Karl Heinrich Schaible

An Essay on the Systematic Training of the Body Karl Heinrich Schaible

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878. Excerpt: ... III. ROMANS--MIDDLE AGES--MODERN TIMES. THE ROMANS. In Rome, during the early ages of the Republic, bodily exercises were very general. Young and old appeared in the arena to practise, and statesmen and scholars employed their leisure hours in strengthening their muscles. But with the downfall of the Republic gymnastics gradually degenerated, and at a later period dexterity in them was no longer an honour, but a disgrace, to a free citizen, and they were performed only on public occasions by slaves and low-class persons as a means of gaining money. It would appear that Greek gymnastics and gymnasia, together with many other Greek institutions, were introduced into Italy subsequent to the subjection of Greece to Roman rule, since we find that, in the time of the Emperors, they were much practised by the youth of patrician families. But the gymnastics of Greece, already in their own land undergoing a process of decay, presented, when transplanted into the land of the Romans, an essentially altered character. In the heroic ages, at the time when arts and sciences flourished most, and during the gradual decadence of Greece, the chief characteristic of her gymnastics, as we have shown above, was more or less their tendency to develop at one and the same time both moral and physical strength and health. But the Romans used gymnastics originally only as a means of gratifying their lust of power, and, at a later period, as a matter of public display. Gymnastics were used for the first purpose as a method of military training. They were never, among the Romans, connected with the inner development of man; and even Greek gymnastics, at this epoch, could afford no beneficial effect in that respect, because, before being transplanted to the Roman soil, they had alrea...