Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

b82 GY2MNASIUM. GYMNASIUM.
strewing them with dust, before they commenced tempt. (Plut. Quaest. Rom. 40.) Towards the end
their exercises, as well as the regulation of their of the republic many wealthy Romans, who hlad
diet, was the duty of the aliptae. [ALIPTAE.] acquired a taste for Greek manners, used to attach
These men sometimes also acted as surgeons or to their villas small places for bodily exercise,
teachers. (Plut. Dion. c. 1.) Galen (1. c. ii. 11) sometimes called gymnasia, sometimes palaestrae,
mentions among the gymnastic teachers, a Dmal- and to adorn them with beautiful works of art.
pl-Tlic4s, or teacher of the various games at ball; (Cic. ad Att. i. 4, c. Verr. iii. 5.) The emperor
and it is not improbable that in somle cases parti- Nero was the first who built a public gymnasiumn
cular garties may have been taught by separate at Rome (Sueton. Ner. 12); another was erected by
persons. Commodus. (Herod. i. 12. 4.) But although these
The games and exercises which were performed institutions were intended to introduce Greek.in the gymnasia seem, on the whole, to have been gymnastics among the Romans, yet they never
the same throughout Greece. Among the Dorians, gained any great importance, as the magnificent
however, they were regarded chiefly as institutions thermae, amphitheatres, and other colossal buildfor hardening the body and for military training; ings had always greater charms for the Romans
among the Ionians, and especially the Athenians, than the-gymnasia.
they had an additional and higher object, namely, For a fuller account of this important subject,
to give to the body and its movements grace and which has been necessarily treated with brevity in
beauty, and to make it the basis of a healthy and this article, the reader is referred to Hieronymls
sound mind. But among all the different tribes of Mercurialis, De Arte Gyosnastica, Libri vi. Ist ed.
the Greeks the exercises which were carried on in Venice, 1573, 4th ibid. 1601; Burette, IHistoire
a Greek gymnasimn were either mere games, or ties Atsletes, in the Mum. de l'Acad. des Inscript.
the more important exercises which the gymnasia i. 3; G. Libker, Die Gymnastik der!lellecenn, Miilbld in common with the public agones in the great ster, 1835; Aachsmuth, Hellen. Altlert. vol. ii.
festi vals. p. 344, &c. 2d. edit.; MUiller, Dor. iv. 5. ~ 4, &c.;
Among the former we lay mention, 1. The ball Becker, cGallus, vol. i. p. 270, &c.; CYarlikles, vol. i.
(a~(aiplmes, &patposoaXia, &c.), which was in uni- pp. 309-345; and especially J. H. Krause, Die
versal favour with the Greeks, and was here, as at Gyq7iistlik ncd A qonistik dles Ilellesen, Leipzig',
Roloe, played in a variety of ways, as appears from 1841; Olyjmspia, Wien, 1838; Die P/thien, Avethe words &7r6kjais, s7riocuoos, cpaLtc'3sa or cp7srao- Imsees &c., Leipzig, 1841. The histories of edu.
-r&v, &c. (Plat. De Legg. vii. p. 797; compare cation among the ancients, such as those of HochGronov. ad Plaut. Cscrcscl. ii. 3. 17, and Becker, heimer, Schwarz, Cramler, and others, likewise conGallus, i. p. 270.) Every gymnasiumn contained tain much useful information on the subject. [L. S.]
one large room for the purpose of playing at ball in T/e Relation of Gynzcnastlics to thle Miiedical A st -
it (oqppeo'r'hptoiev). 2. nai(elv eXccuOTiu'a, elEX-'rhe games of the Greeks had an immediate influcusr-vm'a, or Wa8 ypa/u.ts, was a game in which one ence upon the art of healing, because they consiboy, holding one end of a rope, tried to pull the dered gymnastics to be almost as necessary for the
boy who held its other end, across a line marked preservation of health, as medicine is for the cure
between them on the ground. 3. The top (/CI1ii3', of diseases. (Hippocrates, De Locis itn Io1cisce, vol.,61'ugli, pjO'tos, orpodtXos), which was as common ii. p. 138, ed. Kiihn; Timaeus Locrensis, De Ancila
an almusement with Greek boys as in our own JIslusdi, p. 564, in Gacle's 01p7sc. Alt/thol.) It was
days. 4. The 7revrdXA0oO, which was agamer withfive for this reason that the gymnasia were dedicated
stones, which were thrown up from the upper part to Apollo, the god of physicians. (Plut. Sysmp. viii.
of the hand and caught in the palm. 5. stcarE'pa,, 4. ~ 4.) The directors of these establishmlllelts, as
which was a game in which a rope was drawn well as the persons enployed under their orders,
through the upper part of a tree or a post. Two the bathers or aliptae, passed for physicians, and
boys, one on each side of the post, turning their were called so, on account of the skill which long
backs towards one another, took hold of the ends experience had given them. The directors, called
of the rope and tried to pull each other up. This 7raAuo'e'povnAa&EsE, regulated the diet of the
sport was also one of the amusements at the Attic young men brought up in the gymnasia; the
Dionysia. (Hesych. s. v.) These few games will sub-directors or Gymcnastae, prescribed for their
suffice to show the character of the gylnnastic diseases (Plat. de Leg. xi. p. 916); and the iy~briors
sports. or bathers, aliptae, iatraliptae, practised bloodThe more important games, such as running letting, administered clysters, and dressed wounds,
(p6,uos), throwing of the aGo-cos and the Sctw, I ulcers, and fractures. (Plat. De Ley. iv. p. 720;
jumping and leaping (&xua, with and without Celsus, de Miedic. i. 1; Plin. H. An xxix. 2.)
aA&Xrpes), wrestling (srdAq), boxing (-irvyyi), the Two of these directors, Iccus, of Tarentunm, and
pancratinum (raeylcpdrTlov), rE'rvaOAos,a Xarapo&o - Herodicus, of Selymbria, a town of Thrace, depla, dancing (OpXjoris), &c., are described in sepa- serve particular notice for having contributed to
rate articles. unite more closely medicine and gymnastics. Iccus,
A gymnasium was, as Vitruvius observes, not a who appears to have lived before Herodicus (Olyglsp.
Roman institution, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus lxxvii. Stephan. Byzant. s. v. Tapds, p. 693; com(Ant. Ross. vii. 70-72), expressly states that the pare Paus. vi. 10. ~ 2), gave his chief attention
whole a&ywC'rTttKr'l of the Rsomans, though it was to correcting the diet of the wrestlers, and to acpractised at an early period in the Ludi Maximi, customing them to greater moderation and abstemiwas introduced among the Romans from Greece. ousness, of which virtues he was himself a perfect
Their attention, however, to developing and model. (Plat. de Leg. viii. p. 840; Aelian, Vcas.
strengthening the body by exercises was consider- I-Iist. xi. 3; Id. Ilist. Asnimal. vi. 1.) Plato conable, though only for military purposes. The re- siders him, as well as Herodicus, to have been one
gular training of boys in the Greek gymnastics was of the inventors - of medical gymnastics. (Plat.
foreign to Rtoman manners, and even held in con- Protagor. ~ 20. p. 316; Lucian, De Conscrib. Iist.