Part 6
Let us suppose then for a moment that our feet are sensibly shod and that their muscles are properly exercised: let us suppose also that we have learned enough of the principles of body poise and balance to be able to ‘stand at ease.’ With the next order ‘Quick march!’ a new series of difficulties will begin. Correct walking requires that the centre of gravity of a moving weight should be kept constant over its base, and to do this the muscles must be in a state of elastic tension. If the diaphragm is not doing its work, the act of passing the weight of the body from one foot to another results in an effort to feel forward for a new base, and movement proceeds in jerks. The way to avoid this jerky movement is to carry the whole weight forward at the same time as the advancing foot, and this can only be done if mind and muscle work together. The essential difference between a soldier’s march, if it be properly performed, and the civilian’s walk, degenerating into a slouch, is that the first calls for a definite mental effort; the second is mere mechanical habit. As soon as men march mechanically they cease to march, and that is the value of a regimental band: it stimulates the connection between mind and muscle that centres round our diaphragm.
Unfortunately, very few men know where their diaphragm is, or what purpose it serves. They think they know the position of their heart and their liver (although experience on the drill ground shows that they are generally wrong), but as regards their diaphragm, their ignorance is even as the night. As they plaintively remark, ‘How should they know? They have never been taught.’ And that is really the mischief. As children they were laboriously instructed in the anatomy of the world: they knew what a promontory and a peninsula were, and could tell you the names of the principal rivers from China to Peru. But as for the anatomy of their body they were left in almost complete darkness. Many people cannot even spell the word diaphragm correctly; the ancient Greeks were so convinced of the influence of the diaphragm on mental and physical conditions that in their language the same word ‘phrenes’ stood for diaphragm and mind. It is a fact that if the diaphragm muscles are flabby and loose (as with undrilled men they almost invariably are), the whole mental system becomes infected with the resultant slackness. An alert mind is only secured by an alert body, and the call, ‘Attention!’ is, in fact, a stimulus to the abdomen muscles, which spring up vigorously and raise the weight of the body from the centre. A heightening of vitality and a sense of spiritual power follow as surely as it did on the ancient hymn--‘Sursum corda’--‘We lift up our hearts unto the Lord.’
Walking is of all forms of exercise the best for women; but it loses its value if a woman’s gait is radically wrong. Instead of walking from the hips, most women walk from the knees: the result is a strut, a shuffle, a stamp, a shamble, a waddle, or a hobble, never a true walk. To walk correctly, feet, legs and body must be under control. The feet must be allowed to keep their proper shape and position, and while the inside of the foot is used the toes should be planted in a straight line with the heel, never turned outwards. Uncertain balance produces bent knees, and one of the first results of a true walk is an increase of beauty in all the leg muscles, an increase of strength in the knees and in the deep-set muscles of the lower back. A woman’s knees, which nature meant to be strong and elastic, are now, with the abdomen, the weakest part of the female frame. There is nothing that women fear so much as a jump, and this timidity is purely the result of knee weakness, and the consequent inability to distribute body weight correctly. In the interests of health, beauty and comfort, correct walking is essential for women, and yet not one woman in a thousand would satisfy an expert.
To walk properly, then, the diaphragm must be on the alert, and a lifted diaphragm in a state of muscular tension cannot exist side by side with a large flabby abdomen. If a man’s body is to be beautiful, and if the man himself is to be in perfect physical condition, the abdomen must be reduced to the smallest possible dimensions and not overloaded with fat. The size of the abdomen is increased by the absorption of large masses of food, especially if they are of a gaseous and indigestible nature; it is decreased if the amount of food taken is reduced and if the food itself is rich in nutriment so that less bulk is required. Above all, if the muscles of the abdomen and back are strengthened by a carefully-designed system of exercises, they will take their share in bearing the weight of the upper part of the body and will prevent it from settling down, an inert mass, in the socket of the pelvis. As things are now, our hip muscles have usually too much work to do and are exaggeratedly developed, and an examination of any Greek athlete statue--the Diadumenos will serve as one example of many--will show that the Greek hip was much finer and slimmer than ours: it was more behind the body than under it and a far greater freedom of movement was thereby made possible.
An even more striking change will be seen in the muscles of the abdomen. With us a young, well-proportioned man has usually a depression just above the iliac ridge, and the iliac line descending from the hips to the top of the legs makes only a slight inward curve. In the Greek body we see a firm roll of flesh lying just above the iliac crest, the iliac line running beneath it for a short distance inwards in a horizontal direction, and then bending downwards at an obtuse or sometimes almost a right-angle.
Of this plain fact two explanations are possible. Either the ancient sculptors wilfully falsified their models’ contours in the interests of ideal beauty, or else this difference between the ancient and modern abdomen really did exist. The first explanation is highly improbable considering the Greeks’ artistic conscience, and furthermore in their statues of women no trace of this horizontal iliac line is ever apparent. The only reasonable inference is that these muscles, which with us are so undeveloped as to be invisible, were the result of the constant physical training to which the Greek man, but not the Greek woman, was habituated.
In an artistic sense there can be no doubt as to the excellent effect which the ancient line produces. It gives proportion and an air of solidity and greatly diminishes the superficial area of the abdomen. And that it represented a real condition rather than an artistic ideal is a very probable fact, for the statues of Greek athletes often represent positions which for us with our weak abdomens are almost impossible of attainment. One of the most perfect of all, Myron’s Diskobolos--the young athlete throwing the diskos--seemed to Herbert Spencer ‘an impossible contortion’; and after a close examination of its poise he declared that at the next moment--if the action were continued--it would fall upon its nose. It is quite possible that such a regrettable accident would have been the result if our revered philosopher had attempted to perform the movement, but the muscles of the Greek body, properly trained and hardened, found in it no insuperable difficulty.
The movement that Myron represents is the swing back of the diskos. The athlete has already taken his stance, and with left foot forward has extended the diskos horizontally to the front in his right hand. Then comes the decisive action: the whole weight of the body is transferred to the right foot, whose toes grip the ground at full tension; the left foot trails back, offering no resistance either to the pause or the coming momentum; the body swings round upon the fixed pivot of the right foot. The diskos held in the right hand comes downwards and backwards; head and body turn with it; the next moment the body will swing round again with a forward lift and the diskos will fly from the extended hand. Whether the force of the throw relies entirely upon the lift of the thighs and the swing of the body, or upon the arm alone, swinging rapidly in a free shoulder socket, will depend upon the weight of the diskos used. In either case it is the pause at the end of the backward swing that the sculptor has fixed in the bronze.
Only in imagination can we see the actions by which the body has got into this position and by which it will again recover its equilibrium. It illustrates one of Lessing’s sayings in the _Laocoön_: ‘Of ever changing nature the artist can use only a single moment and this from a single point of view. And as his work is meant to be looked at not for an instant but with long consideration, he must choose the most fruitful moment, and the most fruitful point of view, that, to wit, which leaves the power of imagination free.’
One of the greatest benefits that the ancient Greeks have bestowed upon the modern world, if only we like to make use of it, is the standard of bodily perfection they have bequeathed to us in the remains of their sculpture. Just as Greek literature is eternally precious, not only for itself but as a criterion of beauty, so Greek statuary supplies us with visible proof of the power and grace to which the human body with proper care and training can attain. Besides the Diskobolos we have an admirable example of slender vigour in the Hermes of Praxiteles, of athletic strength in the Hagias of Lysippus, of grave dignity in the Charioteer of Delphi, of poise and balance in the Archers of the Ægina pediment, and of what the Greeks considered perfect proportion in the various copies--all unfortunately rather late and lifeless--of the Doryphoros of Polycleitus, from which the sculptor himself worked out his ideal canon.
Of examples of female beauty we have an equal wealth, and almost every movement of the body may be illustrated from some extant statue. For walking, we have the Victory of Pæonius, stepping freely forward with her light linen robe blowing back against her girlish limbs, and the more mature figure of the Victory of Samothrace. To some modern critics both statues seem to be flying through the air, but the appearance of winged motion is in reality simply due to the fact that they are walking _correctly_, using about half the effort, and covering at each pace nearly double the ground that a modern woman would traverse.
As types of the standing position there are the three great statues of Venus in Paris, Rome, and Florence. The Venus de Milo, more beautiful than any modern body with her mingled charm of grace and vigour, the tapering waist line and fine hips giving grace, the strength and development of the abdominal muscles promising the perfect fulfilment of woman’s noblest task; the Venus of Cnidus, where again the line of beauty is the line of the hips, as the goddess stands with left knee bent resting the weight of her body on the right flank; the Venus de Medici, less vigorous at first sight than the other two, but revealing on a closer view a subtle complexity of sinew and muscle about the waist line, where the modern corset leaves unsightly rolls of fat and muscles atrophied.
For sitting, there is the group known usually as ‘The Three Fates,’ from the east pediment of the Parthenon; the figures resting, but resting with knowledge, the shoulders square and thorax high
arched, the body not allowed to collapse in an inert mass, but ready at need to spring again at once into active life. Another example is the crouching Venus of the Vatican, set in a position of modest grace which a modern woman would find almost impossible of attainment. With us the cartilages of the breast bone are practically useless and the thorax is left unsupported; Greek women were able to move the entire thorax sideways, a capacity we have lost, and when lowering their bodies they kept them, as does the goddess here, with the longitudinal axis of the torso remaining as far as possible in the vertical plane.
If we need types of more active motion, there is the Amazon from the pediment at Epidaurus, her body perfectly poised as her thigh muscles press the horse’s side; or the Athena of the Æginetan pediment showing us how with proper control of the muscles it is possible to turn the body through three-quarters of a circle without moving the feet; and the exquisite bronze Fortune at Naples, a perfect example of muscular balance--‘drawn up on the extreme points of her toes, she looks as though hovering over the world, light as thistledown, and yet in her tense immobility the very essence of Force.’
It has often been said that the marvellous achievements of Greek sculptors were a result of their daily opportunities of seeing the nude form; but nudity alone does not suffice. The greatest sculptor of our time tried the experiment of studying his nude models as they walked to and fro at their ease in his great room at the Hotel Biron. We saw the result: critics accused him of a love for the grotesque and the uncouth, while Rodin himself was reduced to the theory that for the artist nothing is ugly. The truth is that the naked body of a modern grown man is not beautiful, and therefore a faithful transcription such as Rodin gives cannot be beautiful. But the Greek models were beautiful, because beauty of body had been developed by a system of gymnastics universally applied.
With their statues to guide us, it will be our own fault if we do not again reach the standard of physical perfection which the Greeks attained; for it is a curious and inspiriting fact that the human form almost immediately responds to any opportunity that is given it, and that with each child the race begins anew. What we need is a national training, carefully planned by experts and adapted alike for children, youths and grown men. And with it we need a fuller realization of the duty that every one owes to himself, and a deeper determination to make each part of our body as beautiful as nature allows. Listen to the words of the wisest of philosophers:
‘It is a shameful thing to grow old in neglect, without having realized to the utmost such strength and beauty as your body is capable of. Strength and beauty will not come of themselves: the man who takes no care for them will never possess them.’
5
Galen’s Treatise on the Small Ball
Ball games, as we know from Homer, were from the earliest times popular among the Greeks, being especially esteemed for the grace of body which the act of throwing and catching gives. The central incident of the _Odyssey_ is connected with such a game, for it was a lost ball that roused Odysseus from his sleep in the bush and led to his discovery by Nausicaa. At Athens in the fifth century they were, for men, rather overshadowed by the gymnastic exercises already described, but youths found in them a favourite diversion, and the poet Sophocles in his tragedy of the _Nausicaa_ won particular praise in the title-rôle--a non-speaking part--because of his dexterous skill. Those who played, as Athenæus tells us, always paid great attention to elegance of attitude, and he quotes from the comic poet Demoxenus:
‘A youth I saw was playing ball, Seventeen years of age and tall; From Cos he came, and well I wot The gods look kindly on that spot. For when he took the ball or threw it, So pleased were all of us to view it, We all cried out; so great his grace Such frank good humour in his face, That every time he spoke or moved, All felt as if that youth they loved. Sure ne’er before had these eyes seen, Nor ever since, so fair a mien: Had I stayed long, most sad my plight Had been, to lose my wits outright, And even now the recollection Disturbs my senses’ calm reflection.’
Of the actual details of these ball games we have very few accounts in literature or representations in art. One of the most recent archæological discoveries has, however, thrown light on one point. Up till lately we had no instance of implements being used; but in February, 1922, while the foundations of a shop were being constructed at Athens, sections of the Themistoclean circuit wall were brought to light. Built into them were three quadrangular bases of Pentelic marble with sculptured reliefs on their sides and one of these reliefs shows clearly the details of a hockey match. The ball is on the ground in the exact middle: two youths with sticks are engaged in a ‘bully’ for it precisely in the modern fashion: on either side of them stand two other pairs of youths, with sticks, representing, it may be presumed, the rest of the two competing teams.
Another of the six reliefs, equally interesting, shows probably the beginning of the most popular and the most energetic of all forms of ball games, the Phæninda, played with a small hard ball stuffed with hair, the Harpastum. The game bore some resemblance to our Rugby, except that the ball was always thrown and never kicked. The scene on the relief represents a throw-in from the touchline; one youth is preparing to throw, the rest are waiting either to seize the ball in the air or to tackle the next possessor. A passage from the comedian Antiphanes, quoted by Athenæus (Bk. I, ch. 26), gives a lively picture:
‘The player takes the ball elate, And gives it safely to his mate, Avoids the blows of the other side And shouts to see them hitting wide. List to the cries, “Hit here,” “hit here,” “Too far,” “too high,” “that is not fair”-- See every man with ardour burns To make good strokes and quick returns.’
Another sort of game, less rough in character and more akin to our lacrosse, was possibly played with a lighter feather stuffed ball, in Greek, _sphaira_, the Latin _follis_. Here, tackling was not allowed, and the ball was thrown from hand to hand while the players were running at full speed.
In playing with the _harpastum_ or the _follis_ the main object was to drive your opponents to retreat behind their base line, and in both styles there
was a good deal of running. The third type of game, played with the _trigon_, required less exertion. The players here were only three in number, and stood at the three-corners of a triangle, throwing balls quickly one at the other: both hands were used and caddies supplied the players with missiles.
All three games were Greek inventions; but they reached the height of their popularity under the Roman Empire. Seneca, writing on the brevity of mortal life, complains that there are many people who have no other occupation but to play ball from morning till night. Martial frequently mentions the dusty _harpastum_, the warming _trigon_, and the feathered _follis_, and in one of his epigrams praises a young student for taking his exercise in the form of a long run rather than waste his time on the ‘busy idleness’ of a ball game. To this period also belongs the one serious account that we have in Greek of any game, Galen’s treatise on exercise with the small ball.
Claudius Galenus, born at Pergamum in the reign of Hadrian, 131 A.D., is one of the most notable figures of a notable age. Courtier-physician, scholar-diplomat, the friend of princes and the trainer of gladiators, he recalls the versatility of the great sophists of the fifth century B.C., and he equals them in the breadth and profundity of his knowledge. His writings embrace four distinct fields: medicine in all its aspects, philosophy, rhetoric, and grammatical logic; and although he is best known as a physician his commentaries on Hippocrates may claim to be the beginning of truly scientific scholarship.
His long life was spent in acquiring and imparting knowledge. A thorough education, conducted under his father’s eye, rendered him apt for every art. His wealth enabled him to travel and study at his leisure, and in early manhood he made the ‘grand tour’ of the ancient world, living for a time at Smyrna, Alexandria, and Rome before he returned to his native town. We have now 118 genuine extant works from his pen, which translated from the Greek into Arabic and thence again into Latin, were the chief text-books in all the mediæval universities. Editions were innumerable, and even to-day the name of Galen occupies more than fifty pages in the British Museum Catalogue. In a production so immense we must not expect consummate grace of language, but his own maxim, ‘the first merit of style is clearness’ is well exemplified in the ‘Small ball,’ which is short enough to be translated here in its entirety.
‘How great an advantage for health gymnastic exercises are and what an important part they play in questions of diet has been sufficiently explained by the best of our ancient philosophers and physicians. But how superior to all other exercise is the use of the small ball has never been adequately set forth by any of my predecessors. It is only right then for me to put forward my ideas for your criticism, Epigenes, since you have the very best practical experience of the athletic art, in the further hope that they may be useful also to all those to whom you communicate your knowledge.
‘The best forms of gymnastic, I think, are those which are able not only to work the body but also to delight the mind. Those men were true philosophers who invented coursing and the other varieties of the chase, tempering the labour they involve with pleasure, exultation and rivalry, and they had an accurate knowledge of human nature. So powerful an effect has mental emotion upon the stuff of which we are made that many people have been cured of ailments merely by the effect of joy, while many others have fallen ill from sorrow. Indeed, of all the affections that are rooted in the body none is strong enough to master those others that have the mind for their sphere. So it is wrong to neglect the character of our mental emotions; we ought for every reason to give more attention to them than to the condition of our body, especially as the mind is more important than the body can be. This care is the common function of all gymnastic exercises that have an element of pleasure in them, but there are other special points in small ball play which I will now describe.
‘Firstly, it is easy. If you consider what time and trouble all the business of hunting involves, especially coursing, you will clearly see that no one who is engaged in public service or who follows an art or trade can take part in these forms of exercise; they require abundant wealth and a person who enjoys considerable leisure. But ball play is different. It is so democratic that even the poorest can spare the necessary trouble. It needs no nets, nor weapons, nor horses, nor hounds: all it requires is one small ball. Moreover, it suits itself so well to a man’s other pursuits, that it does not compel him to neglect any of them for its sake. What could be easier than a sport which allows any form of human occupation or condition? As regards the exercise that hunting gives, it is out of our power to enjoy it easily: it requires money to provide an elaborate equipment and freedom from occupation to wait for a suitable opportunity. But with ball play even the poorest have no difficulty in getting the implements; it will wait for us, and quite busy people find opportunity to enjoy it. Its accessibility is a very great advantage.