PALÆSTRA

PALÆSTRA, in Grecian antiquity, a public building where the youth exercised themselves in wrestling, running, playing at quoits, &c. To prevent the combatants from hurting themselves by falling, the bottom of the palæstra was covered with dust or gravel. Some will have the palæstra to be only a part of the gymnasium. Many authors imagine that the palæstra was of two kinds; the one for the exercise of the body, the other for the cultivation of the mind; but the derivation of the word seems to confine it to bodily exercise.

We have this account of the palæstre in Bartholemi's Anacharsis: "They are nearly of the same form with the gymnasium. We visited the apartments appropriated to all the species of baths; those where the wrestlers leave their clothes, where they rub their bodies with oil to render their limbs supple, and where they roll themselves in the sand in order to give their antagonists a hold."

"Wrestling, leaping, tennis, and all the exercises of the lyceum, were here repeated before us with greater varieties, and with more strength and skill on the part of the performers. Among the different groups before us, we distinguished men of the most perfect beauty, and worthy of serving as models for artists: some with vigorous and boldly marked outlines, as Hercules is represented; and others of a more slim and elegant shape, as Achilles is described. The former, devoting themselves to wrestling and boxing, had no object but to increase their bodily strength; the latter, educated to less violent exercises, such as running, leaping, &c. confined themselves to acquirement of agility."

"Their regimen is suited to the different exercises for which they are designed. Some of them abstain from women and wine; others lead a very abstemious life; but those who make laborious exertions stand in need of a great quantity of substantial food, such as roasted beef and pork, to restore their strength. If they require only two minae a-day, with bread in proportion, they give a very favourable idea of their temperance. But several are mentioned who have made a terrible consumption of provisions. Thagenes of Thalos, for instance, is said to have eaten a whole ox in a day. The same exploit is attributed to Milo of Crotona, whose usual quantity of food for a day was twenty minae of meat, as many of bread, and three congii of wine. It is said likewise, that Attydamas of Miletus, when at the table of Ari-

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Palamedes

barzanes the Persian satrap, devoured alone the supper prepared for nine guests. These stories, no doubt exaggerated, prove at least the idea generally entertained of the voracity of this class of wrestlers. When they are able to gratify it without danger, they acquire extraordinary strength: their stature becomes sometimes gigantic; and their adversaries, struck with terror, either decline entering the lists, or sink under the weight of their enormous bodies.

They are so oppressed by excess of nutriment as to be obliged to pass part of their lives in a profound sleep, and soon become so extremely corpulent as to be no longer known to be the same persons: this is succeeded by disorders which render them as wretched as they have always been unserviceable to their country; for it cannot be denied that wrestling, boxing, and all those combats disputed with so much fury and obstinacy in the public solemnities, are no longer any thing but ostentatious exhibitions, since tactics have been brought to perfection. Egypt at no time adopted them, as they give only a temporary strength. Lacedæmon has corrected their inconveniences by the wisdom of her institutions. In the other states of Greece men have discovered, that, by subjecting their children to them, they incur the risk of injuring their shape and preventing their growth; and that, in a more advanced age, professed wrestlers never make good soldiers, because they are unable to support hunger, thirst, watching, the smallest wants, or the most trifling deviation from their usual habits." See PENTATHLUM and PANCRATIUM.