The Cruise of the Branwen

THE GAMES IN ATHENS poised, the instant before its flight, on the extended thong alone. This thong was very naturally adopted by the gymnasium from the arts of war and of the chase, and it was no doubt the light cavalry, first developed at the end of the Peloponnesian War, who really improved the weapon, until it had become indispensable to Xenophon's men, and had entirely replaced the long, heavy spear of the Heroic Age. By degrees the gymnasium specialised the art of throwing the javelin on foot, instead of on horseback, apparently having competitions both for distance and for accuracy ; and it is the throwing for distance on foot that we saw in the Athenian arena. The use of the thong was known very widely in Rome, Gaul, and Spain, as well as Hellas, and more especially in Denmark, where relics of it have been discovered among weapons of the early Iron Age at Nydam. If this may be considered especially appropriate to Colonel Balck's Scandi– navian athletes, who have hitherto beaten the rest of the world in javelin-throwing, it must be added that similar relics are known in Ireland from the fourth century B.c., and an Irish spear with a loop is shown in Lord Dillon's picture of Captain Thomas Lee, painted in 1594. As the javelin and the discus are two of the events in the Olympic Games of 1908 which most faithfully recall the classical festivals of ancient Greece, and as a victory in these events will count as much as success in any other, it will be well for Englishmen to take at the least the same 73