=Athletes.=--Many continued these exercises all their lives as a point
of honor and became Athletes. Some became marvels of skill. Milo of
Croton in Italy, it was said, would carry a bull on his shoulders; he
stopped a chariot in its course by seizing it from behind. These
athletes served sometimes in combats as soldiers, or as generals.
Gymnastics were the school of war.
=Role of the Spartiates.=--The Spartans taught the other Greeks to
exercise and to fight. They always remained the most vigorous
wrestlers and the best soldiers, and were recognized as such by the
rest of Greece. Everywhere they were respected. When the rest of the
Greeks had to fight together against the Persians, they unhesitatingly
took the Spartans as chiefs--and with justice, said an Athenian
orator.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] "Hellenica," iii., 3, 6.
[63] See Thucydides, iv., 80.
[64] A collection by Plutarch is still preserved.
[65] A phrase of Xenophon.
CHAPTER XII
ATHENS
THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE
=Attica.=--The Athenians boasted of having always lived in the same
country; their ancestors, according to their story, originated from
the soil itself.
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