The History of Baths

Ritualistic Bathing - Part 2

These exalted figures began the worship of games. Sacred games were held at Delphi in honour of Apollo, Corinth, and Nemea. These four events were known as the periodos games , and great athletes, such as Theagenes of Thasos, won victory at all of them.

Although most of the events contested at Greek sacred games remain today in modern athletics in some form or other the most important competition was the chariot race. The extraordinary status and prestige conferred on the winners was in reality very different from the amateur athlete myth expounded by the 19th Century philhellenes, trying to recreate a myth. They received immortality in the form of literary acclaim especially in the odes of Pindar, statues were built in their honour and they amassed personal wealth as well.

No Metropolis or city, was considered a community if it lacked a gymnasium where, the male athletes trained and competed. Greek women rarely participated in sports of any kind except in Sparta whose military traditions encourages fitness in all. All women were excluded from the Olympic Games in every capacity even spectators, except for the priestess of Demeter who sat in the altar of view, on the North of the stage. The 2nd-century AD traveller Pausanias wrote of races for girls at Olympia, but these events in honour of Hera were of minor importance. This excusion of women was one of the reasons that the competed without clothes so that there was no possibility of women competing disguised as men.

Homer's epic poem the Iliad depicts discus throwing and stone hoisting, and the Olympic Games, begun in Greece in 776 BC, featured a wide variety of physical contests, applying to sport and war. The most formidable warriors were the Spartans of Laconia; they endured harsh physical discipline to ensure that the finest physical specimens were produced. These drastic measures included leaving newborn babies out on the roof to see if they survived. Spartans were also enthusiastic nudists as they thought that this toughened the body.

The most famous Greek athlete was Milo of Croton, who popularized contemporary progressive resistance training by carrying a calf from the day of its birth until it became full-size. In the late 6th century BC he won wrestling championships at the Pythian Games seven times and at the ancient Olympics six times.

The classical embodiment of physical development and perfection was the Greek Heracles known to the Romans as Hercules, the son of Zeus.
His laborious feats and matchless physique served as a model for all subsequent physical culturists and body builders’.

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