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| ISBN-13: | 9780486147451 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 05/14/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 24 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Athletics in the Ancient World
By E. NORMAN GARDINER
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2014 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-14745-1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
THE MEANING OF ATHLETICS
THE story of ancient athletics is the story of Greek athletics. The Greeks, as far as we know, were the only truly athletic nation of antiquity. To them we owe the word 'athlete' and the ideal that it expresses. This does not mean that the Greeks were the inventors of the various sports and games that we describe as athletic. The love of play is universal in all young things. Running, jumping, throwing various objects, fighting are common to children of all races and all times. But play is not athletics, though the instinct of play is undoubtedly one of their motives, and recreation is an important element therein. The child plays till he is tired and then leaves off. The competitor in a race goes on after he is tired, goes on to the point of absolute exhaustion; he even trains himself painfully in order to be capable of greater and more prolonged effort and of exhausting himself more completely. Why does he do this? Why does he take pleasure in what is naturally painful?
The idea of effort is the very essence of athletics as the Greeks understood the term and as we understand it; it is indeed inherent in the word itself. For the Greek word from which athlete is derived has two forms, a masculine form ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), usually meaning a contest, and a neuter form ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), usually denoting the prize of the contest. Of these two meanings there can be no doubt that the idea of contest is the earlier and root-meaning, for it determines the meaning of the words derived from it. The word is used by Homer to describe the ten years' struggle of the Trojan War; it is used of the labours of Heracles. This meaning of the word is clearest in the adjective ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) formed from it, which from meaning 'struggling', 'contesting' comes to mean 'miserable', 'wretched'. We find this same feeling in Homer when he describes boxing and wrestling as 'grievous' ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), an epithet which he also uses of war and battle. Yet the Homeric warrior delights in these grievous contests, and Pindar describes the athlete as one 'who delights in the toil and the cost'. We too have the same feelings. The game that appeals to every true athlete, the game that he delights in, one that he remembers when his playing days are over, is 'the hard game', the game that puts to the utmost test all his physical powers and all his skill.
But why does the athlete delight in the grievous contest? Why do we enjoy a hard game? The athlete is one who competes for something, but it is certainly not the material value of the prize that attracts him. The prize may be an ox, or a woman skilled in fair handicraft, a tripod, or a cup, but the most coveted prize in the Greek world was the wreath of wild olive which was the only prize at the Olympic Games. The real prize is the honour of victory. The motive that turns his effort into joy is the desire to put to the test his physical powers, the desire to excel. It is not every people any more than every individual that feels this joy in the contest, in the effort. The athletic spirit cannot exist where conditions of life are too soft and luxurious; it cannot exist where conditions are too hard and where all the physical energies are exhausted in a constant struggle with the forces of man or nature. It is found only in physically vigorous and virile nations that put a high value on physical excellence: it arises naturally in those societies where the power is in the hands of an aristocracy which depends on military skill and physical strength to maintain itself. Here are developed the love of fighting and the love of glory, and here we find the beginnings of athletics in wrestling, boxing, and other forms of combat which are the training of the young and the recreation of the warriors. Such were the conditions among the Homeric Achaeans, and probably among many of the tribes of central Europe. But for the tradition which the Greeks inherited from the Achaeans the later development of Greek athletics would have been impossible. And we may doubt whether the modern athletic movement would ever have taken place but for the spirit handed down to us by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
In the following chapters we shall trace the causes that led to the astonishing development of athletics among the Greeks. Chief among these was the desire to excel. No people has ever been dominated to such an extent by this desire as the Greeks were; no people has ever been so fond of competition. Competition entered into every department of their life. They had competitions in music, drama, poetry, art, even beauty competitions. But stimulating as was the spirit of competition and wonderful as were the results that it produced, it was and is a dangerous motive when uncontrolled. It was akin to that spirit of individualism which was the bane of Greek politics. We may doubt if team games could ever have acquired the same popularity among the Greeks as individual contests. Nor was the worship of success always compatible with the feeling of generosity towards the defeated, or scrupulousness as to the means of obtaining victory. Over-competition, as we shall see, led only too soon to specialization and professionalism with its attendant evils: it proved fatal to the true amateur spirit.
Before we proceed to the story of Greek athletics, let us briefly see what traces we can find of athletics in the great civilizations of the East.
CHAPTER 2SPORTS OF THE ANCIENT EAST
EGYPT
OF the popularity of games among the Egyptians from the earliest times we have abundant evidence in the paintings of their tombs. The walls of Beni-Hassan in particular present us with a truly marvellous display of games and sports.
With the sedentary games we are not here concerned except so far as they illustrate the antiquity of the games which have been popular at all times in the Mediterranean, especially of games of chance. It does not follow that we must look for the origin of these games to Egypt; rather it seems that they are the common property of the whole Mediterranean world, and possibly, if we had fuller knowledge of the Sumerians, we should find the same games among them. Here a few examples must suffice. One of the oldest and most widespread games is draughts. We have the draughtboard and draughtsmen that the Egyptians used, and Cnossos has yielded up a beautifully inlaid draughtboard. We have a picture of Rameses III seated on a throne and playing draughts with a lady, perhaps his queen, who is standing opposite. He is in the act of moving one of the men. We remember too how in the Odyssey Athena found the suitors seated before the palace, taking their pleasure in draughts. A late terra-cotta group from Athens shows us a young Athenian and a woman quarrelling over a game of draughts, while an aged dame expostulates with them. In the Via dell' Abondanza at Pompeii an inscription on the walls tells us of the existence of a draughts or chess club (Latruncularii). Yet a more striking example of the persistence of a game is the Italian game of Morra, known to every visitor to Italy though forbidden by the Italian law. It was especially common among the ladies of fourth-century Athens, and two thousand years earlier the Egyptian artist depicted it on the walls of Beni-Hassan.
With acrobatic performances we come somewhat nearer to athletics, for they imply physical agility and strength and require long and strenuous training. The Egyptians, like all orientals, loved shows of every sort. Acrobats were introduced at their feasts to amuse the guests just as they were at Xenophon's Symposium or at Trimalchio's banquet, and their performances were much the same as they are to-day. The Egyptian acrobats were mostly women, and so were the Greek. On the walls of Beni-Hassan we see them bending backwards till they touch the ground (Fig. 1 b), preparing, as Xenophon describes them, to turn a series of somersaults backwards. Sometimes one acrobat picks up another head downwards, and clasping each other with their heads between each other's legs they turn cartwheels backwards (Fig. 1 a). In one curious group we have a representation of 'hop-skip-and-jump' without the jump (Fig. 1 c); the hop is seen in three successive positions, then we have a standing figure, and then two movements of the jump.
These Egyptian acrobats also exhibited their skill in ball play, sometimes singly, throwing up several balls at the same time and catching them sometimes with crossed hands (Fig. 1 e), or again throwing balls to one another. These ball-playing scenes recur with strange persistence in Greek and Roman art. For example, at Beni-Hassan we see girls mounted pick-a-back on one another, in one case seated side-saddle, and tossing balls to each other to catch (Fig. 1 d). It is perhaps the game that the Greeks called ephedrismos, in which any player who dropped a catch had to be the ass ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and carry his fellow on his back. On Greek vases we see it played in the palaestra by young men with an instructor presiding (Fig. 209), and we find it again played by the little Cupids depicted on the walls of the house of the Vettii at Pompeii. It is stranger still to find what looks like a team game with three players on each side (Fig. 1 f), for this scene anticipates in a most curious way the game of ball represented in the recently discovered sixth-century reliefs from the wall of Themistocles at Athens (Fig. 212).
These ball games as depicted at Beni-Hassan were confined almost entirely to women and, as their dress shows, they are mostly professional performers. Yet we can hardly suppose that the games thus represented were not popular also among the young of both sexes. Boys certainly had games of their own. They played with hoops as did the young Greeks and Romans. In one scene two boys are seated on the ground back to back with arms linked trying to get up off the ground. In another they are swinging heavy bags like Indian clubs (Fig. 2 b, d).
The only truly athletic exercise is wrestling. At Beni-Hassan there is a wonderful variety of wrestling scenes (Fig. 2 a). On one wall alone there are two hundred and twenty wrestling groups. They look like illustrations of the wrestling school. Some of the groups show consecutive positions, but it is difficult to discover any definite system or arrangement. The wrestlers are naked save for a loin-cloth. Every conceivable grip and throw is represented. All holds seem to be allowable, and the wrestling is continued on the ground. It looks as if it were necessary to get an opponent on his back with his shoulders down. There is, however, no indication of hitting as in the Greek pankration.
These wrestling groups must represent part of the training of the soldiery; they are always associated with other military exercises, such as shooting with the bow or sham fights. In the latter we see men fighting with bucklers and short sticks in a manner that reminds one of some of the medieval fights in Italy. Herodotus particularly remarks on the hardness of the Egyptian skulls, which he attributes to their habit of shaving the head. Certainly there must have been many broken heads in Egypt. One of their sports seems very similar to that of single-sticks; the combatants fight with short sticks about two feet long, and their left arms are protected by wooden armguards strapped on (Fig. 2 c). A more formidable weapon was the neboot, which is still used in Egypt and still used to decide quarrels. It is a stout pole, six to eight feet long, grasped in both hands like the old 'quarterstaff', and was used particularly by Egyptian boatmen, who must have given one another many a 'bloody pate'.
Wrestling, single-stick, and quarterstaff-play were the exercises of the common people, and of the soldiery who formed a distinct class. There is no evidence that they were ever the amusements of the upper classes, or that there were ever organized competitions in them. The absence of such competitions is certainly implied by Herodotus, who was surprised to find gymnastic contests of a Greek type held by the people of Chemmis at the festival of Perseus. The upper classes seem to have preferred sedentary games and watching the performances of professional acrobats.
Among the popular shows in Egypt were also bull-fights, sometimes fights between two bulls, sometimes between a man and a bull. Both types are represented in the Beni-Hassan pictures, and Strabo tells us of bull-fights held before the temple of Hephaestus at Memphis. The popularity of bull-fighting at an early date in Egypt is interesting in view of the importance given to it in Crete, but the scenes of the Egyptian bull-ring are singularly tame compared with the wonderful performances of the Minoans.
From this account of the games of the Egyptians it is clear that they had no claim to be an athletic people though there may have been plenty of athletic material among the poorer classes. For thousands of years the upper classes lived a life of luxurious ease and security in the fertile Nile valley. They were not a military people, their army was recruited chiefly from the warlike tribes of the Sudan. Among such a people athletics are not likely to flourish, and whatever else Greece owed to Egypt it is certain that she did not owe to them the athletic impulse. Let us turn now to that other great Mediterranean civilization in Crete.
CRETE
M. Glotz tells us that the Greeks were indebted to Crete for their athletic system and their athletic festivals. He calls attention particularly to the slim athletic type of figure represented in Cretan art, and describes the Cretan athlete as using a gymnastic belt. The figures represented are certainly of an athletic type, but the slimness that M. Glotz notes is characteristic of much early art, and the wasp-like waist is equally noticeable among the Egyptians. Moreover, the heavy belt which he describes as a gymnastic belt is part of the ordinary Minoan dress worn by women as well as men. Let us see what we can learn from the monuments.
The key to Cretan sports is furnished by the well-known Boxer vase from Hagia Triada (Fig. 3). It is a steatite filler, eighteen inches high and was originally gilt. Round it run four bands in relief representing various sports. The topmost band is much damaged, and it is difficult to understand its meaning. Under the handle are two men fighting, possibly wrestling. They are naked save for loin-cloths and a sort of high boots. Beyond them is a pillar with a curious oblong capital, then two men advancing to the right with outstretched arms, and a third figure stooping down; the rest of the figures are lost. All three men wear high crested helmets. What are they doing? They are generally supposed to be fighting, but their attitude seems inappropriate. It has been suggested that the first two may be engaged in a foot-race, and that the third is jumping; or the first two may be taking their run for a jump. There does seem to be some sort of gradation in the three figures. But without the rest of the group, or the discovery of similar scenes no certainty is possible.
The second band represents a scene from the bull-ring. Two magnificent bulls are careering in full gallop, and the second of them is tossing a cowboy; the rest of the scene is lost.
The two remaining bands represent boxing scenes. The upper band is divided into three panels by pillars similar to that in the topmost band. Between the first two pillars stands a victorious boxer, while his opponent has fallen on the ground. In the next panel only the victor's figure is left, in the third only that of the fallen. The boxers wear close-fitting helmets, possibly of leather like the later wrestling caps; their hands seem to be padded, and the forearm also protected by some sort of guard. The attitude of the victors is very vigorous. They have the right arm drawn back for hitting and the left advanced. We may notice that the left arm is always bent, a position far superior to the stiff straight guard shown on some Greek vases.
In the lowest band the fighters are apparently boys, if we may judge from the thick masses of hair and the short curls on the forehead. Their hands are bare. Two of them have fallen; one sitting on the ground supports himself with his left arm while he holds his right arm above his head to ward off further blows. The other seems to have been knocked head over heels. Mosso sees in this position traces of the savate. Dr. Hall thinks he has been swung by the legs and dashed to the ground, but the attitude of the three standing figures is precisely the same as that of the boxers in the zone above and there is nothing in them to suggest wrestling.
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