LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, which signifies
labour, combat. This name was given to those who exercised themselves with
an intention to dispute the prizes in the public games. The art by which
they formed themselves for these encounters, was called Gymnastic, from
the Athletae's practising naked.

Those who were designed for this profession frequented, from their most
tender age, the Gymnasia or Palaestrae, which were a kind of academies
maintained for that purpose at the public expense. In these places, such
young people were under the direction of different masters, who employed
the most effectual methods to inure their bodies for the fatigues of the
public games, and to train them for the combats. The regimen they were
under was very hard and severe. At first they had no other nourishment
than dried figs, nuts, soft cheese, and a coarse heavy sort of bread,
called {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}. They were absolutely forbidden the use of wine, and enjoined
continence; which Horace expresses thus:(122)

Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit,
Abstinuit venere et vino.

Who in th' Olympic race the prize would gain,
Has borne from early youth fatigue and pain,
Excess of heat and cold has often try'd,
Love's softness banish'd, and the glass deny'd.

St. Paul, by a comparison drawn from the Athletae, exhorts the Corinthians,
near whose city the Isthmian games were celebrated, to a sober and
penitent life. "Those who strive," says he, "for the mastery, are
temperate in all things: Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but
we an incorruptible." Tertullian uses the same thought to encourage the
martyrs.(123) He makes a comparison from what the hopes of victory made
the Athletae endure. He repeats the severe and painful exercises they were
obliged to undergo; the continual denial and constraint, in which they
passed the best years of their lives; and the voluntary privation which
they imposed upon themselves, of all that was most pleasing and grateful
to their passions. It is true, the Athletae did not always observe so
severe a regimen, but at length substituted in its stead a voracity and
indolence extremely remote from it.

The Athletae, before their exercises,(124) were rubbed with oils and
ointments to make their bodies mor