Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

GYMNASTICS

the river Alpheus, which separated the site of the festival from the rest of the ground. Only on one occasion was this neglected, when the mother of Peisirrhodus had stolen in in order to be present, with a mother’s joy easy to understand, at the hoped-for victory of her son. The case is not without a certain tragi-comedy. To avoid the danger of discovery she had disguised herself as a trainer; but, unfortunately, when trying to leap over the barrier that shut off the trainers from the arena in order to congratulate her son on his victory, her scanty garments exposed her person and it was seen that she was a woman. Possibly as a recognition of her mother-love, but chiefly out of regard for her family which had produced several Olympic victors, she was not punished ; but, to avoid similar incidents in the future, it was ordered that henceforth the trainers should enter the lists naked.

Of course, the prohibition which excluded women from viewing the public games did not prevail with equal strictness throughout Greece; at least Bockh on Pindar, Pythia, ix, p. 328, has made it probable that in the contests of the African Greek colony of Cyrene women were allowed to be spectators, and Pausanias says (vi, 20, 9) that unmarried girls were not forbidden to look upon the contestants at Olympia. According to the same author, the priestess of Demeter had the vested right of looking on; she even had a definite seat for the purpose on the steps of her white marble altar. Classical scholars have racked their brains to discover why the right to look on at the contests of naked boys and youths was permitted to maids but not to married women. ‘The problem seems very easy to solve, if we remember that the Greeks felt the greatest enjoyment of beauty more than any people that ever existed. ‘They desired at their national festivals to surround themselves only with beauty, hence they allowed young girls to look on,

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