Part 16 (1/2)

151. Wrestling.--The real crowds, however, are around the wrestlers and the racers. Wrestling in its less brutal form is in great favor. It brings into play all the muscles of a man; it tests his resources both of mind and body finely. It is excellent for a youth and it fights away old age. The Greek language is full of words and allusions taken from the wrestler's art. The palaestras for the boys are called ”the wrestling school” par excellence.

It is no wonder that now the ring on the sands is a dense one and constantly growing. Two skilful amateurs will wrestle. One--a speedy rumor tells us--is, earlier and later in the day, a rising comic poet; the other is not infrequently heard on the Bema. Just at present, however, they have forgotten anapests and oratory. A crowd of cheering, jesting friends thrusts them on. Forth they stand, two handsome, powerful men, well oiled for suppleness, but also sprinkled with fine sand to make it possible to get a fair grip in the contest.

For a moment they wag their sharp black beards at each other defiantly, and poise and edge around. Then the poet, more daring, rushes in, and instantly the two have grappled--each clutching the other's left wrist in his right hand. The struggle that follows is hot and even, until a lucky thrust from the orator's foot lands the poet in a sprawling heap; whence he rises with a ferocious grin and renews the contest. The second time they both fall together.

”A tie!” calls the long-gowned friend who acts as umpire, with an officious flourish of his cane.

The third time the poet catches the orator trickily under the thigh, and fairly tears him to the ground; but at the fourth meeting the orator slips his arm in decisive grip about his opponent's wrist and with a might wrench upsets him.

”Two casts out of three, and victory!”

Everybody laughs good-naturedly. The poet and the orator go away arm in arm to the bathing house, there to have another good oiling and rubbing down by their slaves, after removing the heavily caked sand from their skin with the stirgils. Of course, had it been a real contest in the ”greater games,” the outcome might have been more serious for the rules allow one to twist a wrist, to thrust an arm or foot into the foeman's belly, or (when things are desperate) to dash your forehead--bull fas.h.i.+on--against your opponent's brow, in the hope that his skull will prove weaker than yours.

152. Foot Races.--The continued noise from the stadium indicates that the races are still running; and we find time to go thither.

The simple running match, a straight-away dash of 600 feet, seems to have been the original contest at the Olympic games ere these were developed into a famous and complicated festival; and the runner still is counted among the favorites of Greek athletics.

As we sit upon the convenient benches around the academy stadium we see at once that the track is far from being a hard, well-rolled ”cinder path”; on the contrary, it is of soft sand into which the naked foot sinks if planted too firmly, and upon it the most adept ”hard-track” runner would at first pant and flounder helplessly.

The Greeks have several kinds of foot races, but none that are very short. The shortest is the simple ”stadium” (600 feet), a straight hard dash down one side of the long oval; then there is the ”double course” (”diaulos”) down one side and back; the ”horse race”--twice clear around (2400 feet); and lastly the hard-testing ”long course”

(”dolichos”) which may very in length according to arrangement,--seven, twelve, twenty, or even twenty-four stadia, we are told; and it is the last (about three miles) that is one of the most difficult contests at Olympia.

At this moment a part of four hale and hearty men still in the young prime are about to compete in the ”double race.” They come forward all rubbed with the glistening oil, and crouch at the starting point behind the red cord held by two attendants. The gymnasiarch stands watchfully by, swinging his cane to smite painfully whoever, in over eagerness, breaks away before the signal. All is ready; at his nod the rope falls. The four fly away together, pressing their elbows close to their sides, and going over the soft sands with long rhythmic leaps, rather than with the usual rapid running motion. A fierce race it is, amid much exhortation from friends and shouting. At length, as so often--when speeding back towards the stretched cord,--the rearmost runner suddenly gathers amazing speed, and, flying with prodigious leaps ahead of his rivals, is easily the victor. His friends are at once about him, and we hear the busy tongues advising, ”You must surely race at the Pythia; the Olympia; etc.”

This simple race over, a second quickly follows: five heavy, powerful men this time, but they are to run in full hoplite's armor--the ponderous s.h.i.+eld, helmet, cuira.s.s, and greaves. This is the exacting ”Armor Race” (”Hoplitodromos”), and safe only for experienced soldiers or professional athletes.[*] Indeed, the Greeks take all their foot races seriously, and there are plenty of instances when the victor has sped up to the goal, and then dropped dead before the applauding stadium. There are no stop watches in the Academy; we do not know the records of the present or of more famous runners; yet one may be certain that the ”time” made, considering the very soft sand, has been exceedingly fast.

[*]It was training in races like these which enabled the Athenians at Marathon to ”charge the Persians on the run” (Miltiades' orders), all armored though they were, and so get quickly through the terrible zone of the Persian arrow fire.

153. The Pentathlon: the Honors paid to Great Athletes.--We have now seen average specimens of all the usual athletic sports of the Greeks. Any good authority will tell us, however, that a truly capable athlete will not try to specialize so much in any one kind of contest that he cannot do justice to the others. As an all around well-trained man he will try to excel in the ”Pentathlon,”

the ”five contests.” Herein he will successfully join in running, javelin casting, quoit throwing, leaping, and wrestling.[*] As the contest proceeds the weaker athletes will be eliminated; only the two fittest will be left for the final trial of strength and skill. Fortunate indeed is ”he who overcometh” in the Pentathlon.

It is the crown of athletic victories, involving, as it does, no scanty prowess both of body and mind. The victor in the Pentathlon at one of the great Pan-h.e.l.lenic games (Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, or Nemean) or even in the local Attic contest at the Panathenaea is a marked man around Athens or any other Greek city. Poets celebrate him; youths dog his heels and try to imitate him; his kinsfolk take on airs; very likely he is rewarded as a public benefactor by the government. But there is abundant honor for one who has triumphed in ANY of the great contests; and even as we go out we see people pointing to a bent old man and saying, ”Yes; he won the quoit hurling at the Nema when Ithycles was archon.”[+]

[*]The exact order of these contests, and the rules of elimination as the games proceeded, are uncertain--perhaps they varied with time and place.

[+]This would make it 398 B.C. The Athenians dated their years by the name of their ”first Archon” (”Archon eponymos”).

...The Academy is already thinning. The beautiful youths and their admiring ”lovers” have gone homeward. The last race has been run.

We must hasten if we would not be late to some select symposium.

The birds are more melodious than ever around Colonus; the red and golden glow upon the Acropolis is beginning to fade; the night is sowing the stars; and through the light air of a glorious evening we speed back to the city.

Chapter XVIII. Athenian Cookery and the Symposium.

154. Greek Meal Times.--The streets are becoming empty. The Agora has been deserted for hours. As the warm balmy night closes over the city the house doors are shut fast, to open only for the returning master or his guests, bidden to dinner. Soon the ways will be almost silent, to be disturbed, after a proper interval, by the dinner guests returning homeward. Save for these, the streets will seem those of a city of the dead: patrolled at rare intervals by the Scythian archers, and also ranged now and then by cutpurses watching for an unwary stroller, or miscreant roisterers trolling lewd songs, and pounding on honest men's doors as they wander from tavern to tavern in search of the lowest possible pleasures.

We have said very little of eating or drinking during our visit in Athens, for, truth to tell, the citizens try to get through the day with about as little interruption for food and drink as possible.

But now, when warehouse and gymnasium alike are left to darkness, all Athens will break its day of comparative fasting.

Roughly speaking, the Greeks antic.i.p.ate the latter-day ”Continental”