.
PALAESTRA (παλαίστρα). The upshot of a controversy which lasted for many years as to the difference between a παλαίστρα and a γυμνάσιον is that as a general rule the παλαῖστραι were the ordinary schools kept by private individuals, where boys were trained and got regular instruction in physical exercises: while the γυμνάσια were the public establishments to which the grown--up young men, and even adults (Plat. Rep. 452 B; Xen. Symp. 2, 18), resorted for exercise, but where there was no regular instruction given except to those who were training either for the games or to become professional athletes. This distinction was made by K. F. Hermann in his additions to Becker's Charikles, 2.186, 189, and has been accepted by Guhl and Koner,4 256-7, Grasberger (Erziehung und Unterricht, i. 252), Göll (Charikles, 2.239), Blümner (Privatalterthümer, 336, and in Baumeister's Denkmäler, s. v. Gymnastik), Mahaffy (Old Greek Education, p. 25, note), and Iwan Müller (Handbuch der klass. Alterthümswissenschaft, 4.451 c, 1887).
Becker in his Charikles (Eng. trans. p. 294) had maintained “that the Gymnasium was a place including grounds for running, archery, javelin-practice, and the like, along with baths and numerous resorts for those who only sought amusement; while the Palaestra, on the other hand, was the regular wrestling-school, where, originally, wrestling (πάλη) and the pancration were principally taught and practised;” and that “the distinction which Krause had attempted to establish that the Palaestra was chiefly for the use of boys is quite untenable.” He bases his conclusion on Aristoph. Birds 140, παῖς ὡραῖος ἀπὸ γυμνασίου: on Plat. Legg. 6.794 D, who wishes for γυμνάσια καὶ διδασκαλεῖα for girls as well as boys, proving, he thinks, that γυμνάσια were used for boys; on Lucian, Nav. 4, where the young men go to the palaestra; and on Theophr. Char. vii. (Jebb), which speaks of gymnasia where the ephebi practise, which implies, Becker thinks, that there were gymnasia where the boys practised. But neither in this passage nor in that from Plato is γυμνάσια used otherwise than generically in the sense of “places for exercise,” with no idea of any distinction from παλαῖστραι: and as to the passage from Aristophanes, Göll (op. cit. 234) shows from Theocritus (Idyll. 23.60, 61) and Lucian (Amor. 26) that παῖς is a term that can be applied to youths up to twenty years of age; while the passage from Lucian represents the young men as setting out in search of Adimantus, who had gone to the palaestra to look for a favourite boy, and not with any idea of exercising. But, again, there is the muchdiscussed passage in Antiphon (Tetral. 2.2, 3; 3, 6), where a boy (παῖς), answering a summons from his παιδοτρίβης, crosses the range and is killed by a spear shot by a youth (μειράκιον), who is said to be μελετῶν μετὰ τῶν ἡλίκων ἀκοντίζειν ἐπὶ τῷ γυμνασίῳ. But this can be explained by supposing either that the παῖς was a spectator, or more likely was practising for the games, and the presence of the παιδοτρίβης seems an additional proof of this. It is better to explain the passage thus than to force the sense of ἐπί, “in the neighbourhood of,” with Grasberger, 1.269.
A striking passage to show that palaestrae were for boys, gymnasia for young men, is Theocritus (Idyll. 2.80), where the young men Delphis and Eudamippus come from the gymnasium (ὡς ἀπὸ γυμνασίοιο καλὸν πόνον ἄρτι λιπόντων), compared with vv. 8, 97, where Delphis is represented as staying about the palaestra of Timagetus to see his boy favourite. It also shows that the palaestrae were called after their proprietor (or perhaps their founder): compare also the palaestrae of Taureas (Plat. Charm. 153 A), Timeas (C. I. A. 2.445, 1. 22), Antigenes (ib. 446, 1. 61), Sibyrtius (Plut. Alc. 3). The master of the palaestra was called παιδοτρίβης: he was regularly paid by the parents of the boys he taught, and the conducting a palaestra was an ordinary private speculation. Sometimes, indeed, we find certain quarters of the town building palaestrae ([Xen.] Rep. Ath. 2, 10), probably by subscription, but even these were private undertakings, as the state, as such, had nothing to do with them. That regular instruction was given in the palaestrae can be proved from Theophrastus (Char. xix.), where the Loquacious man goes into the παλαῖστραι and prevents the boys getting on with their [p. 2.313]work by his endless gossip with the παιδοτρίβαι and διδάσκαλοι.
As to the actual building, a palaestra required for wrestling and jumping a smoothly-floored, fairly large room. Throwing the spear and discus and running required indeed a very considerable space; but the palaestra in a strict sense, i. e. place for wrestling, was generally separated from the course for running (δρόμος): cf. Hdt. 6.128, Κλεισθένης καὶ δρόμον καὶ παλαίστρην ποιησάμενος εἶχε. In the smaller palaestrae there probably was no δρόμος, only a comparatively small room for wrestling. This was doubtless the chief exercise practised in the palaestra; since instruction would be more necessary for wrestling than for running. Besides this main school-room, there were smaller adjacent rooms: one for holding oil, with which the wrestlers rubbed themselves; another for sand, which was necessary to enable them to get grips; and a third for a bath--unless a river happened to be close by. The elaborate Palaestra described by Vitruvius (5.11) is really a Gymnasium, and is fully treated of under that head.
There are many vase-paintings of athletic exercises; a good example is in Baumeister's Denkmäler, fig. 671. In these paintings, besides those actually exercising who are naked, there is generally a clothed bearded figure, who carries a rod in one hand and often a staff in the other. He is the παιδοτρίβης, and the rod is used for punishment (cf. Aelian, Ael. VH 2.6). Corporal punishment was much resorted to in ancient schools. Occasionally a statue of a bearded Hermes is depicted (cf. Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, Taf. lxvi.). Along with Apollo (Lucian, Anach. 7), Hermes was the god who principally presided over athletics (Hor. Carm. 1.10.4; cf. Orelli, Inscript. 1417), and he was said by mythologists to have been the father of the goddess Palaestra (Philostr. Imagg. 2.32, p. 433, Kayser).
The παιδοτρίβης was the ordinary trainer in gymnastics (Plat. Lach. 184 E; Aristoph. Cl. 973, Eq. 1238), just as the γραμματιστὴς was the ordinary schoolmaster in our sense of the word; and the two are often mentioned in connexion (Plat. Protag. 312 B; Dio Chrys. Or. 13.426, Reiske). He trained all the boys who did not want either to compete in the games or to become professional athletes. The latter were trained by the gumnasth/s, who had more special scientific knowledge, and who also possessed a greater acquaintance with physiology, which enabled him to tell the effect on the constitution of this or that exercise (Galen, de sanit. tuend. 2.12, vol. vi. pp. 156-7, ed. Kuhn). The παιδοτρίβης was not expected to have a scientific knowledge of the exercises: he had just the knack and trick (τὴν ἐμπειρίαν τε ἅμα καὶ τριβήν, Galen, op. cit. 2.9 = p. 143: cf. Plat. Gorg. 463 A), and was only expected to know how to do the exercises and to show his pupils how to do them, but not to determine any special exercises to be assigned to each separate pupil. Just like the ordinary preparatory schoolmaster of the last generation, he put his pupils through a traditional course; believing, like the proverbial unscientific cook, that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. Indeed the cook is his very analogue, according to Galen (l.c.), who says that the παιδοτρίβης is to the γυμναστὴς as the cook (we should perhaps say the apothecary) is to the physician; that is, that he carried out the directions given by the γυμναστής: and this was the function a παιδοτρίβης performed when he acted in concert with the γυμναστής. However, it must be remembered, on the one hand, that the great mass of Greek boys were never subjected to the training of the γυμναστής: and, on the other, that we are not to suppose παιδοτρίβαι merely gave routine and rule-of-thumb instruction. We hear that Herodicus of Selymbria was quite scientific (Plat. Rep. 406 B). But in Plato's time the distinction of παιδοτρίβης and γυμναστὴς was not marked, as he ranks now the one, now the other, on a level with the physician (Crit. 47 B; Protag. 313 E). It gradually grew up in aftertimes (there is a hint of it in Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 10.9, 15), owing to the greater number of boys who wished to attain first-rate excellence in athletics; perhaps we may compare the increasing number of schools which with us hire cricket professionals. But though the distinction was certainly made and is much insisted on by Galen and others, still in all the Catalogues of the ephebi coming from Roman times we almost always find the παιδοτρίβης given, often the ὑποπαιδοτρίβης, but there is no mention of the γυμναστής. (See the Catalogues of the ephebi in C. I. A. 3.1077-1275.)
We cannot fix with certainty the details of the instruction. For example, the time of day at which the physical training took place, whether all the boys went to their gymnastic exercises in the afternoon, as Grasberger (op. cit. 1.292 ff.) maintains, or whether the younger and the older went at different times--the one in the morning, the other in the afternoon--as Stark and Göll hold. The arguments on both sides rest on à priori grounds; Grasberger insisting on the whole tenor of ancient life being to work the brains in the morning and the body in the afternoon, and that such is the natural course, while Stark (notes to Hermann's Privatalterthümer, § 36, note 13) is satisfied with showing against Grasberger that his reference to Plato, Lysis, 223 A, proves nothing, as that passage refers to the special occasion of a feast. Certain it is that children went to some sort of school very early in the morning (Plato, Legg. 808 C; Thuc. 7.29; LUDUS, p. 95).
The actual exercises practised in the palaestra were running, jumping, wrestling, throwing the spear and the discus--which formed what was called the Pentathlon [PENTATHLON]; boxing and the pancration were mostly confined to the gymnasium (I. Müller, l.c.), though in a milder form they were perhaps practised by the boys too (Blümner in Baumeister, l.c.). But, besides these athletic exercises, the παιδοτρίβης was expected to train the boys in what we would call calisthenics, so that they should walk properly without any swaggering (σοβεῖν, Dio Chrys. Or. 31.651, Reiske: cf. Alexis, Frag. 263, Kock) and generally have a graceful carriage. It is possibly in this respect that we are to explain what Isocrates says (de Antid. § 181) that γυμναστικὴ is a part of παιδοτριβική. The general aim of the exercises was that the boys should be fair and strong in body, as the παιδοτρίβης is represented as saying in Plato, Gorg. [p. 2.314]452 B, τὸ ἔργον μού ἐστι καλούς τε καὶ ἰσχυροὺς τοιεῖν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τὰ σώματα. There is a very interesting passage in Clement of Alexandria (Strom. pp. 823, 4, ed. Potter) in which he tells how the παιδοτρίβης directed each several motion of beginners (σχηματίζειν and διαπλάσσειν are the words used); more forward pupils he instructed by showing (ἐπιδεικνὺς) himself how the exercise was done, while to the most advanced pupils he simply told (προστάττοι ἐξ ὀνόματος) what exercise was to be performed.
In early times the state exercised a police control over the palaestrae in the interests of morality, Solon enacting that the schools should not be opened before sunrise or kept open after sunset, and forbidding grown men to visit the palaestrae (Aeschin. Timarch. § § 9-12): but this law soon fell into abeyance, as may be seen from the Lysis and Charmides of Plato, and from Theophrastus's account of the Loquacious man.
The Greek exercises of the palaestra never took any great hold on the Romans. They disapproved of them as leading to idleness, and, owing to the nakedness of those who took part in the exercises, to immorality; and besides, they were no good for war (Plut. Quaest. Rom. 40 = 274, 25, Reiske; Senec. Epist. 88, 18; Plin. Ep. 10.40, 2). But still they were practised a good deal by the Romans, sometimes as a preparation for the bath, but generally by young men who wished for some, but not for very violent, exercise (Hor. Sat. 2.2, 8 if.: cf. Carm. 1.8, 8; 3.12, 7; and Strabo, 5.236): cf. Marquardt, Privatleben der Römer, 120.
But the word “palaestra” has other senses than the one we have treated of. Haase (in Ersch and Gruber, s. v. Palaestra) shows that it is used as a special part of a gymnasium, as (at least in Roman times) synonymous with gymnasium, and also in a metaphorical sense. That it was used for part of a gymnasium, probably the part where wrestling was practised, can be proved from Hyperides (Orat. Att. ii. p. 404, ed. Didot), Plut. (Vit. X. Oratt. 841, 27), and perhaps Lucian (Parasit. 51). That it was synonymous with gymnasium in Roman times can be proved from Vitruvius (5.11), who describes a gymnasium and calls it a palaestra; Plutarch, too (Sympos. 2.4 = 638, 21), says that the place where all the athletes exercise is called a palaestra; and Pausanias tells us (5.15, 8; 6.21, 2) that there were at Olympia palaestrae especially devoted to athletes. The wealthy Romans often had private palaestrae or gymnasia added to their houses (Cic. Att. 1.1. 0, 3; Verr. 5.72, 185). For the metaphorical use of “palaestra,” as signifying rhetorical academic oratory as opposed to real public speaking, see Cic. de Orat. 1.18, 81; and for elegance in composition as opposed to an uncouth and uncultivated style, Cic. de Leg. 1.2, 6.
The chief works to consult for further information on the exercises of the Palaestra are Haase's article on Palaestrik in Ersch and Gruber; Krause in Pauly, s. v. Gymnasium; Grasberger, op. cit. 1.244 to end; Hermann-Blümner, Gr. Privatalterthümer, 341-351: and Mahaffy, Old Greek Education, chap. iii. Detailed accounts of the different exercises will be found in separate articles summarised in the Index.
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