GYMNASTICE, or the GYMNASTIC art, denotes the art of performing exercises of the body, whether for defence, health, or diversion. See GYMNASIUM.

Several modern writers have treated of this art. M. Burlette has given the history of gymnastics in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions.

On the first establishment of society, men, being apprised of the necessity of military exercises, for repelling the insults of their neighbours, instituted games and proposed prizes to animate their youth to contests of divers kinds. And as running, leaping, strength and dexterity of arm in throwing the javelin, driving a ball, or tossing a quoit, together with wrestling, &c., were exercises suited to the manner of fighting in those days; so the youth vied to excel in them, in the presence of the aged, who sat as their judges, and dispensed prizes to the conquerors; till what was originally only amusement, became at length a matter of such importance, as to interest great cities and entire nations in its practice. Hence arose an emulation and eagerness to excel, in hopes, one day, of being proclaimed and crowned conquerors in the public games, which was the highest honour a mortal could arrive at; nay, they went so far as to imagine, that even gods and demigods were not insensible of what men were so captivated with; and, in consequence hereof, to introduce the greatest part of these exercises into their religious ceremonies, the worship of their gods, and the funeral honours done to the manes of the dead.

Though it be hard to determine the precise epocha of the gymnastic art, yet it appears from several passages in Homer, and particularly the 23d book of the Iliad, where he describes the games celebrated at the funeral of Patroclus, that it was not unknown at the time of the Trojan war. From that description, which is the earliest monument now extant of the Grecian gymnastics, it appears, that they had chariot-races, boxing, wrestling, foot-races, gladiators, throwing the discus, drawing the bow, and hurling the javelin; and it should seem, from the particular account Homer gives of these exercises, that even then the gymnastic art wanted little of perfection; so that when Galen says there was no gymnastic art in Homer's days, and that it began to appear no earlier than Plato, he is to be underlaid of the medicinal gymnastics only. This last, indeed, had its rise later; because, while men continued sober and laborious, they had no occasion for it; but when luxury and idleness had reduced them to the sad necessity of applying to physicians, these, who had found that nothing contributed so much to the preservation and re-establishment of health as exercises, proportioned to the different complexions, ages, and sexes, did not fail to refer them to the practice of gymnastics.

According to Plato, one Herodicus, prior a little time to Hippocrates, was the first who introduced this art into physic; and his successors, convinced by experience of its usefulness, applied themselves in earnest to improve it. Hippocrates, in his book of Regimen, has given instances of it, where he treats of exercise in general, and of the particular effects of walking, with regard to health; also of the different sorts of races, either on foot or horseback; leaping, wrestling, the exercise of the suspended ball, called corycus, chronometry, unctions, frictions, rolling in the sand, &c. But as physicians did not adopt all the exercises of the gymnastic art in their practice, it came to be divided between them and the masters of martial and athletic exercises, who kept schools, the number of which was greatly increased in Greece. At length the Romans also caught the same taste; and, adopting the military and athletic exercises of the Greeks, they improved and advanced them to the utmost pitch of magnificence, not to say extravagance. But the declension of the empire involved the arts in its ruin, and, among others, gymnastics and medicine; which last unhappily then relinquished the title it had to the former, and has neglected to resume it ever since.