Modern Athletics 1868

MODERN ATHLETICS. tliey sometimes contendedfor prizes in thepnblic games, did not, like the athletes, devottheeir wholelives to the preparation for these contests. In fact,the onewas an amateur, the otherpraofessional. But ™ ear J? 3, in the present, there were persofnsconsiderable politica and social importance who obtained praiztesthe national games, butwho did not followatliMicexercisesasapi-o- fession. Thus we readin the eighthbook of Herodotus, in his enumeration tohfe naval forces_ at Salamis, that of tibe nations resident beyond the river Acheron, tie Crotoniataos werethe only people who, whenHellas was in danger, cameto her succour witohne ship, whosecom­ mander was Phayllus, and he was thnce a Pythian victor. But as thepreparation for these contests involved more and more extraordinary effoirts,was found that seavere and exclusive courseof training wasnecessary toinsure any chance ofobtaining victory. Hence arose a class ot men, the professional athletes, who m the latter and more degenerate days of Eome alone contended m the public games, while the spectatorsenjoyed the easy luxury aof self-indulgent criticism. This was the division oi the CX0rClSG(i» • • • t Of the exercises themselves there wasdistinction be- tween the pancratium and the pentathlon, though hot •were events common to the gymnasium and the grea religious festival games. The former was more akin to our boxing and wrestling combined, _a^violent and haid exercise, which does not now enter into athletic sports, but is confined to professionals and the prize ring, and therefore needs no descriptionhere. There were also, on the one hand, inthe national games, chariot and horse races (with which, not being bodily exercises, wedo not conceive ourselves to beconcerned); andon the other, in the gymnasia, boyishsports, such as ball plapng, boys puffing at the two endsaofrope ("French and English), top spinning, playing atdu"bs," and thelike, which are also foreign to our subject."Wewill therefore direct our attention to the pentathlon, as more nea ly corresponding to "athletic sports" ansow understood, bothm its own nature and in the position, as gentlemen, of those who practised itin old time,and who,we hope, will not cease to practise its corresponding equivalennotws . The pentathlon consisted of five distinct kinds of games, Yiz.Leaping (aX/xa), foot race {8p6[xoi) i disc-tmowing