Gymnasium And Athletics Essay ⋆ History Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The gymnasium and athletics were integral aspects of ancient Greek culture and society. The gymnasium provided a physical space where men gathered to exercise, participate in sports, and engage in intellectual discourse. The gymnasium and the closely associated palaestra also provided a place where athletes trained for competition in wrestling, boxing, pancratium, and track and field. Besides these athletic events, ancient Greeks also played several ball games, some at a competitive level, but not in the Olympic Games. The best athletes in ancient Greece, who represented the city-states in the Olympic Games and other athletic events associated with major religious celebrations, were professionals supported by wealthy citizens. Praised and criticized by philosophers, athletics and athletes provided inspiration for artists, dramatists, poets, and sculptors. As Greece declined and Rome rose to dominate the Mediterranean, athletics evolved to meet the cultural and social needs of the Roman world until Christian rulers suppressed it the late fourth century c.e.

The word gymnasium means “exercise for which one strips”; Greek men exercised and competed in the nude. The earliest gymnasiums, founded in the late sixth century b.c.e., were partly shaded sandy areas where men disrobed, rubbed themselves in olive oil, sprinkled sand on the oil, and exercised. After exercising, they removed the sandy oil from their bodies with a curved brass trowel, known as a strigil, and then bathed in a clear water stream. At their height gymnasiums had evolved into elaborate buildings with clubrooms, lounges, altars, and storage rooms for lotions, olive oil, and athletic powders. Bathtubs and showers replaced the streams for washing after exercise and competition.

Attached to some gymnasiums was a palaestra, a smaller facility for specialized athletic instruction and training. Most palaestras, however, were separated from the gymnasium and were open only to professional athletes. A sanded field surrounded by a colonnaded court, the palaestra was used for instruction and practice in wrestling, in which most healthy men participated regularly and with great enthusiasm. The gymnasium and the palaestra assumed a central focus in the everyday lives of Greek males. Many men visited the gymnasiums to watch others train and compete, play board games, discuss the issues of the day, and listen to an orator. As informal educational facilities, they were important meeting places for the mixing of generations, debate, and the exchange of ideas. Gymnasiums each had their own character and tone; whereas one might have been a haven for left-wing politics, another might have purported more conservative views. Others provided a refuge for male prostitutes, who profited from the subtle but tacit homosexuality that pervaded much of male Greek society. The largest gymnasiums, the Academia, the Lyceum, and the Cynosarges, were located in Athens. The Academia, the name of which endures to mean a place of higher learning, was the choice of Plato and his followers. On the other hand, Aristotle preferred the Lyceum, which has survived, linguistically at least, in the French lycée.

Greeks participated in a variety of athletic events, including running, throwing, jumping, wrestling, and boxing; all of which were contested in the Olympic Games, one of four athletic competitions associated with periodic religious celebrations. Foremost among the running events was the stade, a race of approximately 656 feet (200 m), or the length of the stadium. Runners also contested the double stade, in which they sprinted to a pole at the end of the course, made a tight turn, and raced back to the starting line. Distance runners competed in a race of approximately 15,748 feet (4,800 m.), or 12 stades.

Discus, Javelin, Wrestling, And Boxing

Throwing events included discus and the javelin. The discus began as a round flat stone before evolving into a bronze plate. The javelin measured six feet and had a small leather loop attached at the center of the shaft in which the athlete inserted two fingers. The athlete wound the loop around the javelin to create spin upon throwing it, maximizing its distance. The standing broad jump was performed with hand weights that the athlete swung back and forth to enhance the distance of the leap.

The discus throw, javelin throw, standing broad jump, stade, and wrestling combined to form the pentathlon, an Olympic event, in which the most versatile athletes competed. Aristotle described the athletes who participated in the pentathlon as

“the most beautiful because they are fit for exercises for speed and for those of strength.”

Wrestling, boxing, and the pancratium, a combination of wrestling and boxing, were violent, brutal contests of strength and will. Only the largest, heavily muscled, and toughest men throughout Greece competed in these sports, which were bound by few rules, no time limits, no ring, and no weight limit. Wrestling, a truly freestyle contest, permitted all types of holds, mostly to the upper body, and tripping to bring the opponent to his knees. Although prohibited from biting each other and gouging each other eyes, wrestlers fought until one brought the other to his knees three times.

Wrestling, compared to boxing, was a mild event. Boxers bound their hands and wrists with heavy strips of leather, leaving only their fingers free. They combined blows to the head or neck with closed fists with open hand slapping to divert attention, cut the face, or close the eyes of the opposition. The bout lasted until one of the contenders was too exhausted to continue, knocked out, or raised his right hand to signal defeat.

Ball Games

Although not included in the Olympic Games, ball games were popular forms of exercise and play among the Greeks. Homer observed that women, children, and old men played ball games. In Sparta, the city-state known for its taste for war, the terms for “ball player” and “youth” were synonymous. In some palaestras, a room known as the sphairisteria was set aside for a ball game similar to modern handball. Although the rules of this game are unknown, records indicate that it was competitive. Moreover, the Greeks played a form of field hockey, in which two opposing teams hit a small ball with curved sticks. One writer observed that the teams “strived to be the first to drive the ball to the opposite end of the ground from that allotted to them.” Another ball game, episkyros, involved two opposing sides throwing a ball back and forth “until one side drives the other back over the goal line.”

Professional Athletics

Greece’s best athletes, those who competed in the Olympic Games and similar athletic competitions, were professionals. Although they did not receive material rewards for their Olympic performances, wealthy patrons financed their favorite athlete’s training, travel, and livelihood. While the dominance of wealthy aristocrats in Greek sport gave the impression of amateurism, the emergence of lower and working-class athletes in the middle of the fifth century b.c.e. supported by wealthy citizens exposed the professionalism inherent in Greek sport. The emergence of athletic guilds in the second century b.c.e. legitimized professionalism, as the organizations provided athletes with a mechanism for collective bargaining to achieve an equitable competitive environment. Through collective bargaining, athletes gained a voice in scheduling games, making travel arrangements, obtaining personal amenities, and securing old-age pensions in the form of working as trainers and managers.

Greek intellectuals praised athletics and exercise for preparing the body for the physical demands of life and forging the bond between the mind and body. Socrates said that the

“body must bear its part in whatever men do; and in all the services required from the body, it is of the utmost importance to have it in the best possible condition.”

For Plato, a student of Socrates, himself once a wrestler, who competed in the Isthmian Games, the ideal was the body and the mind “duly harmonized” through athletics. In The Republic, Plato engaged Socrates in a dialogue, arguing that gymnastic exercise was the “twin sister” of the arts for “the improvement of the soul.” Philosophers like Euripides criticized the athlete’s unyielding pursuit of glory through athletics and sport at the cost of maintaining lifelong health.

“In their prime they made a brilliant spectacle as they go about and are the pride of the state; but when bitter old age comes upon them,” observed Euripides, “they become like old coats that have lost their resilience.”

The athlete provided Greek artists and sculptors a subject in whom they could express their regard for physical beauty, strength, and symmetry. While Myron’s fifth-century b.c.e. statue of the discus thrower, Discobolus, captured the physical ideal expressed by Plato, other sculptors and artists demonstrated the realism of athletics and sport. For example, Apollonius’s firstcentury b.c.e. bronze statue The Boxer not only displays the combatant’s beautifully proportioned muscular body but also the scarred face, gnarled hands, and broken nose common to the sport. Depictions of trim and finely proportioned runners painted on vases and cups were often juxtaposed against gaunt charioteers, grossly disproportioned wrestlers, and pitifully plump gymnasts.

Similarly, dramatists and poets found inspiration in athletics. In Electra, Sophocles portrays Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, as a bold yet reckless charioteer competing in the Pythian Games at Delphi, who dies after being thrown from his chariot after losing control of it through a tight curve. In the following lines, the poet Pindar of Thebes celebrated the athlete’s pursuit of victory:

For if any man delights in expense and toil

And sets in action high gifts shaped by the gods, And with him his destiny

Plants the glory which he desires,

Already he casts his anchor on the furthest edge of bliss,

And the gods honor him.

At the height of Greek culture and society gymnasiums and athletics had spread throughout the entire Mediterranean region. Even as Greece declined in influence through the second century b.c.e., foreign cities and towns continued to build stadiums, hippodromes, gymnasiums, and palaestras. Often gymnasium culture conflicted with local values, as in the case of Jerusalem, where Orthodox Jews were offended by the nudity practiced at a gymnasium built there in 174 b.c.e. Of all the Mediterranean cultures influenced by Greece, the Etruscans on the Italian Peninsula were the most enthusiastic about Greek sports. Etruscans threw the discus and javelin, wrestled, boxed, ran footraces, and raced chariots, but in the context of preparing men for war. While the Etruscans graced their vases and urns with depictions of track and field athletes, they did not find their particular performances entertaining nor inspiring, and for that, they turned to gladiatorial contests and animal fights.

Although Greek sport persisted until the middle of the fifth century c.e., its influence and importance in Mediterranean culture and society had greatly diminished under Roman and Christian rule. By the middle of the second century b.c.e. Rome had conquered Greece as well as the entire eastern Mediterranean. Although the Romans continued the Greek athletic festivals, mainly as a way to unify the eastern and western portions of their empire, they found Greek sports too individualistic, too competitive, and too focused on the participant rather than the spectator. Like the Etruscans, the Romans preferred spectacles, such as circuses, animal fights, and gladiatorial combats, for their amusement. To describe these latter activities, the Romans used the Latin word, ludi, which meant a game in the sense of amusement or entertainment, as opposed to the Greek word, agon, which meant contest.

Although Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome, abolished the pagan religious celebrations associated with the Olympic Games and other such athletic events, Greek athletes persisted until final destruction of Olympia by two devastating earthquakes in 522 and 551 c.e.

References:

Baker, William J. Sports in the Western World. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988;
Mandell, Richard C. Sport: A Cultural History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984;
Young, David C. The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics. Chicago: Ares, 1984.

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