Beginning as the most promising pupils of the gymnasium, and becoming victors in the public games, certain gymnasts gradually grew into a distinct class of prize-runners, wrestlers, and fighters, called Athletes.  They then devoted their lives to attaining excellence in these exercises, and withdrew to the palaestra, or training-school.  Those who quitted the profession became instructors in the public gymnasium.  To attain great bodily strength, they submitted to many rigid rules.  By frequent anointing, rubbing, and bathing, they rendered their bodies very supple.  The trainer, or teacher in the palaestra, was termed xystarch.  He was himself the Nestor of the “ring.”  The food of the athlete was mainly beef and pork.  The latter, we believe, is excluded from the diet-list of the modern prize-fighter.  Of their particular rules of living and “getting into condition” we know but little.  Before being allowed to contend, they were subjected to a strict examination by the judges.  In so high estimation were the victors held, that they were rewarded with a public proclamation of their names, the laudations of the poet, statues, banquets, and other privileges.  The immediate material gain was not the winning of the stakes, but a simple crown or garland of laurel, olive, pine, or parsley, according to the festival at which they fought.  Pindar has embalmed the names of many victors in his Olympic, Pythian, and other odes.

But let us leave the athletes for something more inviting.  The lampadephoria, or torch-race, must have been a singular spectacle.  There were five celebrations of this game at Athens, of which the most noted was at the Panathenaea, where horsemen often contended.  The text describing it has been a puzzle to commentators;—­the most rational and accepted interpretation seems to be, that it was a contest between opposite parties, and not between individuals.  Lighted lamps, protected by a shield, were passed from runner to runner along the lines of players, to a certain goal.  They who succeeded in carrying their lights from boundary to boundary unextinguished were declared the victors.  This game will at once recall the moccoletti, which close the carnival at Rome.

Dancing to the sound of the cithara, flute, and pipe, was a favorite amusement with all classes.  The grizzly veterans and the younger soldiers all joined in martial dances.  The dance and the game of ball were often connected.  The Romaic dance, peculiar to the modern Greeks, is an inheritance from their ancestors.  Dancing by youths and maidens formed part of the entertainment of guests.  Tumblers threw somersets and leaped amid sharp knives, somewhat after the manner of the Chinese jugglers.  Music was also usually associated with either poetry or dancing.