[*]Translation by Milman.  The exact date of this Greek poem is uncertain, but its spirit is entirely true to that of Athens in the time of this sketch.

Health and physical beauty thus go before wealth and the passions of friendship,—­a true Greek estimate!

144.  The Detestation of Old Age.—­Again, we are quick to learn that this “beauty” is the beauty of youth.  It is useless to talk to an Athenian of a “beautiful old age.”  Old age is an evil to be borne with dignity, with resignation if needs be, to be fought against by every kind of bodily exercise; but to take satisfaction in it?—­impossible.  It means a diminishing of those keen powers of physical and intellectual enjoyment which are so much to every normal Athenian.  It means becoming feeble, and worse than feeble, ridiculous.  The physician’s art has not advanced so far as to prevent the frequent loss of sight and hearing in even moderate age.  No hope of a future renewal of noble youth in a happier world gilds the just man’s sunset.  Old age must, like the untimely passing of loved ones, be endured in becoming silence, as one of the fixed inevitables; but it is gloomy work to pretend to find it cheerful.  Only the young can find life truly happy.  Euripides in “The Mad Heracles” speaks for all his race:—­

Tell me not of the Asian tyrant,
  Or of palaces plenished with gold;
For such bliss I am not an aspirant,
  If youth I might only behold:—­
Youth that maketh prosperity higher,
And ever adversity lighter.[*]

[*]Mahaffy, translator.  Another very characteristic lament for the passing of youth is left us by the early elegiac poet Mimnermus.

145.  The Greeks unite Moral and Physical Beauty.—­But here at the Academy, this spirit of beautiful youth, and the “joy of life,” is everywhere dominant.  All around us are the beautiful bodies of young men engaged in every kind of graceful exercise.  When we question, we are told that current belief is that in a great majority of instances there is a development and a symmetry of mind corresponding to the glory of the body.  It is contrary to all the prevalent notions of the reign of “divine harmony” to have it otherwise.  The gods abhor all gross contradictions!  Even now men will argue over a strange breach of this rule;—­why did heaven suffer Socrates to have so beautiful a soul set in so ugly a body?—­Inscrutable are the ways of Zeus!

However, we have generalized and wandered enough.  The Academy is a place of superabounding activities.  Let us try to comprehend some of them.

146.  The Usual Gymnastic Sports and their Objects.—­Despite all the training in polite conversation which young men are supposed to receive at the gymnasium, the object of the latter is after all to form places of athletic exercise.  The Athenians are without most of these elaborate field games such as later ages will call “baseball” and “football”; although, once learned, they could surely excel in these prodigiously.  They have a simple “catch” with balls, but it hardly rises above the level of a children’s pastime.  The reasons for these omissions are probably, first, because so much time is devoted to the “palestra” exercises; secondly, because military training eats up about all the time not needed for pure gymnastics.