GYMNASTICS. This word, derived from the Greek, comprehends all those athletic exercises by which the ancients rendered the body pliant and healthy, and enabled the muscles to do their of fices with treble effect. The variety of methods contrived for this purpose was very numerous, and the ardour with which they were pursued, at every op portunity, contributed to banish all dread of personal danger, and prepared the youth of each nation for the military life.
Persons were appointed to teach the various sports, and the gymnasium was a public receptacle for their performance ; the exercises amounted to nearly sixty descriptions, and the parties concerned in them originally appeared in drawers, but afterwards totally naked, in order to give full scope to their limbs. The gymnasium was under the superinten dance of a master, styled gymnasiarch, who had two assistants, the xystarch and the gymnastis. The master was selected from the higher classes of the people, as his office was of considerable impor tance, and his deputies presided over the inferior persons employed in teach the former directing the wrestlers, and the latter the progress of the other exercises, that the youths might neither suffer through accident or too violent ex ertion.
It has been asserted, that the whole system of education amongst the Greeks was comprehended in two essential points, gymnastics and music ; dancing, under several divisions, invariably accompanied their music in warlike, festive, and bac chanalian movements, to which they added, at proper times, tumbling, nume rous modes of playing with the ball, leap ing, foot-races, pitching the discus, throw ing the javelin, wrestling, boxing, &c. Tumbling was entitled cubistics; the amusements of the ball they comprehend ed under the term spheristics ; the exer cises of leaping, foot-racing, the discus, the javelin, and wrestling, they included in the word palestrics.
The moralists and medical men of an tiquity highly approved of those sports which were calculated to bring health, strength, and grace, in their train ; but were energetic and vehement in their censures of the athletes, who wrestled and boxed with angry violence, and after wards indulged in vicious excesses.
Leaping a considerable distance with ease was one of the innocent and useful acquirements of the Grecian youth, which they soon attained, but which they ap pear to have despised, as incapable of difficulty ; therefore, to render the art laborious, and increase their weight, they adopted the practice of bearing lead on their heads and shoulders, fastening it to their feet, and holding it in their hands. A youth, thus loaded, and almost pinion ed to the earth by attraction, who sprung a greater distance than his competitors tinder the same circumstances, was hail ed with loud plaudits, proportioned to the surprise excited by his uncommon strength of muscles.
The pedestrian races admitted of more ardent endeavours than leaping ; not a moment could be lost or granted for re laxation ; the shouts of the teachers, and of the spectators, were incentives for ex ertion, and, divested of clothing, the ef forts of the least successful were wonder ful. Homer illustrates this part of the subject in his inimitable " Iliad." Rang'd in a line the ready racers stand ; Pelides points the barrier with his hand ; All start at once ; Oileus led the race ; The next, Ulysses, measuring pace with pace ; Behind him, diligently close, lie sped, As closely follow ing as the running thread The spindle follows, and displays the charms Of the fair spinster's breast and moving arms: Graceful in motion thus, his foe he plies, And treads each footstep ere the dust can rise : His glowing breath upon his shoulders plays ; The admiring Greeks loud acclamations raise ; To him they give their wishes, hearts, and eves, And send their souls before him as he flies." Iliad, book xxiii. 885, 895 Rapidity of motion might be useful to The ancients in many particulars, though less so than to the uncivilized nations, generally termed savage ; the inhabitants of the latter seem indeed compelled to acquire swiftness in running, as the pur suit of wild animals is absolutely neces sary to maintain their existence ; and some of the native chiefs of India and its dependencies retain persons to convey dispatches from station to station by pe destrian exertion.