THE monuments of pre-Hellenic Greece already have on them
pugilists (the Hagia Triada vase with boxers), and acrobats
vaulting over a bull ( Tiryns fresco, Knossos ivory statuette,
gems), showing active muscles; they show that the Ægeans
attached a certain importance to bodily exercise and that
the subject inspired artists. But it was reserved for Greece
to bestow on this culture of the human body a care unknown
elsewhere, and to her artists to obtain from it new effects.
Gymnastics ² for the Hellenes were an indispensable prepara-
tion for the social life of the soldier-citizen; they moulded
body and mind alike, since a strong and noble spirit could
exist only in a robust and healthy body. As artists they
admired this healthy body, but the aesthetic interest was
grafted on to the utilitarian and derived from a social
necessity. The Greeks said that it was gymnastics which
enabled the Athenians to win Marathon and the Thebans
Leuctra. Socrates counselled the young Epigenes to cultivate
his neglected body: "What a strange body hast thou,
Epigenes! . . . Is that combat valueless to thee whose prize
is life, should the Athenians come and propose it? Yet many
men, owing to their bad condition, perish in the dangers of
war and often at the cost of their honour; many, for the same
reason, are taken alive; and others gain a bad reputation,
founded on the feebleness of their body, which causes them to
pass for cowards. . . . For my part, I think it easier and
more agreeable to submit to the fatigues necessary in order
to obtain a vigorous body. All is different to him whose body
is in good condition from him in whom it is unfit; health and
vigour fall to the lot of those whose bodily condition is good;
many there are who, by this means, come through a soldier's

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