ANCIENT AND MODERN ATHLETES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9141, 17 July 1908, Page 4

ANCIENT AND MODERN ATHLETES.

The Olympic Games at present being held in England, have revived the question whether the modern athlete is a3 good as the man who strove for the garland at ancient Elis The general view taken by English experts seems to be that the claims of the ancients in the way of prodigious athletic feats are to be treated as if they were a modern fish story. A well-known classical scholar recalls the Greek epigram commemorating the achievements of Phujilus, who, it is declared, jumped 55 feet, and threw the discus 95 feet, but Mr Charles Whibley thinks the explanation simple enough. The epigram is false. "It is contrary to experience that an athlete should jumo 55 feet; it is not contrary to experience that writers of epigrams and spirting chroniclers should daspise.the truth." The fact that the epigram was written centuries after Phayllus died, makes the faith of scholars in these legends all the more remarkable. An expert of European reputation on the subject of ancient athletics, points out that there are no records of ancient games which we can recognise now. The weight of the discus varied from 21b to 101b. There is an inscription on a stone weighing 2Jc\vt, saying that a man threw it over his head, but it does not say how he threw it. Another inscription that a man lifted a stone weighing 9cwt, but the height to which it is raised is omitted. Mr Whibley, who is supported by that famous athlete the Headrnast-jr of Eton, thinks th« moderns would win at all points if the ancients could come back from the dead and compete with them, hut the true honours would rest with the Greeks, whose ideals were moderation, all-round form, and gracefulness. Phayllus, of the legendary leap, was not merely a jumper. He threw the discus, be won prizes in the foot race and the pentathlum a competition of five events—and he fought against the Medes in a ship which he equipped and commanded himself. Our modern fjathletes are for the most part specialists.