Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/47

22 in the end. Passing through a forest one day, he saw the trunk of a tree that had been partially split open. He tried to rend it farther, but the wood closed on his hands, and while he was thus held he was devoured by wolves.

The training of Greek athletes consisted, beside the ordinary gymnastic exercises of the palæstra, in carrying heavy loads, lifting weights, bending iron rods, striking at a suspended leather sack filled with sand or flour, taming bulls, etc. Boxers had to practise delving the ground to strengthen their upper limbs. The competitions open to atfiletes were in running, leaping, throwing the discus, wrestling, boxing, and the Pancratium or a combination of boxing and wrestling.

Victory in this last was the highest achievement of an athlete, and was reserved only for men of extraordinary strength. The competitors were naked, having their bodies salved with oil.

An athlete could begin his career as a boy in contests set apart for boys, He could appear again as a youth against his equals, and, though always unsuccessful, could go on competing until the age of thirty-five, when he was debarred, it being assumed that after that period of life, he could not improve. The most celebrated Greek athletes whose names have been handed down, beside those above mentioned, are Milo,