ATHLETICS AND GAMES OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.
EDWARD M. PLUMMER, M.D.,
AURAL SURGEON TO THE CARNEY HOSPITAL; ASSISTANT AURAL SURGEONTO THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY;INSTRUCTOR, BOSTON POLYCLINIC; FELLOW OF THEMASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, Etc.
Reprinted from the American Physical Education Review, 1898.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.,
Lombard & Caustic, Printers, 26a Brattle St.
1898.
Copyrighted
By Edward M. Plummer, M.D.
Boston, 1898.
I. ATHLETIC GAMES AMONG THE HOMERIC HEROES.
BY EDWARD M. PLUMMER, OF BOSTON.
Few kinds of labor develop the body in a symmetrical manner.This is true even in an elementary division of labor. The carpenterand the blacksmith usually have strong, large shoulders andarms, but small and weak legs. The farmer, from excessive bendingover his work, loses, in a greater or less degree, his elasticityof body, and often becomes stoop-shouldered. If such defectsresult from the more primitive forms of labor, it is not at allstrange that the laborers of the modern industrial world showbodily peculiarities and variations that correspond, in a markeddegree, to their respective trades. A well-known teacher of gymnasticsin a New England college has declared himself able todesignate the various occupations of laborers in a Boston LaborDay parade, without reference to any sign or banner, merely byinspecting their carriage and physical peculiarities. It may, therefore,be asserted that, while labor involving muscular exertion, ifperformed in healthful surroundings, supplies the conditions essentialto good digestion and assimilation, to a more complete respiration,and to the maintenance of healthy nerves, yet, only rarely, ifever, does it tend to develop the ideal body.
Physical culture differs from labor. Labor, having thedesign to produce a change in the world of matter outside the body, isnot deliberately modified to suit the requirements of perfect physicaldevelopment. Physical culture, on the other hand, if it really besuch, is a system of exercises that, taken together, bring all partsand powers of the body into play, with the sole purpose of producingnot only a healthy, but also a symmetrical and graceful body; or, inother words, of developing what the Greeks called εὐρυθμία.
Of all the peoples, whose deeds have been recorded, the Greeksalone made physical culture a matter of study. They did this notso much because they considered it from the standpoint of philosophyto be a duty to perfect the body, as because they clearly[Pg 6]discerned the advantages and prestige that accrued to the possessorof a powerful and graceful body.
For the earliest account of this phase of Hellenic life one naturallyturns to the poems of Homer. Yet one must not presume thatthese poems, simply because they are the earliest literary records ofthe Greeks, exhibit this or any other feature of Hellenic civilizationin its initial state. The art of literature, mechanical on the onehand and artistic on the other, though when its technique is oncelearned, it becomes inseparable from civilization, and though nowwe justly consider the nation that has nothing to transcribeas uncivilized;—this art of literature is, nevertheless, onlyone phase of the life of civilized man! If we reflect that even todaythe lives of the majority of persons are, in most of their relations,outside the sphere of lite