Before they were admitted to combat, other proofs were required; as to birth, none but Greeks were to be received. It was also necessary, that their manners should be unexceptionable, and their condition free. No foreigner was admitted to combat in the Olympic games; and when Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedon, presented himself to dispute the prize, his competitors, without any regard to the royal dignity, opposed his reception as a Macedonian, and consequently a barbarian and a stranger; nor could the judges be prevailed upon to admit him, till he had proved in due form his family originally descended from the Argives. The persons who presided in the games were called _Agonothetæ_, _Athlothetæ_, and _Hellanodicæ_: they registered the name and country of each champion; and upon the opening of the games a herald proclaimed the names of the combatants. They were then made to take an oath, that they would religiously observe the several laws prescribed in each kind of combat, and do nothing contrary to the established orders and regulations of the games. Fraud, artifice, and excessive violence, were absolutely prohibited; and the maxim so generally received elsewhere,(125) that it is indifferent whether an enemy is conquered by deceit or valour, was banished from these combats. The address of a combatant, expert in all the niceties of his art, who knows how to shift and ward dexterously, to put the change upon his adversary with art and subtlety, and to improve the least advantages, must not be confounded here with the cowardly and knavish cunning of one who, without regard to the laws prescribed, employs the most unfair means to vanquish his competitor. Those who disputed the prize in the several kinds of combats, drew lots for their precedency in them. It is time to bring our champions to blows, and to run over the different kinds of combats, in which they exercised themselves. Of Wrestling. Wrestling is one of the most ancient exercises of which we have any knowledge, having been practised in the time of the patriarchs, as the wrestling of the angel with Jacob proves.(126) Jacob supported the angel’s attack so vigorously, that the latter, perceiving he could not throw so rough a wrestler, was reduced to make him lame by touching the sinew of his thigh, which immediately shrunk up. Wrestling, among the Greeks, as well as other nations, was practised at first with simplicity, little art, and in a natural manner; the weight of the body, and the strength of the muscles, having more share in it than address and skill. Theseus was the first that reduced it to method, and refined it by the rules of art. He was also the first who established the public schools, called _Palæstræ_, where the young people had masters to instruct them in it.