Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/43

18 IV. THE ATHLETES OF ANCIENT GREECE. The term "athlete" was applied in Greece only to those who contended in the public games for prizes, exclusive of musical and other contests where bodily strength was not needed. It was not applied to what we call amateurs, or those who exercised without the incentive of a prize. The "athletes" were the distinct forerunners of the trained fighting men who became a professional class in Greece (400-300 ). It was not the value of the prizes themselves which led men to devote their lives to athletic exercises. That was at most very insignificant. But, from the heroic legends of competitions for prizes, such as those at the funeral of Patroclus, from the great antiquity of the four national games of Greece (the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian, with the local Panathenæa at Athens), and from the high social position of the competitors in early times, there gradually became attached to each victory in one of these games so much glory that the townsmen of a victor were ready to, and frequently did, erect a