epigram, picked up a four-year-old heifer at Olympia, and after carrying it round the Altis in triumph, killed it and ate it all in a single day. Nobody has yet elaborated a theory to account for this extraordinary gastronomic feat, and yet it rests upon just as good evidence as Phaÿllus’ jump. The mere fact that the numbers five and ten were used by the Greeks proverbially, just as we use the terms “half a dozen” or “a dozen,” sufficiently explains why an epigrammatist wishing to describe a prodigious jump should select such a number as fifty-five. In Roman times the halteres were used as dumb-bells. The details of such exercises preserved in medical writings prove that they were very similar to those in use at the present day.[560] Antyllus describes three kinds of this “halter-throwing” (ἁλτηροβολία). The first consists in bending and straightening the arms, an exercise which strengthens the arms and shoulders. In the other two exercises the arms are extended and take little part in the movement, which consists in lunging with the arms advanced as in boxing, or in alternately bending and straightening the trunk. The former strengthens the legs chiefly, the latter the back. Galen adds a variety of the latter exercise for strengthening the side muscles of the body. The performer places the halteres 6 feet apart, and standing between them picks up first the left-hand halter with his right hand, next the right-hand halter with his left, and then replaces them, repeating the movement. The prominence given to exercises for developing the important muscles of the trunk is interesting, because the careful representation of these muscles in Greek sculpture and on vases shows that they were developed to a marked degree by the athletic exercises of the Greeks. Wrestling, jumping, and throwing the diskos all helped to develop these muscles. The absence of light clothing round the waist contributed to the same result, and, above all, the fact that the Greek stood and walked, but seldom sat. In the present day these muscles are the worst developed of all muscles in the ordinary man, a result due partly to the character of our games, partly to our clothing, chiefly to our habit of sitting, and sitting in a radically wrong position. It is to these causes that we may ascribe the general absence in the modern figure of the roll of flesh above the iliac crest which is so prominent in all ancient sculpture, and the difference in the form of the iliac line.[561] [Illustration: Fig. 70. R.-f. oinochoe. British Museum, E. 561.]