“Phaÿllos leaped full five and fifty feet, The discus flung one hundred wanting five.”[664] Footnote 664: Eustath. ad Odyss. θ. 128. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 210. Homer briefly describes leaping among the sports of the Phæacians: “Amphialos sprang forward with a bound, Superior in the leap a length of ground.”[665] Footnote 665: Odyss. θ. 128. To this succeeded pitching the quoit, which in the Homeric age would appear to have been practised with large stones or rude masses of iron. On ordinary occasions it has been conjectured that one discus only was used. But Odysseus, desirous of exhibiting his strength to the Phæacians, converts into a quoit the first block of stone within his reach.[666] “Then striding forward with a furious bound He wrenched a rocky fragment from the ground, By far more ponderous and more large by far Than what Phæacia’s sons discharged in air; Fierce from his arm the enormous load he flings, Sonorous through the shaded air it sings; Couched to the earth, tempestuous as it flies, The crowd gaze upwards while it cleaves the skies. Beyond all marks, with many a giddy round, Down rushing it upturns a hill of ground.” Footnote 666: Odyss. θ. 186. sqq. Cf. Il. ψ. 836. seq. The disk[667] in later times varied greatly both in shape, size, and materials. Generally it would seem to have been a cycloid, swelling in the middle and growing thin towards the edges. Sometimes it was perforated in the centre and hurled forward by a thong, and on other occasions would appear to have approached the spherical form, when it was denominated solos.[668] Footnote 667: Schol. Hom. Il. β. 774. Footnote 668: Schol. Hom. Il. β. 774. Other of these exercises were shooting with the bow at wisps of straw stuck upon a pole,[669] and darting the javelin, sometimes with the naked hand and sometimes with a thong wound about the centre of the weapon. In the stadium at Olympia, the area within which the pentathli leaped, pitched the quoit, and hurled the javelin, appears to have been marked out by two parallel trenches: but if these existed likewise in the gymnasia, they must have been extremely shallow, as we find in Antiphon[670] a boy meeting with his death by inconsiderately running across the area while the youths were engaged in this exercise. Instead of throwing for the furthest, they would seem, from the expressions of the orator, to have aimed at a mark. Footnote 669: Lucian. Hermot. § 33. Footnote 670: Tetral. ii. 1. Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 51. sqq. 142.