hence there arose a need for artificial exercise, and the need was
supplied by the medical gymnastic which aimed at producing health. The
Romans, though they despised athletics, realized the importance of
exercise for maintaining health. The bath and massage were essential
parts of this gymnastic, and the exercises prescribed included walking,
gentle running, jumping up and down, the use of halteres as dumb-bells,
throwing the diskos and the javelin. Health-culture has its use for men
who lead a sedentary, artificial life, but it is not athletics; neither
is physical training or gymnastics, to use the word in its restricted
modern sense—invaluable as such training is in education of the young,
especially in thickly populated cities. But health-culture and
gymnastics lack the moral value which friendly rivalry gave once to
Greek athletics and gives to-day to the games of our public schools.
Professional athletics equally lack this moral value; for when
livelihood depends on success, rivalry ceases to be friendly, and the
door is opened for corruption. Both health-culture and professionalism
are poles removed from the true Greek ideal of athletics.
Plutarch’s opinion about the athletics of his day is evident from many
passages in his Lives, to which reference has already been made. His
tract on the Preservation of Health, intended as it is chiefly for the
ordinary, middle-aged, business man, hardly concerns us here except so
far as it continually condemns by implication the artificial and
unhealthy training to which athletes were subjected. Galen and
Philostratus are so little known to the ordinary reader, and their works
are so important, that some account of them is indispensable.
Born at Pergamum in A.D. 130, Galen studied philosophy and medicine at
Alexandria, Smyrna, and Corinth. At Alexandria he was appointed
physician to the school of gladiators. At the age of thirty-four he came
to Rome, where he became the friend and physician of the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, but after a few years he returned to his native land. His wide
experience of men and countries, his knowledge of medicine and anatomy,
his breadth of mind and fearless love of truth make his judgment of
special value. He wrote numerous works on Health, but the two which are
of most importance to us here are his essay on “Exercise with the Small
Ball,” a masterly statement of the true principles of exercise, and his
“Exhortation to the Arts,” an attack on professional athletics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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