Wonders of bodily strength and skill : in all ages and all countries

Book First — Bodily Strength

Chapter L — Physical Force in Ancient Times — Cele erated Athletes II. — Wrestling and Wrestlers - III. — Pugilism among the Ancients IV.— Quoit Throwing ...

V. — Boxing in England M VL— English Wrestlers — T. Topham „ VII. — Venetian Games in the Middle Ages

,, VIII. — SCANDERBERG AND THE TURKS

w IX.— Some Historical Personages ft

99 99

21 36

47 54 68

85 90

99 99

Book Second — Bodily Skill

Chapter I. —Runners and Running in Antiquity and the Middle Ages - „ II. — Couriers of the Aristocracy „ III.— Races of Females - „ IV. — Leaping and Leapers u* Antiquity „ V. — Acrobats in Antiquity

VL— Modern Acrobats - - - VII. — Rope Dancers in Ancient Times and in

the Middle Ages ...

"VTIL— Rope Dancers in Modern Times IX.— Swimming • • • • •

107 119

134 140 149 158

167 178 190

VI CONTENTS.

PAGB

Chapter X. — Swimmers of America and Oceania - - 200

„ XII. — Greek and Syrian Divers • 220

99 XIII.-— Skating and Skaters • • 226

Chapter I. — The Sling and its Use - 247 „ II. —-The Bow in Ancient Times • • - 253

99 III. — The Nations most celebrated as Archers 258

M IV. — The Archer, Robin Hood .... 268

ff V. — Other English Archers - • • - 281

„ VI.— The Bow in the East and in America • 291 9 , VIL — William Tell and the Legend of the

9 , VIII. — The Bow and Arrow in the Nineteenth

Century - 308

„ IX. — The Musket and Pistol • • • -318 n XL — The Boomerang •••••• 334

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. Athletes practising Javelin and Quoit Throwing,

and Pugilism, to the Sound of the Flute -

2. Victor in the Games, accompanied by Herald

3. Hercules and Antaeus -

4. Contest with the Ends of the Fingers

5. Perpendicular Wrestling

6. Wrestlers -

7. A Pancratic Engagement

8. Wrestlers ...

9. Another Scene 10. Another Scene xi. Another Scene

12. Encounter between Pugilists

13. Pugilist rubbed with Oil before a Combat

14. Pugilist Armed with the Cestus

15. Pugilistic Encounter

16. A Pugilist

17. Children Fighting

19. A Pugilist

20. The Statue of the Quoit-thrower

21. Throwing the Stone in Appenzell

22. A " Fistic Encounter"

23. Throwing the Hammer in Scotland-

24. Topham's Great Feat -

25. Venetian Games in the Middle Ages

26. A Story from Froissart

27. Ancient Foot Runners 3

28. Running with Arms

29. Torch Race -

31. Peich, or Runner of the Grand Turk

32. English Running Footman

33. Race of Women in Wurtemburg

34. Halteres used in Jumping - •

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGtt

35. Leaping with Halteres ••-••• 144

37. Leaping over Javelins ....... 145

39. The Game of the Greased Bottle • 146

41. Leaping with Pole ....... 147

42. Ancient Tumbler ........ 150

44. Female Acrobats - • - - - - - -152

49. Rope Dancer at Venice • • • • • -175

50. Bell Ringers at Seville • • • • • • 187

51. Hero and Leander ....... 191

52. Floridians Fighting while Swimming • • 203

53. Skating Races in Holland .---•• 233

54. Battle on Stilts at Namur • • - • • 241

55. The Sling in Action -'.-•• • • 249

56. Shooting with the Bow amongst the Ancients • 255

57. Archer bending his Bow - - - • • -257

58. The CabSclos of Brazil Shooting • • • 265

59. An English Lady practising with the Bow and

Arrow (early part of Nineteenth Century) - 286

60. English Archer of the Middle Ages • 287

61. French Archer of the Middle Ages • 288

62. Fire Arrows 289

63. Fishing with the Javelin - - ... 313

64. Hunting by Torchlight in Kentucky • • -319

65. Exercise with the Javelin .---•. 329

66. Etruscan preparing to Hurl his Javelin - - 330

67. Thessalian Horseman and Foot Soldier armed

with Javelins 331

68. Throwing the Javelin .- . . • -331

69. Australian throwing the Boomerang • • • 335 7a The Boomerang describing its Ellipse • • 336

Preface

Before entering on the perusal of the following pages, the reader ought to be informed what the author has, and what he has not, attempted. It was not his design to write a scientific treatise on athletic exercises, or to furnish the professional or amateur gymnast with a body of historical facts relating to the sports now in vogue. His object was to cull from every source that came within his reach anecdotes descriptive of the most remarkable exhibitions of physical strength and skill, whether in the form of individual feats or of national games, from the earliest ages down to the present time. It need scarcely be said that it did not fall within his province to authenticate these, had it been possible ; and the reader — versed in the literature of modern athletics, and in all facts as to times, distances, weights, and so forth, relating to them — who shrugs his shoulders at the statement of the doings of the giants of past days, must lay the blame elsewhere. The author has simply endeavoured to make a collection of "Wonders of bodily strength and skill" from the literature of all countries and all times, and if many of them may be assigned to the

X PREFACE.

region of the improbable, or even of the incredible, he must respectfully refer doubting enquirers to the original sources. As to the arrangement of the work, it will readily be perceived that in dealing with a mass of materials which could not fail to be of a somewhat heterogeneous character, the task was a difficult one. The author has adopted that disposition which appeared to him the most natural, viz., into three books, devoted respectively to feats or games that demand chiefly physical strength ; to those which are based on skill more than strength; and to those which require skill alone. It will no doubt be found in certain cases that particular performances can hardly be placed exclusively under any one of these heads; but on the whole it will probably be allowed that the arrangement is the best that could be adopted under the circumstances. It is necessary to add that in this translation numerous facts have been added to bring certain subjects up to the present time, and to adapt the work more particularly to the requirements of the English reader.

WONDERS OF

BODILY STRENGTH AND SKILL BOOK I.

BODILY STRENGTH.

CHAPTER I.

PHYSICAL FORCE IN ANCIENT TIMES — CELEBRATED ATHLETES.

The " Profession " among the Greeks — The Victors in Public Gat.Y»t; — The Crowns — The Triumph — The Museum of Olympia — Milo of Croton— Polydamas of Thessalia — Theagenes — The Emperors Commodus and Maximus.

In primitive societies physical force was more highly esteemed, and was also of greater utility than it is in these days. Before men had become mixed in communities, and before those communities were powerful enough to protect all their members, it was well that each individual should be able to protect himself. Progress completed the work of nature and necessity. Everything — climate, religion, and social institutions — combined to favour the development of material force. Costume, regulated by the condition of an ever pure atmosphere, did not hide, but on the contrary, showed to advantage the outlines of the body. Religion was nothing but the worship of external nature, and adoration was paid to physical beauty under the names of Venus and Apollo, and physical strength as embodied in the myth of Hercules. Mind came of course to be placed above matter, but at the same time matter was not entirely overcome; and so in the Bible, Samson is the type of strength, just as Hercules is in heathen mythology.

It is not then surprising that under the influence of such

Athletes practising Javelin and Quoit throwing, and Pugilism, to the sound of the Flute. (From a painted vase in the Berlin Museum.)

ideas there should have arisen among the ancients at an early period a special class of men, whose purpose in life was to develop their physical strength, and that the nations should have encouraged this tendency by establishing i ublic games devoted to all sorts of bodily exercises. In Greece, to go no further back in ancient annals, this art was called "athletics," and those who pursued it were styled " athletes," frorr a word which signified combat They underwent long and painful courses of training before appearing in public. They were obliged to submit to a particular regimen,

PHYSICAL FORCE IN ANCIENT TIMES.

to accustom themselves to bear hunger, thirst, heat, the dust of the arena — in a word, all the discomforts to which they were to be exposed during the public games, which sometimes lasted from the morning to the evening. For this reason, Galen, the physician, showers invectives upon this profession, which he refuses to consider as one of the fine arts ; " For," says he, " athletes devote themselves to increasing the bulk of their flesh and the quantity of their thick and viscous blood — not to the work of simply rendering the body more robust, but more massive, and therefore more likely to crush an adversary by mere weight This sort of training is therefore of no use in the acquisition of that vigour which may be attained by ordinary means, and is, besides, very dangerous."

But the love of glory, which was so ardent among the Greeks, made the athletes forget the fatigues of the palaestra, and blinded them to the mishaps that threatened

them when the day of contest should come. They had only one aim — to carry off the reward of the victor. The crown they won was in itself of little value, consisting of a wreath of parsley, wild olive, pine, oak, or laurel leaves, according to the locality. It is pretended that in the earliest times it was made of gold 3 but this opinion seems to be contradicted by the sentiments of the ancients, and of the people most

Victor in the Games accompanied by

Herald. (Bas-relief in die Clementine Museum.)

interested in the question, the athletes themselves, who considered a reward which was simple and without any intrinsic value as so much more glorious and worthy of esteem. The crown of leaves was only valuable from an idea which was associated with it, and because it gained for the athlete the applause of the people throughout the whole of Greece. Other ovations were accorded to the victor when he returned to his home bearing the crown and the palm — the emblems of his triumph. He made his solemn entrance into the town in a four-horse chariot, preceded by torchbearers, and followed by a long procession. He did not enter by the common gate of the town, but by a breach made in the walls expressly to do him honour. By this ceremonial it was intended to indicate that a city that could count among its sons a number of valiant athletes had no need of walls to protect it against the besieger. But, was it certain that these men, in spite of all their strength, would have made good soldiers? "Though an athlete excels in wrestling," says Euripides, "is unrivalled in running, is skilled in throwing the quoit, or can soundlj buffet the jaws of an adversary, in what way can such accomplishments serve his country? Can he repel the enemy with a blow of the discus, or put him to flight by going through his exercises armed with a buckler? One does not amuse himself with these trifles when he finds himself within the sweep of a swordsman's arm."

The triumphs of the athletes were sometimes very brilliant. For example, when Egenetus, in the ninetysecond Olympiad, entered Agrigentum, his birthplace, he was attended by an escort of three hundred chariots, each drawn, like his own, by two white horses, and all belonging to the citizens of the town. But the honours accorded to vie-

PHYSICAL FORCE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 1 5

torious athletes did not end with the pageantry of a triumph. They enjoyed numerous privileges, which were either of an honorary or of a lucrative description. They had the right of being present at all public games; their names were engraven upon marble tablets, and they were freed from the performance of civic duties. They enjoyed the right of being exempt frc^n the charges which were levied upon the other citizens, and of being maintained to the end of their days at the expense of the national funds. Lastly, their native towns set up statues in their honour, of wood originally, but afterwards of bronze, each of which represented the athlete in the attitude in which he had gained his victory.

In later times these statues greatly increased in number, and formed an unrivalled museum at Olympia, a town of Elis, and also a theatre of public games, which were the most renowned in the whole of Greece. The museum was in the open air, the statues being scattered through the sacred grove, which in its vast circuit contained the temple of Jupiter, with a colossal figure of the god in gold and ivory by Phidias, the temple of Juno, the theatre, and a number of other buildings. The Greeks, in the enthusiasm of their nature, were so apt to render extravagant honours to the victors in the Olympic games, that the magistrates endeavoured to restrain their ardour. They watched carefully that the statues should not be on a larger scale than life, and whatever colossal statue was erected was broken by them without mercy. It was feared that the people, carried away by their enthusiasm, would set up more statues to their favourities the athletes than there were figures of the gods and demi-gods. The statues of Olympia were inscribed with the names of the greatest sculptors.

Among the most celebrated, or, at least, among those that transmit to posterity traditions of the most extraor* dinary feats, is that of Milo of Croton, the work of Damoas, a countryman of the great athlete. One proof that Milo did not bear away the palm without deserving it, is that he himself carried the statue which commemorated his distinction upon his shoulders, and set it up in its place. And it was not only once that he was crowned, for six times did he win the palm at the Olympic games, and on the first of these occasions he was still very young. He was equally successful in the Pythian encounters. The people of Croton, where he was born (a town on the eastern coast of Calabria), were celebrated for their physical prowess. Milo did not belie the renown of his townsmen, and loved to give proofs of his prodigious strength. It was he who was said to have ran a mile with a four-year old ox upon his shoulders, afterwards killed the animal with a blow of his fist, and ate the carcase every inch in one day. It was he also who placed himself upright upon a quoit, which had been oiled to render it more slippery, and there stood so firmly that no shock could move him. No human power could open his fingers, when, leaning his elbow upon his side, he held out his hand closed except the thumb, which was left free. Sometimes in the same hand he would hold a pomegranate, and without crushing it grasp it with sufficient strength to baffle all attempts to force it from him. A woman whom he loved alone could make him slacken his grasp, and for this reason ^Elian remarked that Milo's strength was only material, and did not render him proof against human weaknesses. But, did not Hercules himself, Milo's hero and model, lie at Omphale's feet and spin yarn with that lady's distaff? Not only did Milo take Hercules for hia

PHYSICAL FORCE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 1 7

great example, but he imitated his personal appearance, for on one occasion he marched against an army of Sybarites at the head of his countrymen, clothed in a lion's hide, and brandishing a club.

So great was his strength that he would sometimes bind a cord round his head, and, retaining his breath, break it by the swelling and pressure of the veins. On one occasion, when he happened to be in a house with a number of the disciples of Pythagoras, the ceiling threatened to fall in; but the athlete held up the column on which the roof rested, and saved the lives of the philosophers. It is not astonishing, then, that such a • vigorous athlete did not find in the public games many antagonists desirous of measuring themselves with him, and that on one occasion he was declared the victor without a combat. But, at the moment when he was about to seize the crown, which the president of the games presented to him, his foot slipped and he fell. Some spectators noting this cried out that it was not right to crown him who had not had an adversary, and especially after a fall. " I have stumbled, it is true," answered Milo, " but to lose the prize I should have been knocked down."

Nevertheless, according to ^Elian, Milo found a conqueror in the person of a mountaineer named Titormus, whom he encountered on the banks of the Evenus (modern Fidari), a river of ^Etolia. This was, without doubt, at the time when his strength was beginning to fail, but that it was so he would not allow himself to believe, and his obstinacy proved fatal to him. Having found an oak upon the road, in the bark of which some one had sunk a number of coins, Milo attempted to enlarge the opening ; but the strength of his youth had declined, and he failed

B

The segments closing, fastened his hands in the rift, and held the athlete prisoner; in this position he was assailed, and rent to pieces by wild beasts. At an ordinary meal Milo of Croton is said to have consumed twenty pounds of meat, as much bread, and fifteen pints of wine.

The feats of Polydamas of Thessalia, an athlete of pn> digious strength and of colossal height, were not less extraordinary, and some incredible stories are told of him. It is said that, alone and without arms, he, like another Hercules, killed an enormous and enraged lion. When he held a chariot back with his one hand, the most powerful horses could not pull it from his grasp. One day he seized a bull by one of its hind feet, and the animal was able to escape only by leaving the hoof in the hands of the athlete. The King of Persia, Darius I., having heard the strange reports of his surprising strength, wished to see him, and opposed to him three of his guards, from the troop called the Immortals, who were considered the most skilled and the strongest of his army. Polydamas encountered the three, and killed them all. Like Milo, he perished through his own confidence in his muscular powers. While in a cavern with a number of companions, seeking shelter from the heat, all at once the arch opened up on several sides. The friends of Polydamas sought safety in flight ; but he, without any fear, attempted with his hands to bear up the great mass of earth that fell in upon him, and was buried under it.

These athletes were so accustomed to victory that they were not in the habit of even counting their well-won wreaths. Such, for instance, was Chilo, of Patrae, in Achaia, in whose honour his countrymen raised a tomb, whose statue was carved by the celebrated Lysippus, and who flourished at Olympia ir f he time of Pausanias. Such

PHYSICAL FORCE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 1 9

especially was Theagenes of Thasos (an island in the ^Egean sea off the coast of Thrace), whose prize wreaths amounted in number — not to 10,000, as an oracle announced after his death — but to 1,200 or 1,400, according to Pausanias and Plutarch. A singular story is told of this athlete. After his death one of his rivals went every night — no doubt to gratify his hatred and show his contempt — and lashed the statue, which, accidentally falling, crushed the poor wretch to death under its mass. His son preferred a charge against the effigy, and the trial resulted in its being condemned by the Thasians to be thrown into the sea. But scarcely had this judgment been carried out than the inhabitants of Thasos were visited by a dreadful famine, and the Delphic oracle, on being consulted, gave, as usual, an answer with a double meaning, " The recall of the exiles will alone end your misfortunes." Acting on the letter and not the spirit of the suggestion, they experienced no alleviation of their distress, and the oracle, when again consulted, reminded them that they had not recalled Theagenes. But how was this to be done ? Fortunately, some fishermen were able to get the statue into their nets, and brought it to land. It was conveyed with great pomp and ceremony to the spot where it formerly stood, divine honours were paid to it ; and eventually Greeks and barbarians came to adore this image, which was reputed to have miraculous power, and employed it for cures for certain diseases.

The Roman emperor Caius Julius Verus Maximinus, by blood a Goth, and at one time a herdsman, deserves notice in any record of the great athletes of antiquity. During the games superintended by Septimius Severus, he entered the lists against the most formidable of his day, and knocked down six men without drawing breath. Maxi-

b 2 min, who was upwards of e:ght feet in height, and who received the names of Hercules, and Milo of Croton, could squeeze to powder the hardest stone with his fingers, split up young trees with his hands, break the jaw or the leg of a horse with a kick. Such was his development that his wife's bracelet served him for a ring. He adopted a vegetable dietary, but, according to one authority, would sometimes, to recompense himself for his abstinence, eat forty and even sixty pounds of meat, and drink an amphora of wine in one day. The emperor Commodus had before this assumed by decree the name of Hercules, son of Jupiter, instead of that of son of Marcus Aurelius, and appeared in public covered with a lion's hide and bearing a club in his hand. He afterwards took it into his head to abandon his chosen name, and adopt that of a famous gladiator who had just died. His pleasure then was to descend into the arena, and, laying aside the purple, which he dishonoured by his profligacy and extravagance, to fight naked before the people. His exploits in the ring are, however, not credible ; and though the pedestal of his statue bore the inscription, " Commodus, conqueror of a thousand gladiators," it is to be feared that they were willing victims. Still, if the strength of the emperor was not always as great as it was made to appear, his agility, on the other hand, was incontestable, as we shall have occasion to show further on.

CHAPTER It

WRESTLING AND WRESTLERS.

The Origin of Wrestling — Hercules and Antaeus, Theseus and Cercyon — Two kinds of Wrestling, the Perpendicular and Horizontal — Wrestling with the Finger Ends — Homer's Description — At what time the Athletes Fought entirely Naked — The Pancrace — Anointing and Rubbing — The Group of Wrestlers — Advantages of Wrestling among the Ancients — The Swiss Mountaineers.

All the athletes to whom we have referred may be generally described as wrestlers, and their art is perhaps the most ancient of all gymnastic exercises. It is not to be supposed that those who took part in struggles of this nature were actuated by enmity or a desire for vengeance. On the contrary, for many ages wrestling was only a means of testing the strength of members of the same race, tribe, or family. Two brothers would seize each other round the body, and exert all their strength to make each other succumb, but their doing so was considered only a pastime and a preparation for the serious combats of the arena. These encounters, however, body to body, were marked by all the rudeness of primitive times, and brute force decided the victory. One athlete overthrew the other by his mere weight and mass, crushing him as they crush grain in the mill, and only relaxed his hold when his adversary owned himself vanquished. In the heroic ages every man's energies were directed to rendering his body as powerful as possible, either by continual exercise, or by a

WONDERS OF BODILY STRENGTH AND SKILL.

strengthening regimen, in order to bring into play in the combats all the force of his frame and muscles. That some perverted the great physical powers which nature had bestowed upon them, and which they had developed by culture, to the purpose of tyrannising over and making profit out of their fellow-creatures is not surprising. The classic mythology teems with examples. Among the most dreaded of such monsters were Antaeus and Cercyon, whom Theseus and Hercules were obliged to destroy, and to whom it is said we owe the invention of wrestling. They compelled travellers to try their strength with them, and after easy victories, killed the victims when they had thrown them to the ground. Antaeus, the Lybian giant, did not, according to the myth, run any great personal danger, for he had, so to speak, insured his life, and in his encounters a fall was not a defeat, as it was for ordinary wrestlers, but rather gave him renewed strength. He was, the ancients said, the son of Terra, the earth, and each time he fell and touched his mother he received fresh powers. After Hercufes had three times in vain dragged him down in his embrace, he raised him with his muscular arm, and strangled him without suffering him to touch the reviving earth. Theseus had to overcome some obstacles of the same nature in his combat with Cercyon of Attica, who used to catch wayfarers, and, after fixing them to the branches of trees, break their limbs as on a rack. The brigands of our own time, in Calabria and elsewhere, are not inexperienced in the refinements of cruelty, but

Hercules and Antaeus

(From a carving in the Museum of Chiusi.)

modern governments are armed with very effectual means of putting a stop to them. Theseus, however, had not at his disposal the resources of civilisation, and it was purely out of good will, and at great personal peril, that he assumed in his own person the functions which in our days devolve on the police. If he managed to get through a wrestling bout when the odds were against him not only victoriously but with glory, it was because he had discovered the weak points of all the wrestlers who had preceded him. They possessed brute misdirected strength, which did not suffice when opposed by skill, which strips mere strength of its value ; which reflects, judges, and contrives ; which discovers the weak points of others, but conceals itself; which is at once a shield to defend and a spear to attack. Theseus was the first to perceive its importance in wrestling, and to introduce it in practice ; and the result was that what had formerly been only an exercise without method or rules, now became an art pursued in the gymnasium.

Wrestling held a place in the Olympic games from remote times, and the hero Hercules himself carried off the prize for physical strength. When troubles began to come upon Greece the games fell into desuetude ; but after they were re-established, at the instigation of the oracle at Delphos, wrestling was again recognised as an institution in the eighteenth Olympiad, and the Lacedaemonian Eurybates had the honour of being the first conqueror.

The Greeks recognised two modes of wrestling — one called the perpendicular, in which the combatants were allowed to rise after they had been overthrown ; the other, in which the wrestler did not require to fear a fall, was v tyled the horizontal mode. It was also called the rotatory,

WONDERS OF BODILY STRENGTH AND SKILL.

because in their evolutions and intertwinings the wrestlers* now uppermost now undermost, rolled upon the tan from one side of the arena to the other. Some authors assert that there was a third mode — aci'ocheirismos — which consisted in seizing the ends of the fingers of an adversary, without touching any other part of his body. The name

Contest with the Ends of the Fingers. (From a painted vase in the Hamilton collection.)

comes from the Greek a/cpos, extreme, %dp, the hand. But Kraus, whose work on the gymnastics of the Greeks is an authority, shows that acrocheirisim was only the prelude to the wrestle properly so called, and not an exercise of itself. Yet this preliminary struggle seems to have been of some importance, since certain athletes made it their speciality, and many excelled in it. To this class belonged Sostratus of Sicyon, as well as Leontis of Messina, who, according to Panamas, never fatigued himself by fighting body to body, but contented himself by squeezing and twisting the fingers of his enemy with such vigour as to oblige him to own himself defeated. Thus, as the wrestling match was often terminated with the preliminary play of hands, it is not surprising that modern critics have considered this a special exercise.