The word gymnasium has reference in its derivation to the nude or semi-nude condition of those who exercised there.  But in their proper classical interpretation the public gymnasia were, to a great extent, places set apart for physical education and training.  Gymnastics, indeed, in the broadest sense of the word, have been cultivated in all ages.  The spontaneous exercises and mimic contests of the boys of all countries, the friendly emulation of robust youth in trials of speed and strength, and the discipline and training of the military recruit have in them much of the true gymnastic element.  In Attica and Ionia they were first adapted to their noblest ends.

The hardy Spartans, who valued most the qualities of bravery, endurance, and self-denial, used the gymnasia only as schools of training for the more sanguinary contests of war.  So, too, the martial Roman despised those who practised gymnastics with any other object than as fitting them to be better soldiers.  Yet to so great a degree were these exercises cultivated, even by the latter nation, that the Roman private of the line did his fifteen or twenty miles’ daily march under a weight of camp-equipage and weapons which would have foundered some of the best-drilled modern warriors, and concluded his day’s labors by digging the trenches of his camp at night.  The ponderous pilum, and the heavy, straight sword of the infantry were exchanged in the barrack-yard for drill-weapons of twice their weight; and so perfectly were the detail and regularity of actual service carried out in their daily discipline, that, as an ancient writer has remarked, their sham-fights and reviews differed only in bloodshed from real battles.  The soldier of the early Republic was hence taught gymnastics only as a means of increasing his efficiency; the lax praetorian and the corrupt populace of the Empire turned gladly from the gymnasium to the circus and the amphitheatre.

In the same manner were these exercises regarded by the Dorians and the people of some other of the Grecian States.  The inhabitants of Attica and of Ionia, on opposite shores of the Aegean, as more cultivated races, viewed them in a more correct physiological light.  But it was at Athens that the gymnasium was held in highest repute.

We read that Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, first established particular regulations for its government.  Attic legends, however, gratefully refer the earliest rules of the gymnasium to Theseus, as to one of the mightiest of the mythical heroes,—­the emulator of Hercules, slayer of the Minotaur, and conqueror of the Amazons.  Hermes was the presiding deity, which may appear strange to us, as he was as noted for an unworthy cunning as for his dexterity.  Generous emulation and magnanimity were regarded as the noblest qualities called forth in gymnastic exercises; and Mercury seems a fitter tutelar divinity of the wary boxer and of the race-course than of the whole gymnasium.