Many exercises of a partly military character were also practised in the gymnasia. Besides throwing the spear, which was regarded as an entirely gymnastic exercise, and was practised at the public contests, there was archery, which, in the Alexandrine age, as we previously mentioned, even found a place in the curriculum of the Attic youths. This was also the case with the Cretans, who were renowned as excellent archers at the time of Plato, and probably even earlier. They used for the purpose a bow constructed of horn or hard wood; bows were of two different shapes, one which was common in the East, and was already described by Homer, in which two horn-shaped ends were connected by a straight middle piece; the other was a simpler shape, in which the whole bow consisted of one piece of elastic wood, scarcely curved at all when the bow was not bent, and which, when bent, acquired a semi-circular shape. As a rule, when the bow was not in use the string was only fastened at one end. Before shooting, it was attached to the hook at the other end by means of a little ring or eye. A good deal of strength was needed to bend the bow far enough to attach the string. In shooting, they drew back the feathered arrow, on which a notch fitted, along with the string towards the breast, holding the bow firmly in the left hand. The vase painting depicted in Fig. 135 represents archery practice. The target here is the wooden figure of a cock set upon a column; of the three youths who are practising one shoots standing, the second kneeling, the common position for an archer, and the third is just about to draw his bow pressing his knee against it. All three use the second kind of bow. It is, of course, only an artistic licence that the archers are placed so near their goal; similarly the arrows are still flying while the two archers are about to shoot fresh ones. [Illustration: FIG. 135.]