Excerpt from Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks Of all the peoples, whose deeds have been recorded, the Greeks alone made physical culture a matter of study. They did this not. So much because they considered it from the standpoint of philos ophy to be a duty to perfect the body, as because they clearlydiscerned the advantages and prestige that accrued to the pos sessor of a powerful and graceful body. For the earliest account of this phase of Hellenic life one naturally turns to the poems of Homer. Yet one must not presume that these poems, simply because they are the earliest literary records of the Greeks, exhibit this or any other feature of Hellenic civilization in its initial state. The art of literature, mechanical on the one hand and artistic on the other, though when its technique is once learned, it becomes inseparable from civilization, and though now we justly consider the nation that has nothing to tianscribe as uncivilized; this art of literature is, nevertheless, only one phase of the life of civilized man! If we reflect that even today the lives of the majority of persons are, in most of their relations, outside the sphere of literature, it becomes easy to conceive how a people that has not yet mastered this art could, notwithstanding, be versed 1n simpler arts that would fully entitle them to the epithet civilized; and if we should find portrayed in the earliest literary records of that people a very high and perfect social life, our con ception would be corroborated. We must not, therefore, regard the Homeric poems as affording data concerning the origin and initial con dition of this phase of Hellenic life. On the contrary, the Homeric athletics especially presuppose a long antecedent course of develop ment. Hellenic legend strengthens this inference. According to a myth, Apollo enjoyed the diskos no less than music. he prac ticed for amusement with his favorite Hyakinthos, whom, as it is related, he accidently killed by an unlucky throw. Other tradi tions inform us, that Orion challenged Artemis to a contest with the diskos, and that Autolykos, son 0of Hermes, instructed young Herakles in the art of wrestling. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.