Training was known to the ancients, who paid much attention to the means of augmenting corporeal vigour and activity. Accordingly, among the Greeks and Romans, certain rules of exercise and regimen were prescribed to the candidates for gymnastic celebrity. We are assured, that, among the Greeks, previously to the solemn contests at the public games, the strictest temperance, sobriety, and regularity in living, were indispensably requisite. The candidates were, at the same time, subjected to daily exercise in the Gymnasium, which continued during ten months, and which, with the prescribed regimen, constituted the preparatory training adopted by the athletæ of Greece. Among the Romans, the exercises of the palæstra degenerated from the rank of a liberal art, and became a profession, which was embraced only by the lowest of mankind; the exhibitions of the gladiators being bloody and ferocious spectacles, which evinced the barbarous taste of the people. The combatants, however, were regularly trained by proper exercise, and a strict observance of regimen. Pure and salubrious air was deemed a chief requisite. Accordingly, the principal schools of their athletæ were established at Capua and Ravenna, the most healthy places in Italy; and previous to entering on this regimen, the men were subjected to the evacuating process, by means of emetics, which they preferred to purgatives. In the more early stages of training, their diet consisted of dried figs, new cheese, and boiled grain. Afterwards animal food was introduced as a part of the athletic regimen, and pork was preferred to any other. Galen, indeed, asserts, that pork contains more real nutriment than flesh of any other kind, which is used as food by man. This fact, he adds, is decidedly proved by the example of the athletæ, who, if they live but for one day on any other kind of food, find their vigour manifestly impaired the next. The preference given to pork by the ancients, however, does not correspond with the practice of modern trainers, who entirely reject it; but in the manner of preparing the food, they exactly agree--roasting or broiling being by both preferred to boiling, and bread unfermented to that prepared by leaven. A very small quantity of liquid was allowed to the athletæ, and this was principally water. They exercised in the open air, and became familiarized by habit to every change of the weather, the vicissitudes of which soon ceased to affect them. To exercise their patience, and accustom them to bear pain without flinching, they were occasionally flogged on the back with the branches of a kind of rhododendron, till the blood flowed. By diminishing the quantity of the circulating liquid, this rough kind of cupping was also considered salutary! as obviating the tendency to plethora or redundancy of blood, to which they were peculiarly liable--a proof, if true, of the nourishing qualities of their food.