models rarely approximate to perfection; but for the foot the only safe method is to copy direct from the antique. The Greek sandal was in every way superior to our boot: it protected from injury and yet did not hinder movement: it was easily taken off and when in use left all the top part of the foot exposed to the light and air. Our feet, imprisoned from early childhood in closely fitting socks and in boots that impede the play of the toe muscles, can hardly be said to be alive. The great toe is usually twisted towards the median line, and the joint consequently has an ugly knotted appearance: all five toes are crushed together, and lose their natural shape, while the last, and often the last but one, is altogether distorted and deformed. Nor is the mischief confined to the toes: the whole foot, so seldom exposed to the open air, has a dry, lean, ill-nourished look. It shows itself the starved captive that it really is, and, as our modern schools of dancing and eurhythmic have discovered, the first condition of beauty and of graceful movement is that the foot should be free.
The Greeks were too sensible and too well aware of the importance of securing true body poise to deprive of its vitality that part of the body which is the chief factor in balance, as being the main point of contact between ourselves and the solid ground. As a result the Greek foot was in some important respects differently shaped from ours. The first three toes were longer and were thin and nervous like fingers; the second toe was often the longest of the three; the fourth and fifth toes were little used and were usually off the ground, being thus raised by a pad of firm fleshy tissue, spreading under the foot, on which all movement centred. The instep was not quite so high as with us, but the tendon Achilles was finer, the heel considerably smaller and much less used, for a Greek child was trained to dispense with it as a security for balance and to keep the centre of gravity over the forward part of the foot.
All these points of difference are perfectly well known to modern artists and can be observed in most ancient statues. It rests with ourselves, if we wish it, to recover the combination of beauty and strength which the Greek foot possessed; and if the attempt be made it will be found that it is not impossible even for us soon to approach with some closeness to that desirable ideal.