Those who were designed for this profession frequented, from their most tender age, the Gymnasia or Palæstræ, which were a kind of academies maintained for that purpose at the public expense. In these places, such young people were under the direction of different masters, who employed the most effectual methods to inure their bodies for the fatigues of the public games, and to train them for the combats. The regimen they were under was very hard and severe. At first they had no other nourishment than dried figs, nuts, soft cheese, and a coarse heavy sort of bread, called μάζα. They were absolutely forbidden the use of wine, and enjoined continence; which Horace expresses thus:(122) Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit, Abstinuit venere et vino. Who in th’ Olympic race the prize would gain, Has borne from early youth fatigue and pain, Excess of heat and cold has often try’d, Love’s softness banish’d, and the glass deny’d. St. Paul, by a comparison drawn from the Athletæ, exhorts the Corinthians, near whose city the Isthmian games were celebrated, to a sober and penitent life. “Those who strive,” says he, “for the mastery, are temperate in all things: Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.” Tertullian uses the same thought to encourage the martyrs.(123) He makes a comparison from what the hopes of victory made the Athletæ endure. He repeats the severe and painful exercises they were obliged to undergo; the continual denial and constraint, in which they passed the best years of their lives; and the voluntary privation which they imposed upon themselves, of all that was most pleasing and grateful to their passions. It is true, the Athletæ did not always observe so severe a regimen, but at length substituted in its stead a voracity and indolence extremely remote from it. The Athletæ, before their exercises,(124) were rubbed with oils and ointments to make their bodies more supple and vigorous. At first they made use of a belt, with an apron or scarf fastened to it, for their more decent appearance in the combats; but one of the combatants happening to lose the victory by this covering’s falling off, that accident was the occasion of sacrificing modesty to convenience, and retrenching the apron for the future. The Athletæ were naked only in some exercises, as wrestling, boxing, the pancratium, and the foot-race. They practised a kind of novitiate in the Gymnasia for ten months, to accomplish themselves in the several exercises by assiduous application; and this they did in the presence of such, as curiosity or idleness conducted to look on. But when the celebration of the Olympic games drew nigh, the Athletæ who were to appear in them were kept to double exercise.