Probably no Greek town of any importance was destitute of one of these schools of exercise.  Athens boasted three public gymnasia,—­the Cynosarges, the Lyceum, and the Academy.  These were the daily resort of young and old alike, though certain penal laws forbade them from exercising together at the same hour.

The school-boy frequented them as part of his daily task; the young man of leisure, as an agreeable lounging-place; the scholar, to listen to the master in philosophy; the sedentary, for their customary constitutional on the foot-course; and the invalid and the aged, to court the return of health, or to retain somewhat of the vigor of their earlier years.  The Athenians wisely held that there could be no health of the mind, unless the body were cared for,—­and viewed exercise also as a powerful remedial agent in disease.  Such a variety of useful purposes were thus subserved by the gymnasia, that it will be proper to look briefly at their internal arrangements.  We shall follow the description which has been left us by Vitruvius.

The ancient gymnasium was generally situated in the suburbs, and was often as large as a stadium (six hundred and twenty-five feet) square.  Its principal entrance faced the east.  A quadrangular inclosure comprehended two principal courts, divided by a party-wall.  The eastern court was called the peristylium, from the rows of columns which surrounded it; the western also was bordered by porticos, but for it we have no distinct name.  The peristyle must have been from one to two hundred feet square.  It was sometimes termed the palaestra, though this name was afterwards restricted to the training-school of the athletes proper, who made gymnastics the business of their lives.  It was also styled the sphaeristerium, or ball-ground, to which the nearest approach in modern times is the tennis-court.  The chief western inclosure was planted with plane-trees in regular order, with walls between them and seats of the so-called signine work, and was about one half larger than the peristyle.  The space between the columns of the latter and the outer walls allowed sufficient room for rows of chambers, halls, and corridors, whose uses we will next designate.

The first room on the right, as one entered the east gate, was the loutron, or room for washing, distinct from the regular baths.  Next, in the northeast corner, was the conisterium, where sand was kept for sprinkling the wrestlers after they had been anointed for the struggle.  West of this lay the coryceum, a hall for exercising with a sack of sand suspended from the roof.  It seems plausible to suppose that this exercise corresponded with that more recently practised by Mr. Thomas Hyer, previously to his fight with Yankee Sullivan.  A bag of sand, equal in weight to his adversary, was daily pommelled by the champion of America until he could make it swing and recoil satisfactorily.