This sort of physical training I conceive to have grown up with the growth of towns, and with the abandonment of hunting and marauding, owing to the increase of culture. Among the aristocrats of epical days, as well as among the Spartans, who lived a village life, surrounded by forest and mountain, I presume field sports must have been quite the leading amusement; nor ought competitions in a gymnasium to be compared for one moment to this far higher and more varied recreation. The contrast still subsists among us, and our fox-hunting, salmon-fishing, grouse-shooting country gentleman has the same inestimable advantage over the city athlete, whose special training for a particular event has a necessary tendency to lower him into a professional. There is even a danger of some fine exercises, which seemed common ground for both, such as boating and cricket, being vulgarized by the invasion of this professional spirit, which implies such attention to the body as to exclude higher pursuits, and which rewards by special victories, and by public applause rather than by the intrinsic pleasure of sport for its own sake. Thus the Spartans not only objected to boxing and the pankration, in which the defeated competitor might have to ask for mercy; they even for general purposes preferred field-sports, for which they had ample opportunities, to any special competitions in the strength of particular muscles. But in such places as Athens and its neighborhood, where close cultivation had caused all wild country and all game to disappear, it was necessary to supply the place of country sport by the training of the gymnasium. This sort of exercise naturally led to contests, so that for our purpose we need not separate _gymnastic_ and _agonistic_, but may use the details preserved about the latter to tell us how the Greeks practised the former. There is no doubt that the pursuit of high muscular condition was early associated with that of health, and that hygiene and physical training were soon discovered to be closely allied. Thus Herodicus, a trainer, who was also an invalid, was said to have discovered from his own case the method of treating disease by careful diet and regimen, and to have thus contributed to the advancement of Greek medicine. Pausanias also mentions (vi. 3, 9) the case of a certain Hysmon, an Elean, who, when a boy, had rheumatism in his limbs, and on this account practised for the pentathlon, that he might become a healthy and sound man. His training made him not only sound, but a celebrated victor.