fare was as simple as that of a
modern university boat-crew before a race. They slept in the open
air, and spent their waking hours in wrestling, boxing, running races,
throwing quoits, and engaging in mock battles. This was the way in which
the Spartans lived; and though no other city carried this discipline to
such an extent, yet in all a very large portion of the citizen's life
was spent in making himself hardy and robust.

The ideal man, in the eyes of a Greek, was, therefore not the
contemplative or delicately susceptible thinker but the naked athlete,
with firm flesh and swelling muscles. Most of their barbarian neighbours
were ashamed to be seen undressed, but the Greeks seem to have felt
little embarrassment in appearing naked in public. Their gymnastic
habits entirely transformed their sense of shame. Their Olympic
and other public games were a triumphant display of naked physical
perfection. Young men of the noblest families and from the farthest
Greek colonies came to them, and wrestled and ran, undraped, before
countless multitudes of admiring spectators. Note, too, as significant,
that the Greek era began with the Olympic games, and that time was
reckoned by the intervals between them; as well as the fact that the
grandest lyric poetry of antiquity was written in celebration of these
gymnastic contests. The victor in the foot-race gave his name to
the current Olympiad; and on reaching home, was received by his
fellow-citizens as if he had been a general returning from a successful
campaign. To be the most beautiful man in Greece was in the eyes of
a Greek the height of human felicity; and with the Greeks, beauty
necessarily included strength. So ardently did this gifted people admire
corporeal perfection that they actually worshipped it. According to
Herodotos, a young Sicilian was deified on account of his beauty, and
after his death altars were raised to him. The vast intellectual power
of Plato and Sokrates did not prevent them from sharing this universal
enthusiasm. Poets like Sophokles, and statesmen like Alexander, thought
it not beneath their dignity to engage publicly in gymnastic sports.

Their conceptions of divinity were framed in accordance with these
general habits. Though sometimes, as in the case of Hephaistos, the
exigencies of the particular myth required the deity to be physically
imperfect, yet ordinarily the Greek god was simply an immortal man,
complete in strength and beauty. The dei