Chapter XXII: The Gymnasium and the Palaestra (1)

In Homeric times the gymnasium and the palaestra did not exist. The broad runs in Ithaca,[795] which are sometimes quoted as the prototype of the Greek gymnasia, were not running-tracks but cattle-runs. The need for special places for exercise first arose with the growth of city life. At first these were no more than open spaces in some grove or plain where the ground had been cleared for running or for wrestling. Such were the “runs and wrestling rings” which Cleisthenes of Sicyon prepared for his daughter’s suitors.[796] The place where the Spartan youth exercised retained its ancient name the “Dromos” or run, even in the time of Pausanias. The runs developed into the gymnasium, the wrestling-ring into the palaestra.

The word “gymnasium” means, properly, an athletic exercise. By a natural transference it comes to be used first in the plural, afterwards collectively in the singular for a place set apart for such exercises. It is a general term. The gymnasium is merely an athletic ground, or playing-field, where all sorts of sport take place. It contains “runs and wrestling-rings.” It may serve as a riding-school. Euripides speaks of “gymnasia resounding with the tramp of horses.”[797] It may contain buildings for the comfort of those who use it, but the essential part of the gymnasium is the running-ground. On the other hand, the palaestra is a special term for the wrestling-school. In its simplest form it is a square enclosure, containing some provision for undressing and washing. It is essentially a building. The palaestra may exist without a gymnasium, but no gymnasium can exist without a palaestra. Moreover, in a gymnasium the necessary buildings are naturally centred round the palaestra. Hence the palaestra being architecturally the most important part of the gymnasium, the two terms are in practice often used synonymously. Yet the original distinction is never wholly obliterated; in Pausanias the gymnasium is still the athletic ground, the palaestra the wrestling-school.[798]

Gymnasia probably existed in most Greek states in the sixth century or even earlier. Shade and water being essential for the comfort of those who used them, the site selected was usually a grove beside some stream outside the city. Such was the Platanistas at Sparta, an island formed by the windings of the river, and taking its name from the plane trees which surrounded it. Such were the three ancient gymnasia at Athens: the Academea, the Lyceum, and the Cynosarges. All three were sacred groves outside the walls of the city, the Academea on the west side, on the banks of the Cephisus, the other two on the east near the Eridanus and Ilissus. All three probably existed in the sixth century. The Academea was first enclosed with a wall by Hipparchus, and was afterwards improved by Cimon into a well-watered grove with trim avenues and walks. The origin of the Lyceum was variously ascribed to Peisistratus, Pericles, and Lycurgus. As it certainly existed in the time of Socrates, it was probably founded by Peisistratus, if not earlier, and underwent various improvements at the hands of Pericles and Lycurgus. The gymnasium of Cynosarges was reserved for bastards, and those whose parents were not both Athenian. Themistocles being the son of a Carian mother, and resenting his exclusion from the other gymnasia, succeeded in persuading some prominent young Athenians to accompany him to the Cynosarges. Slaves were not allowed to take any part in athletics, which were regarded as the distinctive mark of freeborn Greeks. The Academea and Lyceum were large enough to serve as riding-schools and parade-grounds for cavalry. The Athenian gymnasia were open to Athenians of all ages; boys were certainly not excluded, though, as we shall see, they were usually sent to the palaestra for education;[799] men of all ages resorted to them for their daily exercise; competitors for the games trained in them; above all, they were the training-school of the epheboi, at all events from the fifth century onwards. “When a boy is enrolled among the Epheboi,” says Socrates, in the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue called _Axiochus_,[800] “then come the Lyceum and the Academea, the rule of the gymnasiarchos, beatings with rods and ills innumerable.” Consequently, the gymnasia were the favourite resort of sophists and philosophers in search of pupils. Some philosophers habitually frequented certain gymnasia, which thereby became connected with particular schools of philosophy. In course of time literary studies prevailed over athletics, and the gymnasium developed into a sort of university.

The existence of palaestrae at Athens in the sixth century is attested by the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus. In this speech the orator refers to certain laws ascribed to Solon for the regulation of schools and palaestrae. The paidotribai were not to open the palaestrae before sunrise, and were to close them before sunset. There were regulations as to the class of boys to be admitted, their numbers and age, their discipline and the conduct of the Hermaea, a boy’s festival celebrated in the palaestrae. The actual text of the laws is spurious, but there is no reason for doubting the existence of the regulations mentioned by Aeschines, and their antiquity. But we must not confound the palaestrae referred to with those which formed part of the gymnasia. The latter were public institutions, mostly outside the city; the palaestrae for which Solon laid down regulations were such of the private palaestrae as were used for the physical education of boys. There were numerous private palaestrae, some perhaps built by rich individuals for their own use,[801] others kept by paidotribai[802] for profit. The publicity of the gymnasia and their remoteness rendered them unsuitable for the training of young boys. Parents and teachers naturally preferred the comparative privacy of the palaestra in the city. Some of these may have been attached to schools, others may have been reserved for boys of certain ages, or special times may have been reserved in them for different ages. Certainly it is at these palaestrae that the Athenian boys received their physical training. But it is no more correct to say that the palaestrae generally were reserved for the education of boys under the age of eighteen, than it is to say that no boys under that age were admitted to the gymnasia. Some of the palaestrae were certainly used by older pupils. In Plato’s _Lysis_ the sophist Miccus is stated to have established himself in a newly built palaestra. Boys of different ages are trained there at different times, but the pupils of Miccus are not boys, but epheboi or grown-up men, and these at all events had free entry there at certain times. The fact is that there were palaestrae of various sorts just as there are schools and colleges of various sorts in England to-day. To treat all the palaestrae as similar, and to endeavour to lay down hard and fast rules for all alike, is as ridiculous as it would be to write a treatise on the schools of England in which no distinction was made between primary schools and secondary schools, or between a college which forms part of a university and a college which is really a school.

Our knowledge of Greek gymnasia down to the fourth century is practically confined to Athens. The earliest existing gymnasium is that of Delphi, which belongs to the fourth century. The gymnasium at Olympia cannot be earlier than the third century. The only contemporary evidence for the fifth century is derived from the vase-paintings which give a vivid picture of the life of the gymnasium at Athens in the first half of this century, but yield only fragmentary evidence as to the arrangements of the gymnasium. Yet this evidence agrees so well with the remains discovered at Olympia and Delphi, and also with such scattered allusions as we find in literature, especially in Plato’s dialogues, that we may feel sure that the gymnasia and palaestrae of the fifth century throughout Greece were substantially of the type which we find in these places.[803]

The essential parts of the gymnasium or palaestra are clearly stated in the treatise on the Athenian Republic,[804] which if not written by Xenophon was probably written in the second half of the fifth century. The writer, speaking of the progress of the Athenian democracy, says: “As for gymnasia and baths and undressing-rooms some rich people have their own, but the people have built for their own use many palaestrae, dressing-rooms, and bath-rooms, and the mob has far more advantages in these respects than the fortunate few.” In this passage we notice, first, that there is no real distinction between gymnasium and palaestra; if there is any distinction, it is merely that the palaestra is somewhat more elaborate than the gymnasium, as the bath-room is more than the bath. Both are merely places for exercise. Secondly, the dressing-rooms and bath-rooms are clearly not independent buildings, but are connected with the gymnasia. Bath-rooms might exist separately, but what would be the use of separate undressing-rooms? Every gymnasium and every palaestra must contain, besides the actual “runs and wrestling-rings,” some place where those who use them may undress and oil themselves before exercise, and may wash themselves afterwards. These are the three essential parts of every such building, and all the complicated arrangements of the gymnasia at Ephesus and Pergamum are merely elaborations of these three requirements.

The dialogues of Plato illustrate alike the similarity and difference in the arrangements of a gymnasium and palaestra. The scene of the _Lysis_ is laid in the new-built palaestra to which reference has already been made. In general plan it resembles an ordinary one-storied Greek house. It is surrounded by a wall (περίβολος), the only opening in which is a door giving access to the street. Around this wall, on the inside, are placed the various rooms which all open out into the central court (αὐλή) which in the palaestra is considerably larger than in an ordinary house. On entering, the visitor finds himself in a sort of ante-chamber, from which he passes into a large hall called the apodyterion (ἀποδυτήριον). The front of this hall is open, so that it commands a view of the court, which is used for exercise. This hall, as its name denotes, is the undressing-room. But, like the modern cricket pavilion, it serves as a general meeting-place for all who frequent the palaestra. There are seats around the walls for their convenience. A group of boys are playing knuckle-bones when Socrates enters, and Socrates retreats to the farther corner to find a seat. Probably, if there were no other rooms, it was in the apodyterion that Miccus used to hold his classes. There may, of course, have been other rooms around the court, certainly there must have been some accommodation for washing, but as the bath-room is not conducive to serious conversation it naturally plays no part in these dialogues.

Now let us pass on to the Lyceum gymnasium.[805] The arrangement is similar, but on a larger scale. Close to the entrance is the apodyterion where Socrates takes his seat and watches people come and go. But besides the court, there is a covered track (κατάστεγος δρόμος), probably a colonnade running round one or more of the four sides of the court. This covered dromos is the place where Athenian gentlemen take their daily constitutional. As Socrates is waiting, two such enter, take two or three turns in this dromos, and then return to the apodyterion. Acumenos[806] indeed recommends a walk in the country as less fatiguing, but the gymnasium is a more sociable place, there is more life and amusement to be found there, and so the Athenian prefers it. But these covered runs are not for athletes or epheboi except in the worst of weather. For them tracks are provided in the park outside (ὁ ἔξω δρόμος) where, as in the Academy, they may run races “mid a fragrance of smilax, and leisure, and white poplar in the spring-season when the plane tree whispers to the elm.”[807]

The pictures on the red-figured vases enable us to fill in these outlines. These vases, manufactured mostly at Athens, between the years 520 and 440 B.C., represent the life of the Athenian epheboi, that is to say, life in the public gymnasia. On them we see scenes from the gymnasia proper, where youths are exercising, scenes from the apodyterion, and scenes from the bath-room.

We will first take a kylix in the Munich Museum, which gives a general picture of exercises in the gymnasium (Fig. 17). The scene takes place within a walled enclosure. The background represents this wall, or perhaps the wall of the apodyterion; for on it are hanging all the paraphernalia of the gymnasium, diskoi in their slings, halteres fastened together by a cord, strigils, oil-flasks, sponges. A pair of Ionic pillars frame the picture suggesting, perhaps, a covered colonnade. Sometimes these pillars are surmounted by a large flat block, which clearly indicates a roof. The actual exercises take place in the court in front, or the dromoi outside. In the ground are planted poles and picks. The poles are used as javelins for practice, and perhaps as measuring-rods; or as posts to mark the lines from which the jump is practised, or the diskos and javelin thrown. The two bearded men are instructors—paidotribai or gymnastai. Usually these are clothed in a long mantle; here they are naked, probably because they are teaching by example. One of them leans on the usual official staff and holds in his right hand a jumping-weight; the other holds in one hand a rod or javelin, in the other a thong for throwing the javelin, but it is not quite clear what his attitude means. The youth who looks on, leaning upon a pole, may be either a youthful assistant or a spectator.

Another kylix gives a vivid picture of the discipline of the gymnasium (Fig. 173). On one side are a pair of wrestlers, and looking on at them is an instructor wearing his robe, leaning on his staff with his right hand, while in his left he holds the forked rod with which he enforces discipline. On the other side is an instructor in the act of using this rod on some boxers. The youth who stands behind the first instructor with the pick may be another boxer taking this form of exercise, but the mantle rolled up round his waist suggests rather that he is an assistant who is loosening the ground of the skamma used by wrestlers and jumpers. On the interior of this vase is a third instructor, and a youth who seems to be measuring the ground with his feet, perhaps measuring the throw of a javelin, for he holds in his hands a javelin and its thong. The careless drawing of this amentum caused it to be misinterpreted formerly as a pair of compasses. Another figure frequently depicted in these scenes is the flute-player,[808] who is usually dressed in a long, gaudy robe, and wears round his head a curious sort of muzzle called φορβεία. These flute-players were probably slaves attached to the gymnasium.

Many of the exercises depicted require considerable space. The javelin and diskos could hardly be thrown with safety in the court of an ordinary palaestra. The open dromoi were the places for such sports. Here, too, it seems riding-lessons were given. Sometimes a group of athletes and a riding scene are placed on opposite sides of the same vase.[809] In these riding scenes pillars[810] are sometimes depicted, oil-flasks and other objects hang on the walls, and the instructors are the same as in athletic scenes. A good example of such a scene occurs on a kylix in Munich (Fig. 174). There are three naked epheboi, one already mounted, one leading a horse and holding in his hand the familiar forked rod, the third is being instructed in the art of vaulting on to his horse by means of a spear or pole. An oil-flask indicates the building, while a tree suggests the groves of the gymnasium.

Scenes in the Apodyterion are very numerous, especially on later vases. We will first take a kylix in the Museum at Copenhagen (Fig. 175). The broad tops of the pillars suggest the roof of the room. Hanging or leaning against the wall are the usual paraphernalia; one object seems curious, it is a hare. Perhaps one of the epheboi has just caught it, or he has brought it as a present to his trainer, or received it as a present or prize.[811] A group of youths and trainers are standing about or seated on stools. Some are fully dressed, others naked; one is scraping himself with a strigil, another is just about to put on his mantle; his walking-stick rests against the wall behind him. Some clothes are placed on one of the stools. We can quite understand the necessity of severe laws against theft in the gymnasia. A law attributed to Solon imposed the penalty of death on any one who stole from the Lyceum, or Acadamea, or Cynosarges a himation, or an oil-flask, or any other object worth more than ten drachmae.[812]

After divesting himself of his clothes and placing them in as safe a place as possible, the athlete next proceeded to anoint himself with oil and carefully rub the oil into the skin. He might do so himself or obtain the services of an attendant, the aleiptes. The terms aleiptes and paidotribes indicate the importance which the Greeks attached to the oiling and massaging of the body both before and after exercise. These processes were afterwards developed into elaborate arts, and special rooms were set apart for them, but in the fifth century they were comparatively simple and took place either in the apodyterion or else in the open air.[813] The oil was contained in little narrow necked flasks of various shapes, lekythoi, aryballoi, alabastra. Each person probably brought his own flask of oil and his strigil. At times of festival oil was supplied free to all competitors, and in later times gymnasiarchoi and other high officials showed their generosity by providing at their own expense the oil required for the epheboi using the gymnasia. A krater in Berlin (Fig. 176) shows a group of epheboi undressing and preparing for exercise. One of them has just taken off his himation and folded it up and is about to hand it to a slave-boy, either his own slave or one attached to the gymnasium. Another has laid his himation on a stool, and is pouring some oil from an aryballos into his left hand. To his left stands a third ephebos resting on his stick, with his mantle thrown loosely across his shoulders, while a small slave removes a thorn from his foot. The other side of the vase illustrates the curious custom of infibulation. Massaging is, as far as I know, not depicted on any vases; but a drawing of an aleiptes rubbing down a boxer occurs on a bronze cist in the Vatican[814] (Fig. 177).

It may have been in the Apodyterion, or else in some other corner of the gymnasium, that the korykos (κώρυκος) was fixed up. In later times a special room was provided for the korykos, but its use at this time is proved by the caricature of a pankratiast using it which occurs on a vase in St. Petersburg (Fig. 178). The korykos was a sort of punchball, a leathern bag or skin filled with fig grains, meal, or sand, and suspended from the branch of a tree or a beam. It varied in size. The larger sort which was used by pankratiasts was about the size of a sack of coals, and was hung so that the bottom of it was on a level with the athlete’s waist. The boxer used a smaller korykos about the size of a punchball hung on a level with his head, to judge from the picture of it on the Ficoroni cist, a work of the third century B.C. (Fig. 179).[815] In the later gymnasia a special room was set apart for ball-play; but popular as ball games always were they seem to have been of little or no importance in the gymnasia of the fifth century.

The bathing arrangements in the gymnasium were severely simple. There existed, indeed, even in the time of Herodotus and Aristophanes, separate bathing establishments (βαλανεῖα) where hot baths and even vapour baths were to be obtained.[816] But these balaneia had nothing to do with the gymnasia, and are indeed sharply contrasted with them. To frequent them was considered, at all events among old-fashioned folk, to be a sign of effeminacy. Aristophanes bitterly complains that the effect of the new-fashioned education was to empty the wrestling schools and fill the balaneia, and Plato considers hot baths only suitable for the old and feeble.[817] In later times elaborate baths of this type were attached to the gymnasia, and became so important that the athletic part of the building was little more than an apanage of the baths. But there is no sign of such baths in connexion with the gymnasia of the fifth century, nor do they exist in the later gymnasia at Delphi and Olympia. The epheboi of the fifth century washed in cold water after exercise. The simplest form of washing is represented on a black-figured hydria in Leyden which dates from the close of the sixth century (Fig. 180).[818] A group of men and boys are washing at a fountain which stands in the grove of the gymnasium. Their clothes hang on the branches of the trees. The fountain itself is under a portico, and the water issues from two panthers’ heads under which a man and a boy are taking a douche and rubbing themselves. On either side stand others preparing for the bath. One on the left lifts in his right hand what is probably an oil-flask, while on the right we see a youth engaged in powdering himself. Various powders were used, a sort of lye obtained from wood ashes, an alkali called litron and somewhat similar to nitre, and a kind of fuller’s earth.[819] After oiling and powdering his body the bather rubbed himself till a lather was obtained.

On the red-figured vases the washing takes place in a bath-room forming a part of the gymnasium and probably adjoining the apodyterion. In the centre of this room is set a large stone or metal basin placed on a stand. Close to it a cistern is sometimes represented, and on one vase we see a youth pouring water into the basin from a bucket which he has drawn up from the cistern by means of a rope and windlass[820] (Fig. 181). The inscription on the basin (δημόσια) shows that it is a public bath. One youth is splashing the water over himself, but a more satisfactory way of washing is to get a friend or assistant to swill a bucket of water over you in the manner represented on a kylix in the British Museum (Fig. 182). On the other side of this kylix is seen a group of youths scraping themselves with strigils (στλεγγίδες). The strigil was in constant use in the gymnasium to remove dirt and sweat after exercise or remove moisture and lather after the bath. It was made of iron or bronze, sometimes of silver or even of gold; the handles are sometimes highly ornamental. Many of them exist in the British Museum and elsewhere. Their shape will be best understood from the accompanying illustration of a fifth-century strigil from the British Museum, on which the owner’s name is inscribed (Fig. 183). A youth scraping himself with a strigil is the motive of the well-known statue, the “Apoxyomenos,” formerly ascribed to Lysippus.

Plunge baths (κολυμβήθραι) certainly existed at this period. A red-figured amphora[821] in the Louvre signed by Andocides (_c._ 500 B.C.) shows a group of women bathing in a swimming bath. One is swimming, while another is preparing to dive into the water. We shall find plunge baths both at Delphi and Olympia, but we have no evidence for their existence in the gymnasia of the fifth century.

In passing on to the gymnasia at Delphi and Olympia we must bear in mind the essential difference which distinguishes them from the gymnasia at Athens, which we have been considering. The latter were intended for the regular use of a large resident population. At Delphi, and still more at Olympia, the resident population was small and scattered; and though they doubtless took advantage of the gymnasia, these buildings were primarily erected, not for their use, but for the use of the competitors in the four-yearly festivals. Hence there was no need for the shady walks and avenues which formed so prominent a feature of the early gymnasia at Athens, nor for the lecture-rooms and libraries which were provided for the literary training of the epheboi in the gymnasia of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus or Hadrian. The gymnasia at Delphi and Olympia were strictly practical and athletic.

The gymnasium at Delphi[822] is a good example of the skill with which the Greeks adapted their buildings to the nature of the ground (Fig. 184). It lies a little to the south-west of the precinct of Apollo below the road which runs from Itea to Arachova and on the steep slopes which overhang the valley of the Pleistus. It is built on two terraces, the upper of which forms a rectangle some 180 metres long by 25 or 30 metres deep, and contains the running tracks, while the lower terrace contains the palaestra proper and the baths. The fine retaining wall which divides the two terraces, and other architectural remains point to the existence of the gymnasium in the early part of the fourth century, and most of the parts which have been excavated are mentioned in an inscription containing the official accounts for repairing the stadium and gymnasium in the year 258 B.C.

The upper terrace was bounded above by the outer wall of the gymnasium. It contained a covered running-track 7 metres broad, and a double uncovered track 20 metres broad. These are the ξυστόν and παραδρομίς of the inscription. They are divided from one another by a stone water channel which, besides carrying off rain water, provided water for the athletes when training. Another channel, which divided the paradromis into two unequal parts, carried water from the Castalian stream to the baths in the lower terrace. The Ionic pillars which formed the colonnade (περίστυλος) of the xystos are of poor and late workmanship, and seem to have replaced an earlier Doric colonnade. Neither xystos nor paradromis was paved; but, as we learn from the accounts of Dion’s archonship, they were dug up, rolled, and covered with fine white sand. Six picks (ἐπισκαφεῖα) were provided either for this work or for the use of the athletes.[823] The length of the xystos, 180 metres, is approximately that of the Delphic stadium, which was 177 metres.

The lower terrace contains an irregular enclosure forming the baths, and a small palaestra 32 metres square. The latter consists of a small court nearly 14 metres square, surrounded by a colonnade (περίστυλος) on to which several rooms open on the north and west sides. The uses of these rooms cannot be determined. The inscription mentions an apodyterion, a κόνιμα, and two σφαιριστήρια. The κόνιμα is probably another name for the skamma or wrestling ring which is also called κονίστρα, and if so may be identified with the central court.[824] The wrestling ring was covered with fine sand, and the contract appropriately mentions the “sifting of the earth” in the konima (τᾶς γᾶς τὰν σάσιν) at a cost of ten drachmae. The sphairisteria were rooms, or perhaps open courts, for ball play. In one of them the ground was to be dug up and rolled, then carefully raked over and levelled, and finally covered with black earth. A wall, too, is mentioned in the sphairisterion. Among the various games of ball practised by the Greeks we find mention of one which consisted in bouncing the ball on the ground or against a wall, and striking it back with the flat of the hand as it rebounded. The object was to keep it up as many times as possible; the first to miss was called the donkey, and had to submit to any penalty imposed by the winner or “king,” as he was called.[825] The palaestra at Delphi was not spacious enough for games in which the balls were thrown with any violence, but the carefully prepared floor and the wall may well have served for the games described, which seem to have been quite familiar in Plato’s time. As athletics became professional, ball play seems to have become increasingly popular, and the ball alley probably became a recognized part of the palaestra. The little private palaestra owned by the “Man of Petty Ambitions” (μικροφιλότιμος) in Theophrastus contains “a wrestling arena and a sphairisterion,”[826] the two parts mentioned in the Delphic inscription. Alexander the Great was specially fond of ball play, and one Aristonicus of Carystus, described as his “sphairistes,” received at the hands of the Athenians the citizenship and an honorary statue.[827]

The baths lay in an irregular enclosure to the north of the palaestra. The washing arrangements are particularly interesting from their resemblance to what we have seen pictured on the vases. The whole enclosure was uncovered. The east side of it was formed by the retaining wall of the upper terrace, and in this wall a series of fountains were arranged precisely similar to those illustrated in Fig. 180. The water was supplied from the conduit in the upper terrace and issued through eleven bronze spouts in the shape of animals’ heads, placed at such a height as to fall conveniently over the head and shoulders of the bathers beneath. It was caught below in eleven basins, which were used for washing in the manner represented on the vases, and from the basins it fell into large stone troughs by which it was carried outside the building to fall into the Castalian ravine. In the centre of the enclosure was a circular plunge bath (κολυμβήθρα) 10 metres in diameter, and 1·80 metres in depth, the sides of which sloped downwards towards the centre in a series of stone steps. There were no warm baths in the old gymnasium, but these seem to have been added in Roman times, and their remains exist to the north of the older building.

The gymnasium and palaestra at Olympia[828] (Fig. 185), situated on the left bank of the Cladeus to the north-west of the Altis, are far more symmetrical in plan and more elaborate than those at Delphi. The palaestra appears to be somewhat older than the gymnasium, and was built in the third century B.C. It is a building 66 metres square enclosing an open court 41 metres square, surrounded by a colonnade of Doric columns on which numerous rooms open. There are two entrances at the corners of the southern wall, and a third door in the middle of the northern wall gives access to the gymnasium proper. The two chief entrances consist of pillared vestibules leading into small anterooms which open on to the covered colonnade. In the eastern anteroom are remains of a hearth or altar. Between the two anterooms is a long narrow room or gallery only separated from the colonnade by a row of pillars, in which we may certainly recognize the apodyterion. In the north-eastern corner is a bathroom, and in it were found remains of a brick-lined bath of Roman date 4 metres square and 1·38 metres deep. There is another basin in the adjacent corner of the gymnasium at the point where the southern corridor opens on to the street. There are no signs in the palaestra or gymnasium of the warm baths which are so important a feature of the gymnasium described by Vitruvius. In Roman times warm baths were installed at Olympia not in the palaestra but in a separate building to the south-west. It is impossible to determine the uses of the various rooms surrounding the court. Some of them are closed with doors, and doubtless served for storing the oil, sand, and other requisites of the palaestra. The larger rooms are open in front. In five of the rooms there are remains of stone seats round the walls, and the floor is paved with concrete. Such rooms must have been used as exedrai or galleries for the spectators, but hardly, as it is sometimes stated, as lecture rooms for philosophers and other teachers, who would certainly have preferred the greater publicity afforded by the opisthodome of the temple of Zeus or by the stoai. The palaestra and gymnasium at Olympia must have been practically confined to the use of competitors, and the practice of these competitors naturally drew thither crowds of friends and interested spectators. In some of the rooms there are traces of altars and bases of statues. Such buildings were always under the patronage of certain gods and heroes. Hermes was in a special sense the patron of the palaestra, and at Athens festivals were held there in his honour. At Elis one of the gymnasia contained altars to Idaean Heracles, to Eros and Anteros, to Demeter and Persephone, and the statues of the first three were placed in the gymnasium called Maltho which was specially reserved for wrestlers. Honorary statues were also sometimes placed in the gymnasia, and at Olympia there were tablets inscribed with the lists of Olympic victors.

The most curious feature in the palaestra at Olympia is a strip of tiled pavement along the north side of the court. It is 24 metres long by 5 metres broad, and consists of two bands of rough ribbed tiles 1·60 metres in breadth divided by a band of smooth tiles 1 metre broad, while a double row of these same tiles runs along the upper edge of the pavement. The edges of these smooth tiles are raised so as to form continuous ridges running the whole length of the pavement. The purpose of this curious pavement is unknown; it certainly cannot have been intended as a wrestling ring, or as a jumping ground, as certain learned writers have with unconscious humour suggested. The most plausible hypothesis is that it was used for some unknown game of ball, and this hypothesis finds some support from the existence of a somewhat similar bowling alley in the larger Thermae at Pompeii, on which two large heavy stone balls were actually found.[829]

Of the gymnasium proper which lay to the north of the palaestra nothing remains but portions of the southern and eastern colonnades. All the western side has been destroyed by the floods of the Cladeus. The southern colonnade consisted of a single row of pillars parallel to the north wall of the palaestra, with which it communicated by a door in the centre of the wall. The eastern colonnade was not, however, continuous with the east wall of the palaestra, but, to avoid the slope of Mount Cronius, was diverted so as to form a slightly acute angle with the southern colonnade. It was 210 metres long by nearly 12 metres broad, and divided into two tracks by a row of Doric pillars. The similar row of pillars which formed its western front began only on a level with the third of the central pillars from the south, and ended with the third pillar from the north. At these two points are traces of the attachment of stone sills such as were found in the stadium, and the distance between these two points, 192·27 metres, is exactly the distance of the Olympic stadium. This double track was the xystos, or covered running-track, and athletes could practise there under precisely the same conditions as in the actual stadium. On the western side of the gymnasium were rooms for the accommodation of competitors during the festival, and possibly in front of them another xystos. In the centre of the open court was constructed a sort of stone stand for the spectators described by Pausanias as κρηπίς, the term which he uses for the rows of stone steps below the treasury terrace in the Altis. But of this and of the lodgings of the athletes, and of the paradromides or uncovered tracks which doubtless existed here, not a trace is left.

The gymnasia at Epidaurus and Delos belong apparently to the same period, and as far as can be judged from their scanty remains were very similar in type. They bear a much closer resemblance to the buildings described by the Roman architect Vitruvius, who lived in the time of Augustus, than do the elaborate gymnasia of later times, which we find at Ephesus and Pergamum. They differ, however, from the Vitruvian type in the absence of hot baths. In Lucian’s time the Lyceum at Athens certainly possessed a hot bath and a plunge bath, and perhaps these existed in Hellenistic times. It is probable that such gymnasia, which were the daily resort of the inhabitants of Athens, resembled the Vitruvian type more closely than did the gymnasia of Olympia and Delphi, which were chiefly used at the seasons of the festivals by competitors. Now that excavation has revealed to us the actual plans of so many gymnasia and palaestrae, the descriptions of Vitruvius are of only secondary importance, and it is needless to discuss the various reconstructions of his plans which the reader will find fully treated in all books of reference. It will be sufficient here to discuss briefly such of the various parts of the building mentioned by him as have not already been noticed.

The palaestra of Vitruvius is of the same type as that at Olympia, a square court surrounded by colonnades on to which the various rooms enter. On three sides the colonnades are single, and the rooms are provided with benches for the use of philosophers, rhetoricians, and men of letters, who can sit there and converse with one another, or lecture to their pupils. The colonnade on the fourth side, which faces south in the ideal palaestra, is double, and the rooms behind it are devoted to the needs of those who take exercise in the palaestra. These rooms are elaborations of the simple apodyterion and bathroom. In the centre is a large hall provided with seats called the ephebeion,[830] which probably served rather as a general club-room for the epheboi than as a dressing-room. For dressing and washing, full provision is made in the rooms to left and right.

To the right are the elaiothesion, and a series of rooms connected with the hot baths. The elaiothesion is the room where the oil was stored, and perhaps also where athletes and bathers oiled themselves. Oil was used not only before exercise, but both before and after the bath. A large supply was required, and, as has been already mentioned, there was no better way in which a gymnasiarchos could show his liberality than by providing oil for the use of the epheboi at his own expense. We even hear of cases where a sum of money was left to form an endowment for this purpose.[831] The oil was kept in amphorae or tanks. A picture of such a tank occurs on the funeral stele found at Prusa of one Diodorus, a gymnasiarchos, who, we may suppose, had celebrated his term of office by himself providing the oil (Fig. 186). It is a large circular tank, somewhat resembling a font, supported on three elaborately wrought legs. On its side hang three ladles (ἀρυτῆρες), which were used for measuring out the oil. Each perhaps held a kyathos, a small liquid measure equal to about 1/12 of a pint. A Spartan inscription referring to some athletic contest, perhaps the Leonidaea, directs that the gymnasiarchos shall provide daily four kyathoi for each man, three for each ageneios, and two for each boy.

Next to the elaiothesion comes the frigidarium, a term usually denoting the cold bath, but here apparently corresponding to the tepidarium of the Roman baths, a room kept at a moderate temperature, heated if necessary by a brazier, where bathers were oiled and scraped and massaged before or after the bath.[832] A passage separates this room from the propnigeion, a hot-air chamber connected with the furnace, and adjoining this is the large vaulted sweating-room (_concamerata sudatio_) which contains the hot-water bath (_calda lavatio_) and the hot-air bath (_laconicum_). It is curious to find one of the principal parts of those luxurious hot baths bearing a name which denotes its Spartan origin. Perhaps the Spartans employed this means of reducing weight in training. Exposure to the heat of the sun’s rays was a recognized part of athletic training, and helped to give the skin the rich brown tone which the Greeks so greatly admired. Philostratus in the chapter in which he deals with this point ridicules the use of the sweating-bath (πυριατήριον) and rubbing with oil without a bath (ξηραλοιφεῖν) as parts of the unscientific system of training adopted by the Spartans, the object of which was merely to produce the power of endurance.[833]

On the other side of the ephebeion are three rooms, the korykeion, the konisterion, and the cold bath. The korykeion can hardly mean anything else than the room of the korykos, or punch-ball. Some writers have objected to this interpretation on the ground that the korykos was not of sufficient importance to have a room especially allotted to its use, and they have therefore suggested that the korykos referred to in this term was not a punch-ball but a basket or string bag, in which visitors to the palaestra brought their luncheon. The explanation is ingenious, but hardly satisfactory. The punch-ball, as we have seen, was known in the fifth century, and is represented on works of art. It was used by boxers and pankratiasts, and, as has been made clear in the first part of this work, boxing and the pankration were by far the most popular events, especially in Hellenistic and Roman times. Hence it is not evident that the korykos was of secondary importance. Moreover, it is a most significant coincidence that the chapter in Philostratus describing the korykos follows immediately on the chapter on the various kinds of konis, and in Vitruvius the korykeion and konisterion are next to one another.

If the above view is correct, the konisterion of Vitruvius is obviously the powdering-room, where athletes powdered themselves before exercise. This powder (κόνις) which they used must not be confused with the lye (κονία) which was used in washing to form a lather. Indeed, its effects were just the opposite; instead of forming a lather with the oil it helped to dry it, and thus counteracted the excessive slipperiness which the oil produced. Its effects on the body were regarded as no less beneficial than those of the 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.[834] There were also special sorts of powder credited with special virtues.[835] One of a clayey nature (πηλώδης) was supposed to be particularly cleansing; another resembling brick dust (ὀστρακώδης) produced perspiration in bodies which were over-dry; a third of bituminous character (ἀσφαλτώδης) warmed the skin. Two sorts, a black and a yellow, both of an earthy character, were especially prized for making the body supple and sleek, the yellow in particular imparting to the skin the glossiness which was the sign of good training. The powder was kept in baskets (σπυρίδες). Philostratus describes how it should be applied, thrown on with a supple wrist and the fingers slightly opened so as to fall like fine dust. But these are refinements for the few. The ordinary youth contented himself with the ordinary earth or sand. Lucian in his _Anacharsis_ describes the youths in the court of the gymnasium picking up the sand and throwing it over one another. Sometimes it seems the earth was mixed with water into a sort of mud, and then the simplest plan was to roll in it. Under the Empire a special sort of ointment (κήρωμα) was used, and the term ceroma was applied to part of the palaestra; but the ceroma belongs to Rome, not to Greece.

The gymnasium of Vitruvius occupies an intermediate position between the true Greek gymnasium and the type which was prevalent under the Empire. The prominent feature of the latter is the elaboration of the buildings, especially of those connected with the warm baths. Indeed, as every bath had its court for exercise, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether some particular building was a bathing establishment or a gymnasium. The most familiar example of these later gymnasia is that at Ephesus; but as the plans of it are to be found in every text-book it is unnecessary to discuss it at length. It consists of a rectangular block of buildings some 80 by 100 metres, standing in the centre of a large enclosed court. Of this outer enclosure very few traces are left, and the imaginary restoration of its courts commonly reproduced rests on no other foundation than the desire of early archaeologists to accomplish the absolutely impossible task of reproducing in it all the features of the Vitruvian gymnasium. The central block of buildings, however, which we may call the palaestra, is fairly well preserved, although the identification of most of the rooms is extremely doubtful. Its plan is almost exactly the reverse of the earlier palaestra. Round three sides of the interior, if not all four sides, there runs a vaulted colonnade (_cryptoporticus_), while the great central courtyard is almost entirely occupied by the hot baths and buildings connected with them, the ancient wrestling ring being reduced to a narrow strip along one side.

The two gymnasia excavated by the Germans at Priene[836] illustrate the earlier and the later types. The lower gymnasium (Fig. 187) which adjoins the stadium near the south wall of the town appears to have been built between the years 130 and 120 B.C. It is very similar in plan to the Vitruvian palaestra, consisting of a court about 35 metres square surrounded by a colonnade. On the north side, facing south, the colonnade is double, as recommended by Vitruvius. On this side and on the west a number of rooms open into it; on the other two sides there are none. The entrance is in the centre of the west side, and is in the form of an Ionic propylaion. To the north of it is an exedra fitted with stone benches, and in the north-west corner is the Loutron or bathroom, which is in excellent preservation and extremely interesting. Along the north side is placed a row of stone troughs into which water flows from a row of lions’ heads about 3 feet from the ground (Fig. 188). On either side of the doorway in the south wall are remains of stone benches, in front of which are troughs in the floor, so that people could sit there and bathe their feet. There is no trace of any hot baths in this gymnasium. In the centre of the north wall is the ephebeion, a large lofty room, open in front save for two massive pillars. There are stone benches round the walls, the upper part of which was decorated by an elaborate arrangement of half pillars and architraves, on either side of a round arched niche containing a large statue of a draped man. The walls and pillars are covered with names of those who used the hall, usually in the form ὁ τόπος Νέστορος τοῦ Νέστορος, “the place of Nestor, the son of Nestor.” Another large hall at the north-east corner has some traces of shelves, and may have been used as a place for undressing and leaving clothes. The northern side of the gymnasium is cut out of the slope of the hill, and was evidently two-storied. Above the ephebeion seems to have been a large square room cut still farther back into the hill. Perhaps there was an entrance from the street above into this upper story. These upper rooms may have served as class-rooms. In Hellenistic times the gymnasium was often a school where training was given for mind as well as body.

The upper gymnasium at Priene stood in the middle of the town. It was the older of the two, for we learn from an inscription that it already existed at the time when the lower gymnasium was being built. In its original plan it seems to have been very similar; but so many alterations have been made in it, and so much subsequent building has taken place on the site, that we cannot be certain of its details. What is certain is that in Roman times it was provided with hot baths. These baths are referred to in an interesting inscription detailing the services rendered by one Zosimus, who lived perhaps in the first century B.C. “From a desire that every young man might attend the gymnasium for the culture of his body, he had the furnace lighted all through the winter.”[837]

Zosimus seems to have been an enthusiastic educationalist. Not only did he provide for the physical training and recreation of the young “a punch-ball, and hoops, and also balls and weapons,” he also provided for the students a teacher in literature. He instituted competitions in all accomplishments of mind and body, and showed the most lavish generosity in furnishing oil and unguents in the gymnasium and in the bath, for all visitors to the festivals of Priene. Among the competitions which he instituted were a “squill fight” (σκιλλομαχία), and boxing in clothes (ἐν εἵμασι). For the former he gave a heifer as a prize, while each successful boxer received a golden fillet. The precise meaning of the “squill fight” is uncertain; it was perhaps some sort of ceremonial contest connected with the worship of Pan. The wearing of clothes in boxing was possibly a concession to the Roman prejudice against nudity.

Equally interesting are the extensive remains of the gymnasia at Pergamum recently excavated by the German archaeologists.[838] These remains belong mostly to the second century A.D., but many traces of earlier buildings survive. Built originally in the second century B.C., or earlier, under the early kings of Pergamum, the gymnasia underwent various modifications and reconstructions in the succeeding centuries, and may be regarded as typical of the gymnasia existing in Hellenistic and Roman times in these rich cities of the East, which, after the loss of Greek independence, became the chief centres of athletic activity. Like the gymnasium at Delphi, they bear witness to the ingenuity of the Greeks in adapting their buildings to the exigencies of the ground, while the magnitude of the work involved is a striking proof of the wealth of the Attalidae. They were built on a series of three terraces cut out of the steep face of the hill above the road which led up to the upper city. The lowest terrace at its western end is some twelve metres above the road, and the other terraces are about the same height above one another. The terraces are supported by numerous retaining walls, strengthened by buttresses and cross walls forming a series of compartments filled up with earth and rubble. Each terrace formed a separate gymnasium, devoted respectively to the use of boys, epheboi, and young men. It seems that there were originally four terraces, corresponding perhaps to the four gymnasia mentioned in an inscription of the time of Attalus III. (146 B.C.).[839] In the time of Tiberius, Pergamum possessed five gymnasia, and at a later period six, but the site of these additional gymnasia is unknown at present. Elder men, and foreigners too, had the privilege of using the gymnasia. An inscription in honour of Metrodorus,[840] a gymnasiarchos who lived at the close of the second century B.C., records that besides offering prizes for boys and epheboi he spent a considerable sum in providing “elder men” with “all things necessary for their health.” The generosity of these gymnasiarchoi is frequently recorded in inscriptions. The office seems to have been held by the most distinguished citizens. The general direction of education was in the hands of four Paidonomoi.

The general arrangement of the buildings will be sufficiently clear from the accompanying plan (Fig. 189). The lowest terrace, which was the gymnasium of the boys, consists of a narrow triangle, about 80 metres long and 25 broad at its widest point, divided into two parts by a wall. Its northern side is formed by the retaining wall of the middle terrace, the buttresses of which form niches containing long stone bases on which were placed statues and stelai. One of these stelai contains a list of boys who have passed out into the ranks of the epheboi. The middle terrace forms the gymnasium of the latter. It measures 150 by 36 metres, and contains at its eastern end a small Corinthian temple, the walls of which seem to have been covered with lists of epheboi. The northern side is formed by a long double colonnade, and beyond it to the east a series of rooms, one of which is an exedra open to the front. This double colonnade, which is two metres above the level of the court, seems to have replaced an earlier single colonnade.