Footnote 525: _I.G._ 444. Footnote 526: Ditt. _Syll._ 2nd Ed., 680. Footnote 527: _De Gressu Animal._ p. 709. Footnote 528: Arrian, iii. 22. Footnote 529: _Gym._ 11. Footnote 530: Pliny, _H. N._ xxvi. 13, 83; xxviii. 19, 78. The spleen was supposed to cause stitch; Plautus, _Merc._ i. 2, 14. CHAPTER XIV THE JUMP AND HALTERES Jumping is not a military exercise but an amusement of peace. It is useful, of course, at times for a soldier to be able to leap over any obstacle in his way. But the Homeric chieftain was not suitably dressed for such feats of agility, whether he went to war in Mycenaean style with his long-shadowing spear and towerlike shield reaching down to his feet, or like the later hoplite arrayed in panoply of bronze. For flight or pursuit he trusted in his chariot and horses. Hence jumping was no part of his training, and it is mentioned in Homer only as an accomplishment of the peaceful Phaeacian traders. Pindar, true to Homeric tradition, does not include it among the sports introduced by Heracles in the first Olympic games, and Plato has no use for it in the training of his soldier-citizens. In athletic festivals the jump was one of the events of the pentathlon, but never existed as an independent competition. Yet it must have been always a popular exercise and amusement, and its popularity during the sixth and fifth centuries is shown by the frequency with which it is depicted on vases. Pentathletes were sometimes represented with jumping weights in their hands, and the jump seems to have been regarded as the typical event of the pentathlon.[531] Perhaps it owed its importance to the part which the jumping weights played in physical training, at least in later times. They were used much in the same way as the modern dumb-bells, and many of the modern dumb-bell exercises were known to the Greeks and freely practised, especially in medical gymnastics. The only form of jumping that had any place in athletic competitions was the long jump. The explanation of this is obvious. Greece was not a land of fences or hedges, and the only natural obstacles which it afforded were streams and ditches. There is no ground for the statement frequently made that the Greeks practised also the high jump, and the deep jump, much less that they practised the pole jump. They certainly used a spear or a pole in vaulting on horseback (Fig. 174), but the so-called jumping poles are now universally recognized as either javelins or measuring rods. A certain number of vase paintings may possibly represent the high jump, but they may just as well represent a standing long jump; none represent jumping from a height, or the deep jump.