The rooms housed within the porticos of the palaistra reveal the functions that a gymnasion provided its patrons. Instead of performing on the parallel bars or ‘pumping iron’ on free weights in figure-hugging lycra, the patrons would be seen practising running, long jump, javelin, discus, wrestling and pankration, naked but oiled, covered with a coating of protective dust and with their genitals tied in place by a leather thong know as a kynodesme (literally a ‘dog leash’ a penis was a ‘dog’ in ancient Greek slang). The only major constructions would have been the palaistra, a large courtyard enclosed by porticos, and the xystoi, the covered running tracks for use in bad weather. In contrast, the visitor to a Greek gymnasion would have found something more akin to an open-air athletics field set within extensive parklands, devoid of any fixed equipment, though with the addition of altars and shrines. A visitor to a gym built between the closing decades of the 19th century and the present day would expect to walk into an indoor hall filled with equipment. To this we can add a third: therapeutic training, because the ancient Greeks, too, understood the value of exercise in maintaining health and curing disease. Training for sporting competition (which would now be classed as complementary or assistance exercise) and for the narcissistic pursuit of the body beautiful (aesthetic training) are two functions shared by the ancient and modern institutions. To cite one sculptural example, the western section of the Parthenon frieze (most of which is now in the British Museum) shows athletic young cavalrymen, naked except for a himation rakishly carried over one arm or thrown back over the shoulders, preparing to ride out in the Greater Panathenaic pompe. ![]() It was a common sight, too, during religious festivals. It was obligatory during local and Pan-Hellenic competitions, such as the Panathenaic and Olympic Games and while training at the gymnasium. And for good reason: male nudity was no mere artistic convention in classical Athens, as it would be in neoclassical London, Paris or Berlin. Like today’s gym members, freeborn Athenian men and boys went to the city’s public gymnasia to perform aesthetic training, that is, exercises that enabled them to achieve or maintain the bodily ideal that was visibly glorified in the city’s public art. It is not just etymology that links the ancient gymnasion with its modern successor. Freeborn male citizens and their sons would have trained even more assiduously for the quadrennial Greater Panathenaia, which included a full programme of athletic events, with the added edge that they were expected to compete in the Panathenaic Stadium, gymnos, naked. Of the three major festivals held during Hekatombaion, the most important was the Panathenaia, marking the birthday of Athena on the 28th with a pompe (procession), in which freeborn Athenians of both sexes progressed from the Dipylon Gate along the Panathenaic Way to the Agora and thence up through the Propylaia to the Altar of Athena on the Acropolis. They did not go to the gym after the event to assuage their guilt about the excesses of the preceding festive season but beforehand in order to look their best for the forthcoming celebrations. For one, the Athenian New Year began on the first new moon after the summer solstice, during the month of Hekatombaion (June/July), in midsummer, not midwinter. One cannot help but feel, however, that the ancient Greeks had things much better organised than we do. The male citizens of classical Athens (sixth to fourth centuries BC) would have thronged the city’s three public gymnasia – the Akademia (Academy), Lykeion (Lyceum) and Kinosarges (Cynosarges) – around the new year. ![]() The New Year’s resolution to join a gym is nothing new.
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