Part 15 (2/2)
Health and physical beauty thus go before wealth and the pa.s.sions of friends.h.i.+p,--a true Greek estimate!
144. The Detestation of Old Age.--Again, we are quick to learn that this ”beauty” is the beauty of youth. It is useless to talk to an Athenian of a ”beautiful old age.” Old age is an evil to be borne with dignity, with resignation if needs be, to be fought against by every kind of bodily exercise; but to take satisfaction in it?--impossible. It means a diminis.h.i.+ng of those keen powers of physical and intellectual enjoyment which are so much to every normal Athenian. It means becoming feeble, and worse than feeble, ridiculous. The physician's art has not advanced so far as to prevent the frequent loss of sight and hearing in even moderate age.
No hope of a future renewal of n.o.ble youth in a happier world gilds the just man's sunset. Old age must, like the untimely pa.s.sing of loved ones, be endured in becoming silence, as one of the fixed inevitables; but it is gloomy work to pretend to find it cheerful.
Only the young can find life truly happy. Euripides in ”The Mad Heracles” speaks for all his race:--
Tell me not of the Asian tyrant, Or of palaces plenished with gold; For such bliss I am not an aspirant, If YOUTH I might only behold:-- Youth that maketh prosperity higher, And ever adversity lighter.[*]
[*]Mahaffy, translator. Another very characteristic lament for the pa.s.sing of youth is left us by the early elegiac poet Mimnermus.
145. The Greeks unite Moral and Physical Beauty.--But here at the Academy, this spirit of beautiful youth, and the ”joy of life,”
is everywhere dominant. All around us are the beautiful bodies of young men engaged in every kind of graceful exercise. When we question, we are told that current belief is that in a great majority of instances there is a development and a symmetry of mind corresponding to the glory of the body. It is contrary to all the prevalent notions of the reign of ”divine harmony” to have it otherwise. The G.o.ds abhor all gross contradictions! Even now men will argue over a strange breach of this rule;--why did heaven suffer Socrates to have so beautiful a soul set in so ugly a body?--Inscrutable are the ways of Zeus!
However, we have generalized and wandered enough. The Academy is a place of superabounding activities. Let us try to comprehend some of them.
146. The Usual Gymnastic Sports and their Objects.--Despite all the training in polite conversation which young men are supposed to receive at the gymnasium, the object of the latter is after all to form places of athletic exercise. The Athenians are without most of these elaborate field games such as later ages will call ”baseball” and ”football”; although, once learned, they could surely excel in these prodigiously. They have a simple ”catch”
with b.a.l.l.s, but it hardly rises above the level of a children's pastime. The reasons for these omissions are probably, first, because so much time is devoted to the ”palaestra” exercises; secondly, because military training eats up about all the time not needed for pure gymnastics.
The ”palaestra” exercises, taught first at the boys' training establishments and later continued at the great gymnasia, are nearly all of the nature of latter-day ”field sports.” They do not depend on the costly apparatus of the twentieth century athletic halls; and they accomplish their ends with extremely simple means. The aim of the instructor is really twofold--to give his pupils a body fit and apt for war (and we have seen that to be a citizen usually implies being a hoplite), and to develop a body beautiful to the eye and efficient for civil life. The naturally beautiful youth can be made more beautiful; the naturally homely youth can be made at least pa.s.sable under the care of a skilful gymnastic teacher.
147. Professional Athletes: the Pancration.--Athletics, then, are a means to an end and should not be tainted with professionalism.
True, as we wander about the Academy we see heavy and over brawny individuals whose ”beauty” consists in flattened noses, mutilated ears, and mouths lacking many teeth, and who are taking their way to the remote quarter where boxing is permitted. Here they will wind hard bull's hide thongs around their hands and wrists, and pummel one another brutally, often indeed (if in a set contest) to the very risk of life. These men are obviously professional athletes who, after appearing with some success at the ”Nemea,” are in training for the impending ”Pythia” at Delphi. A large crowd of youths of the less select kind follows and cheers them; but the better public opinion frowns on them. They are denounced by the philosophers. Their lives no less than their bodies ”are not beautiful”--i.e. they offend against the spirit of harmony inherent in every Greek. Still less are they in genteel favor when, the preliminary boxing round being finished, they put off their boxing thongs and join in the fierce ”Pancration,” a not unskillful combination of boxing with wrestling, in which it is not suffered to strike with the knotted fist, but in which, nevertheless, a terrible blow can be given with the bent fingers. Kicking, hitting, catching, tripping, they strive together mid the ”Euge!
Euge!--Bravo! Bravo!” of their admirers until one is beaten down hopelessly upon the sand, and the contest ends without harm. Had it been a real Pancration, however, it would have been desperate business, for it is quite permissible to twist an opponent's wrist, and even to break his fingers, to make him give up the contest.
Therefore it is not surprising that the Pancration, even more than boxing, is usually reserved for professional athletes.
148. Leaping Contests.--But near at hand is a more pleasing contest. Youths of the ephebus age are practicing leaping. They have no springboard, no leaping pole, but only a pair of curved metal dumb-bells to aid them. One after another their lithe brown bodies, s.h.i.+ning with the fresh olive oil, come forward on a lightning run up the little mound of earth, then fly gracefully out across the soft sands. There is much shouting and good-natured rivalry.
As each lad leaps, an eager attendant marks his distance with a line drawn by the pickaxe. The lines gradually extend ever farther from the mound. The rivalry is keen. Finally, there is one leap that far exceeds the rest.[*] A merry crowd swarms around the blus.h.i.+ng victor. A grave middle-aged man takes the ivy crown from his head, and puts it upon the happy youth. ”Your father will take joy in you,” he says as the knot breaks up.
[*]If the data of the ancients are to be believed, the Greeks achieved records in leaping far beyond those of any modern athletes, but it is impossible to rely on data of this kind.
149. Quoit Hurling.--Close by the leapers is another stretch of yellow sand reserved for the quoit throwers. The contestants here are slightly older,--stalwart young men who seem, as they fling the heavy bronze discus, to be reaching out eagerly into the fullness of life and fortune before them. Very graceful are the att.i.tudes.
Here it was the sculptor Miron saw his ”Discobolus” which he immortalized and gave to all the later world; ”stooping down to take aim, his body turned in the direction of the hand which holds the quoit, one knee slightly bent as though he meant to vary the posture and to rise with the throw.”[*] The caster, however, does not make his attempt standing. He takes a short run, and then the whole of his splendid body seems to spring together with the cast.
[*]The quotation is from Lucian (Roman Imperial period).
150. Casting the javelin.--The range of the quoit hurlers in turn seems very great, but we cannot delay to await the issue. Still elsewhere in the Academy they are hurling the javelin. Here is a real martial exercise, and patriotism as well as natural athletic spirit urges young men to excel. the long light lances are being whirled at a distant target with remarkable accuracy; and well they may, for every contestant has the vision of some hour when he may stand on the p.o.o.p of a trireme and hear the dread call, ”All hands repel boarders,” or need all his darts to break up the rush of a pursuing band of hoplites.
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