An important part of the Greek system of education was the training of the body in physical exercise. For this purpose there were gymnasia in every city, where the youth were trained in running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the javelin, and casting the discus. Great spaces were occupied by these gymnasia, which included buildings for dressing-rooms and baths, porticoes and halls used as assembly-rooms, walks, gardens, and the palÆstra, or wrestling-field.

Every four years a great national festival was held at Olympia, consisting of games or contests in the various athletic sports. Every freeman of Hellenic blood had a birthright to take part in them. The contestants were required to undergo a preparatory training, often lasting months, in the gymnasium of Elis, the province in which Olympia was situated.

During the progress of the games a universal truce was proclaimed throughout Greece. All hostilities ceased for the time, and the Greeks as a united people assembled at Olympia for the joyous celebration in honor of Zeus. So important were these Olympic games that they were used as a standard for reckoning time. In assigning a date to an event, the Greeks used to say that it took place in this or that Olympiad, an Olympiad being the period of four years between two successive festivals.

We may well believe that the Olympic festivals, as well as the ordinary daily exercise in the city gymnasia, had great attractions for sculptors. The palÆstra must have been a favorite resort of artists. What a sight it was when the young men came out of the dressing-rooms stripped for running, their bodies shining with oil,—what a play of muscles in the lithe young limbs as the runners "pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling!" The course was usually of deep sand, and was about three miles in length. The runners trained for special emergencies attained extraordinary speed and endurance. The race over, each youth returned to the dressing-rooms of the gymnasium and, taking a small instrument called the strigil, made of metal, ivory, or horn, scraped the oil from his body.

It is in this cleansing process that the young man of our illustration is engaged. The statue on this account is called the Apoxyomenos, which is a Greek word meaning "scraping himself." It represents a typical incident of the life of the gymnasium, such as might be seen any day of the year.

Tall and graceful, with slender flexible limbs, the youth stands in an attitude of rest, scraping his right arm. In his fingers is the die which marks his number in the race. His body rests upon one leg, but so light is his poise that he is ready to change his position momentarily. Neither attitude nor countenance shows any sense of exhaustion, only that delicious fatigue which makes rest so enjoyable.

There is a passage in the Greek poet Aristophanes' comedy of the Clouds, in which a speaker urges upon a young man the life of the gymnasium. "Fresh and fair in beauty-bloom," he says, "you shall pass your days in the wrestling-ground, or run races beneath the sacred olive trees, crowned with white reed, in company with a pure-hearted friend, smelling of bindweed, and leisure hours, and the white poplar that sheds her leaves, rejoicing in the prime of spring when the plane tree whispers to the lime." This is the kind of life typified in the figure of our statue, [14] a side of Greek life which no one can overlook if he would understand the genius of the Greek nation.

It must not be supposed that our statue represents an actual individual. It is not a portrait, but an imaginary typical figure. It is true that portrait statues of athletes were made in great numbers, as we shall note again in another chapter. It was indeed this practical experience among athletes that led sculptors to see what a perfect human figure ought to be. In the study of many different forms they developed an idea of a type common to all and uniting all the perfections. Certain sculptors figured out what they regarded as the true proportions of the ideal human form. One of these was Lysippus, who is believed to have executed this statue as an illustration of his theories. We note as the special characteristics of his ideal figure that it is tall, with slim light limbs, and a rather small head, about one eighth the total height.

We may now see how such a statue as the Apoxyomenos was a preparatory study for statues of the gods. The gods were to be represented in the most perfect human forms which it was possible to conceive, and by working out typical figures like this, forms were found worthy of the noblest subjects. Thus the proportions discovered by Lysippus were peculiarly appropriate for the lighter, fleeter gods, as Apollo and Hermes.

Lysippus executed his works entirely in bronze, and the statue reproduced in our illustration is a marble copy of the original, which was long since lost.