Early Greek Athletic Trainers - LA84 Foundationlibrary.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2009/JSH3602/jsh3602e.pdf · Early Greek Athletic Trainers ... the stars of Iliad 23. ... and

LEHMANN: EARLY GREEK ATHLETIC TRAINERS

Summer 2009 187

Early Greek Athletic Trainers

CLAYTON MILES LEHMANN†

Department of HistoryThe University of South Dakota

Although modern scholars have directed much attention toward ancient athlet-ics, they have tended to focus on the games and the athletes. This article insteadfocuses on the trainers who both prepared the athletes for competition and whoalso constituted part of the staff of the Greek gymnasia. It reviews the terminol-ogy for training and trainers, then summarizes what we know about the prac-tice and setting of training during the archaic and classical periods. The articleconcludes with a consideration of the social status of early Greek trainers. Read-ers will have a comprehensive and critical survey of the topic based upon athorough review of the ancient evidence and modern interpretations.

WHEN ACHILLES CALLED THE ACHAEANS TO THE FUNERAL GAMES in honor ofPatroclus, the heroes before Troy competed for prizes in the painful boxing and wrestling,the footrace, armed one-on-one combat, the weight-throw, and finally archery. But firstof all came the charioteers, the stars of Iliad 23. They included Eumelos—acknowledged

†Correspondence to [email protected]. The author would like to thank the students whoparticipated in his Honors Seminar in Greek Athletics and his colleagues at the University of SouthDakota who commented on a version of this paper in the Humanities Research Forum. He found itespecially gratifying that two trainers on the faculty of his athletic department attended this talk. Finally,he thanks the anonymous reviewers who greatly reduced the number of infelicities that remain in thispaper. Abbreviations follow those used in L’Année Philologique, The Oxford Latin Dictionary, and HenryGeorge Liddell and Robert Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon.

JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY

188 Volume 36, Number 2

by everyone to surpass all others in horsemanship—Diomedes, Menelaus, and the youngAntilochus, son of Nestor. Father draws son aside and says,

Antilochos, you are young indeed, but Zeus and Poseidonhave loved you and taught you horsemanship in all of its aspects.Therefore there is no great need to instruct you. Il. 23.306-8 (trans. Lattimore)

Whereupon the garrulous old man proceeds to deliver forty lines of instructions. Antilochosdoes well, but by recklessness, not by following any of his father’s advice: he and Menelausjostle. Diomedes wins the race and receives first prize. Eumelos wrecks his chariot, butAchilles awards him second prize because as the best horseman he deserved to win.Antilochus, who came in second, objects and so receives a prize too, but Menelaus accuseshim of a foul. The good-natured young man refuses to take the oath of innocence beforeZeus and instead offers the mare he won to Menelaus: “You know how greedy transgres-sions flower in a young man, seeing / that his mind is the more active but his judgment islightweight” (Il. 23.589-90). Menelaus forgives the rash young man and lets him keep themare, taking instead the third prize, a golden cauldron. Even Nestor, who did not com-pete, gets a prize. Achilles explains,

since never again will you fight with your fists nor wrestle,nor enter again the field for the spear-throwing, nor raceon your feet; since now the hardship of old age is upon you. Il. 23.621-23

Among the many peculiarities of this episode from the modern point of view, thefuneral games of Patroclus afford us perhaps the first example in Western civilization ofthe universal tendency to give advice. Hindsight often proves the advice bad, so it seemsremarkable that people willingly accept, solicit, and even pay for it. In the world of athlet-ics, the advice we pay for comes from coaches or trainers. Ancient Greek athletes likewiseemployed this sort of expert.

This article concerns the history of athletic trainers in early Greece, from the time ofHomer—that is, from the eighth century—until the fourth century, with some attentionto later developments. While scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the ath-letes, events, and competitions, they have given relatively less attention to such supportpersonnel as trainers. Modern scholarship on Greek trainers depends ultimately and al-most exclusively on the monumental work of Julius Jüthner, who wrote a series of articlesand books on Greek athletic training. These include a commentary on the single mostimportant ancient source on Greek training, the Gymnastics of the third-century-C.E.philosopher Philostratus the Athenian.1 In what follows I shall discuss the terminology oftraining, its origins and setting, and the social status of trainers. I focus not on the theo-ries, techniques, and goals of training but rather on the practitioners. By athletics I referhere not to sport in general but either to the competitive sports associated with religiousfestivals such as the Olympics or to the formal sports practiced in that distinctive Greekinstitution, the gymnasium.

TerminologyIn modern English we use several terms to refer to persons who help their charges

condition their bodies, develop physical skills particular to a given event, and preparethem mentally for competing. We use the terms coach and trainer often interchangeably,though usually trainer refers to an expert at conditioning the body. Until the fourth


Summer 2009 189

century B.C.E. in ancient Greece only one word designated a trainer: paidotribês. Theroots, meaning “boy” and “to rub,” suggest that the person so named massaged boys intraining with olive oil, but the earliest instances of the word relate to instruction in exer-cise. Athletes preparing for competition and other adults as well as children used theservices of paidotribai, who offered formal and systematic training, unlike the informal andimprovised advice of Nestor.2

The first attested use of the term paidotribês comes from the middle of the fifth cen-tury, when the Athenian orator Antiphon, in one of his theoretical legal cases (3.3.6),implicated a paidotribês in the accidental death of one of the boys throwing javelins in agymnasium. The next comes late in the fifth century in Aristophanes’ Clouds (973-974),where Just Logic describes boys exercising in the traditional way “in the place of thepaidotribês,” that is, in the palaestra or wrestling school. Many scholars find an even earlieruse in the early sixth century in a speech by Aeschines, who mentions a law of Solon andsays that the lawgiver regulated the hours that teachers and paidotribai kept the palaestrasopen (1.10). The law as quoted, however, uses the terms teacher and gymnasiarch, notpaidotribês (1.12), and I see no reason to assume that Solon’s original language featured theterm. Jüthner, however, thought it did, and scholars have generally followed him. 3 In thefirst part of the fourth century Plato uses the term often—hardly surprising, given the factthat many of Socrates’ encounters, philosophical and otherwise, took place in palaestras,and Plato draws frequently on athletic training for examples and metaphors.

In Plato’s Gorgias (504a) Socrates states that, like craftsmen in general, paidotribai anddoctors order and arrange the body. If one asked the paidotribês to identify himself, hewould say, “[M]y work is to make men’s bodies beautiful and strong” (Gorgias 452b).Elsewhere Plato speaks of a paidotribês working with a person in training (Rep. 3.389c), ofthe paidotribês as an expert in wrestling (Alc. 1.107e) or a teacher of boxing and the pancration(Gorg. 456d-e) or of running (Gorg. 520c), or an expert in diet (Minos 317e), or, like adoctor, an expert in exercise and diet (Lovers 134d-e). He also uses the term to mean“trainer” in general (Alc. 131e, Gorg. 452b, Lach. 184e), or as a trainer within an

ðáéäïôñßâçò “paidotribês, trainer”ðá¾ò “boy”ôñßâù “to rub”

ðáéäïôñéâéêÞ (ôÝ÷íç) “paidotribic (art), training”ãõìíáóôÞò, ãõìíáóôéêüò “gymnastês, gymnast, trainer”

ãõìíÜæù “to exercise”ãõìíüò “naked”

ãõìíáóôéêÞ (ôÝ÷íç) “gymnastic (art), gymnastics”¢ëåßðôçò “aleiptês, anointer, trainer”

¢ëåßöù “anoint with oil”fiáôñáëåßðôçò “medical trainer”



educational program (Prot. 312b, 326b-c, Crit. 47b). Plato calls the palaestra or wrestlingschool where one of Socrates’ encounters took place “Taureas’ palaestra,” but he does notgive Taureas a title or any other kind of identification (Charm. 153a). In authors of theHellenistic and Roman periods we also hear of the palaestras of individuals identified onlyby name: Timagetus (Theocr. 2.8, 97), Sibyrtius (Plut. Alcib. 3, falsely quoting Anti-phon), Hippocrates ([Plut.] Isoc. 14), Alexander (Plut. Demetr. 5), and Baton (Epict. Disc.2.26-27). 4 Jüthner, following earlier scholars, suggests that all such individuals had thetitle paidotribês and maintained the institutions for the state, and most who have writtenabout these schools since have accepted the idea without discussion. But no one hasproved that these individuals really practiced as paidotribai, and we should not take them assuch.5

Early in the fourth century Isocrates made the pedotribic art and philosophy the twinpillars of education (Antidosis 15.181). Aristotle’s pupil, Aristoxenus, mentioned a paidotribêslikewise named Aristotle.6 The term becomes regular in the later fourth century when,Aristotle reports (Ath. Pol. 42.3), the Athenians employed two paidotribai among the teach-ers of the adolescent boys (called ephêboi) in the two-year program of training that pre-pared them for service to the state as citizen-soldiers (inexplicably, the inscriptions ofAristotle’s time list only one paidotribês for each year).7 In the Roman period a hypopaidotribêsassisted the paidotribai.8 The fact that the Athenians added a physician to the ephebic staffonly in the second century C.E. suggests that previously the paidotribês oversaw the boys’health.9 In the Hellenistic and Roman period the cities regularly hired paidotribai andsometimes elected them as annual officers to oversee training in the gymnasia.10 About200 B.C.E. a paidotribês in Teos received 500 drachmas per year—a little less than thegrammar teachers and much less than the music teacher, but nearly twice as much as theinstructors in military arts. In Miletus the paidotribês received thirty drachmas a monthwhen a teacher received only twenty.11 Notably, all these instances refer to training in thecontext of education in the gymnasium or palaestra (see below); we have no idea what apersonal trainer would charge to work with a competitive athlete or any adult outside theeducational system. Only in the third century do we hear of a paidotribês training a com-petitive athlete: Cratinus recognized his paidotribês with a statue at Olympia (Paus. 6.3.6).But Cratinus won in the boys’ wrestling, and we do not know whether he worked with hispaidotribês privately or not. Unlike other modern scholars of Greek athletics, who demon-strate an unjustified confidence in the modern understanding of the ancient terminology,I conclude that competitive athletes in the archaic and classical periods might have calledtheir trainers paidotribai, but we can only assume so as we know of no other available termthat early.

Various words related to gymnazô, “to exercise” (meaning to train someone else as wellas to train one’s own body), also designate trainers. The term appears first as gymnastikosand gymnastês in Plato. Whereas Plato usually used the term paidotribês for a trainer in aneducational context, he usually pairs gymnastai with physicians as experts whom peopleconsulted concerning their bodies. 12 In Laws (11.916a) Plato observes that gymnastai andphysicians constitute an exception to the regulation that someone who unknowingly pur-chases a slave that has an unobvious disease such as epilepsy has the right of restitution, buta physician or gymnastês who ought to know better does not have the right. In the Gorgias


Summer 2009 191

(464a) he has Socrates point out that people can seem to enjoy good health but a doctor orgymnastês can see the truth; similarly a doctor or a gymnastês can tell what products suit thebody in Prot. (313d). In Statesman (295e) doctors and gymnastai adjust their treatment ofa given bodily problem as they acquire new understanding of it.

Galen, the medical writer of the Roman period, noted that the appearance of the termgymnastês at the end of the fifth century coincides with the rise of professional athletics.13

I shall return to this development later. In Plato’s Protagoras (316d-e) the sophist claimsthat his predecessors pretended to practice other arts in order to avoid the opprobrium ofsophistry: Homer presented himself as a poet, for example, Orpheus as a prophet, andIccus of Tarentum and Herodicus of Selymbria as practitioners of the gymnastic art.Herodicus, who wrote the first manual of theoretical gymnastics, seems to have lived atabout the same time as Protagoras (mid fifth century). An extension of the practicaltraining of the paidotribai into the sphere of medicine, Herodicus’ teaching emphasized thecare and training of the body in order to enhance life. In fact Plato dismisses Herodicus’work as a useless extension of life: the gymnastês kept treating a disease without curing itand so extended suffering at no profit to patient or society.14 Still, perhaps Plato used theterms gymnastês and gymnastikos because he found them in Herodicus’ writings, and per-haps Herodicus adopted these terms in the first place because he wanted to distinguish hisart from the less specialized art of the paidotribês. Plato demonstrates a certain inconsis-tency in his usage. For example in The Statesman (294d-e), he features a discussion abouthow those who train by art in their classes use generalized training for the good of most oftheir pupils rather than specialized training geared to individuals. But in Laws (4.720d-e)he points out that a client seeking a good physician or gymnastês will seek one who tailorsthe treatment or exercise to the particular case.

It seems that after the term gymnastês came into use, it designated a paidotribês whocould not only teach conditioning but also relate it to health and diet. Thus when Aristotle(Politics 8.3 1338b6) points out that education should begin with physical training, hesays that the young should undertake training by the gymnastic and pedotribic arts, forthe first of these enhances the general condition of the body, the other its movement.Aristotle considers the work of the gymnastês and the paidotribês to be the two complemen-tary components of physical training. A generation earlier, in the beginning of the fourthcentury, Isocrates, in the passage alluded to above, said that gymnastics constituted onepart of the pedotribic art (Antidosis 15.181).

As time passed, the term gymnastês came to sound more impressive than paidotribês,which suggested training for children in the schools, so trainers of professional athletestended to prefer the former title.15 Paidotribai continued to train boys for competition,however, and when their charges won victories they might receive honors, including stat-ues and crowns.16

Finally at the end of the fourth century the term aleiptês came into use. Although itliterally means someone who anoints with oil—that is, a masseur—its first use occurs withreference to the athlete’s diet: an aleiptês will prescribe an appropriate diet according to theneed of his client, whether a beginner or a Milo (Arist. EN 2.6 1106b1-2). But commonusage soon confused it with the other terms for trainer, and it became an extremely com-mon designation for a trainer, though sometimes it refers specifically to a masseur.17 In



the Roman period aleiptai served as officers in the athletic guilds.18 The Romans also sawa class of doctors who specialized in what we would call sports medicine, the iatraleiptai.For example, a decree of Vespasian gives privileges to doctors, iatraleiptai, and advancedstudents (SB Berlin 17 Oct 1935), and Pliny asked Trajan to grant citizenship to his iatraleiptêsHarpocras after the latter helped him recover from a dangerous disease (Ep. 10.5.1-2,10.6.1-2, 10.7, and 10.10.1-2). The medical writers preferred the term hygieine for sportsmedicine, but it never entered popular use.19

In the Hellenistic and Roman period medical writers such as Galen (second centuryC.E.) approached training as an aspect of health, not of education. The paidotribês, Galenargued, did not have the physiological knowledge necessary properly to care for the body;nor did Galen care for the tendency of failed competitors to become trainers.20 Medicalwriters tended to assign to the term gymnastês the more theoretical aspects of training,while paidotribês designated someone who offered practical instruction and followed theguidance of the former, like a soldier implementing a strategy he does not understand.21

Thus they reversed the classical view represented by Isocrates. Philostratus offers a carefulbut purely theoretical explanation of the relationship among medicine (iatrikê), pedotribictraining (paidotribikê), and gymnastics (gymnastiê). Gymnastics he considers part of medi-cine but a more complete form of training. The gymnastês knows how to condition thebody and train athletes for competition, just as the paidotribês does. Both kinds of trainersconcern themselves with timing, exertion, proportion, defense and offense, as appropriateto a given athletic event. But the gymnastês also knows enough physiology to use diet andmassage to purify the humors, moderate excess, smooth wrinkles, and fatten or change orwarm any part of the body. He can address certain problems of health, as can a physician,but only the latter can heal breaks, wounds, eye diseases, and dislocations.22

Origins and DevelopmentGreek athletics has its origins in the early centuries of Greek history.23 Tradition dates

the founding of the first Panhellenic contest, the Olympics, to 776 B.C.E., featuring thefootrace only. Wrestling, boxing, jumping, and so on came later and the early sixth cen-tury saw the foundation of other Panhellenic games and ever more numerous local compe-titions. As competition became more extensive and intensive, the advice offered athletespresumably became more formal and systematic. The fourth-century church father JohnChrysostom noted that no athlete could distinguish himself at the Olympics withoutusing a trainer.24 Pindar, who wrote praise-poems for athletes in the first part of the fifthcentury, recognized the fact that the fame of victory came from natural strength aug-mented by art (Ol. 9.100-107).

Pindar mentions five famous trainers, not by calling them trainers but by recognizingtheir contribution to the victory of his clients. He identifies all five of them as friends andfamily of their charges: Melesias of Athens (Ol. 8.54, Nem 4.93, 6.65), Ilas (Ol. 10.17),Menander of Athens (Nem. 5.48; cf Bacchylides 13.190-98), and Orseas (Isth. 4.72). Inaddition we learn that Lampon trained his sons Pytheas (Isth. 6.68-70) and Phylacidas,whom Pytheas also trained (Isth. 5.66-68). Pindar identifies Melesias as a friend in arhetorical sleight -of-hand of the same sort that delivers the poet himself from contractualinferiority. Ilas and Menander earn thanks, not a wage.25


Summer 2009 193

As the number of games and the stakes in terms of glory and money-prizes increased,specialization followed. Writers of the Roman period assumed that an early athlete couldwin several events in one competition but then came formal training, which prepared thebody for one event only. Specialization reached the point that a runner, for example, knewnothing of wrestling.26 Philostratus observes that in the good old days athletes madethemselves strong through frugal living and hard work: they bathed in running water,slept on the ground, ate course bread and a variety of meat, and they made no distinctionbetween athletics and warfare (Gym. 43). But in the degenerate modern world, he goes on(Gym. 44), the trainers feed athletes fish, white bread sprinkled with poppy seeds, andtheories.

Along with training for competition came training within the context of Greek edu-cation, as we have seen. We know far more about this sort of training, especially for laterperiods, but the bulk of our information comes from Athens. Indeed, Pritchard arguespersuasively that throughout the classical period in Athens training for competition tookplace in the same venues and under the supervision of the same personal as for boys’physical education.27 As noted above, in the later fourth century Athens included paidotribaiamong the staff for the ephêbeia, and Hellenistic cities regularly employed paidotribai intheir public gymnasia. For example, the gymnasium law of Beroea regulates the hours ofthe paidotribai and requires a triennial exhibition.28

We know very little about the methods of training. The names survive but not theworks of some early theorists such as Iccus of Tarentum in the first half of the fifth century,Herodicus of Selymbria in the middle of the century, Diotimus sometime before the thirdcentury, Theon of Alexandria, and Tryphon.29 They laid out not practical exercise buttheories about training. We hear about one popular system called the tetrad because themedical writers criticized it for its inflexibility—indeed one athlete perished because histrainer insisted he resume the regimen after a two-day break. From the surviving hostileaccounts we can tell that the four-day regimen involved building up and reducing effort: aday of preparation with short intense movements, a day of all-out effort, a day of relax-ation, and a day of moderate exercise.30 Trainers accompanied their charges to competi-tions, worked with them during the mandatory training period associated with some events(the Olympics required a thirty-day training period for all competitors),31 and encouragedor scolded their charges to victory (Phil. Gym. 17-24).

The evidence for training comes mainly from late and anecdotal sources and can giveus only impressions. Philostratus affords a typical example of what we learn about train-ing from the ancient writers when he describes the ideal athlete for the pentathlon.

The pentathlete should be heavy rather than light, and light rather than heavy.He should be tall, well built, with good carriage, and with musculature which isneither superfluous nor inadequate. His legs should be long rather than strictlyproportionate, and his hips should be flexible and limber for the backwardbending of throwing the javelin and the discus and for the jump. . . . He willhurl the discus considerably better if there is a large grip for the rim of thediscus provided in the hollow of a long-fingered hand, and he will have lesstrouble in throwing the javelin if his fingers are not so short that they barelyreach the throwing-thong. (Gym. 31, trans. Miller)

Note that we learn much about what makes a successful pentathlete—as well as about the



rhetorical character of Philostratus’ writing—but nothing about how to train for winningcharacteristics, some of which simply depend on natural physical features. Concerningpotential athletes with respect to the four temperaments, the choleric, Philostratus says,need restraint, the phlegmatic urging on, and melancholics need not apply. The trainerprefers the sanguine, like blocks of perfect marble to the sculptor (Gym. 42). WhenPhilostratus gives examples of specific techniques, they seem curiosities, not guidelines:ancient athletes chased animals and fought bulls and lions, bent bars of iron, yoked them-selves to wagons, swam fully armored in the sea (Gym. 43). Consider the resistance train-ing invented by the famous wrestler Milo of Croton. He developed his strength by liftinga newly born calf. As the calf grew he repeated the lift daily, until he lifted and carried agrown bull (Quint. Inst. 1.9.5). The story continues into the realm of diet: after carryingthe bull around the sanctuary at Olympia, he slaughtered it and ate the meat in one day(Paus. 6.14.5, Athen. 10.412-413).

Other anecdotes attest to memorable episodes of coaching. Eryxias, the earliest trainerwe hear of, worked with the pancratist Arrichion of Phigaleia at the Olympics of 564,remembered as one of those who won the contest but died from it. Eryxias kept Arrichionfrom yielding as his opponent strangled him by shouting that he would have the nobleepitaph “Never defeated at Olympia.”32 Next we hear of Tissias, trainer of Glaucus ofCarystus, who won the boxing at Olympia about 520. “Hit him with the one from theplow!” Tissias called, referring to the story of how the young Glaucus used his hand like ahammer to fit a plough share to the frame.33

Ancient writers tell us much about the ideal physical type but very little about howthe paidotribai worked toward it. Plato (Laws 7.795e-796a) explains that gymnastic train-ing combines dance and wrestling to result in strength, grace, agility, and good health. Hecondemned the body type that resulted from training for what the Greeks called the heavyevents—wrestling, boxing, and the pancration: fleshy over-muscled bodies, gracelessness,and ill health. In fourth-century art Hermes represents the former, Heracles the latter.34

But the heavy bodies of wrestlers appear already in the sixth century, as in a Panathenaicprize amphora by Exekias, of the 530s.35 In sum, it appears that, although they includedthe competitive events in their training, Greek athletic trainers in theory aimed not atsuccess in competition but beauty, strength, agility, and grace in body. The philosopherswent on to insist that physical training serve the larger goal of education.36 So Plato (Laws1.644a, trans. Kyle 139): “any training which aims at wealth or strength or any otheraccomplishment unattended by wisdom and justice is vulgar, illiberal, and utterly unwor-thy to be called paideia.”

Some trainers seem to have prohibited sexual activity. Iccus of Terentum, an athleteof the early fifth century, would not touch women or boys while he trained for competi-tion.37 As for diet, the trainers experimented with various fads, including cheese-heavyand meat-heavy diets. In the sixth century athletes from Croton dominated the games,perhaps because of the medical and dietary expertise of the Pythagoreans.38 Evidently intheir pre-vegetarian days they encouraged a meat diet; since later on everyone knew ofPythagoras’ aggressive vegetarianism, ancient scholars had to invent another Pythagoras,the dietician.39 Let Epictetus deliver the final word of advice concerning diet: if you wantto win at the Olympics, follow the rules and do not eat dessert.40


Summer 2009 195

In Sparta the gymnasium served as an institution of military training (Phil. Gym. 19).To what extent the gymnasium served military ends in other cities remains a topic ofscholarly discussion. Jean Delorme, author of the leading study of the ancient gymna-sium, argued that in fact the need for more generalized military training consequent uponthe adoption of hoplite warfare in the seventh century caused the creation of the gymna-sium, for the hoplite soldier needed the sort of physical conditioning the elite had ac-quired for pleasure.41 This argument explains much, but perhaps its simplicity makes itsuspect. I prefer sport historian Thomas Scanlon’s more sophisticated analysis, placing thespread of the culture of the gymnasium in the context not only of the change in militarystyle and the consequent need of the city to train more hoplites but also of the growth ofpederasty, the increasing popularity of athletic nudity, and the proliferation of festivals, alltaking place in the late seventh and sixth centuries.42

Greek pots frequently carry representations of athletic scenes. Most famously,Panathenaic prize amphoras, which contained the oil awarded to winners at the pentetericAthenian festival in honor of their patron goddess, show the respective event. Many othertypes of vessels show athletes in competition, and often non-competitors stand on thesidelines, usually judges but sometimes perhaps trainers.43 For example, an early fifth-century red-figure cup by the painter Panaetius shows an athlete using the halteres orjumping weights, next to him stands a bearded man leaning on a staff and supervising ajavelin-thrower (just off this photograph to the right). The coach brandishes a sandal—acommon disciplinary tool (Figure 1).44 More commonly clothed, and always older than

Figure 1: Red-figure Cup by Panaitios. COURTESY OF STAATLICHE ANTIKENSAMMUNGEN UND GLYPTOTHEK,MÜNCHEN, 2637. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.



the athletes, the coach or trainer holds a staff and a forked switch, as in a cup by the Brygospainter, where two trainers work with jumpers (Figure 2).45 At all the games except for theOlympics, trainers wore the tribôn, a short cloak of coarse cloth (Phil. Gym. 17). Pausaniastells a story to explain why trainers at Olympia uniquely had to strip just like the athletes.The law, Pausanias reports, imposed capital punishment on any woman who entered thesanctuary on certain days, but in the history of the games only one woman broke the law.Callipateira had a son, Peisidorus; to watch him box, she disguised herself as a trainer(gymnastês). In her excitement at his victory, she leapt over the barrier that separatedtrainers from the athletes and exposed herself. Out of respect for her father, brothers, andson—all Olympic victors—the officials pardoned her, but henceforth the law requiredtrainers to strip before entering the games.46 Now, the pots often show scenes of compe-tition, and judges stand by carrying the sticks they used to enforce the rules of the event, asin a red-figured cup by Onesimus of about 500 B.C.E.47 But when, as in the potsillustrated here, the background shows the sort of equipment likely to figure inside agymnasium—flasks of oil, strigils, and the like—we can be sure we have a trainer and nota judge. A red-figure cup by the Foundry Painter shows trainers working with boxers,wrestlers, and an armed runner (Figures 3-4).48 A column and a stele decorate the gymna-sium, and on the walls hang such items as the leather thongs used to wrap boxers’ handsand a discus bag. Assuming that the barrier that separated the trainers from the athletes atOlympia figured as well in the other festivals, we should not expect to see trainers onscenes of athletic competition. A fragmentary cup by Macron shows a group of boysarriving at the gymnasium with their gear (Figure 5). 49 Note the basin to the left and tothe right the pick used for softening earth for combat sports or leaping. The clothed figureleaning on his staff looks like a paidotribês.

The SettingThe Greeks invented the idea of dedicating a certain physical space and setting to

athletics, whether for training or competition.50 The earliest evidence we have for thegymnasium comes from the sixth-century Megarian author Theognis: “Happy is the loverwho after spending time in the gymnasium goes home to sleep all day long with a beauti-ful young man.”51 The state organized, constructed, and administered these institutions,appointing or electing a gymnasiarch or epistatês to run it.52 Physical training, bathing,and teaching all took place in the gymnasium. The Athenians had many gymnasia, usedby citizens of all classes and ages.53 These constituted the setting for many of Plato’s

Figure 2: Red-figure Kotyle by the Brygos Painter. COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, 10.176.PHOTOGRAPH © 2009 MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON.


Summer 2009 197

Figure 3: Red-figure Cup by the Foundry Painter. COURTESY OF

BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, E 78. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

Figure 4: Red-figure Cup by the Foundry Painter. COURTESY OF

BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, E 78. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

Figure 5: Red-figure Cup by Macron. COURTESY OF BRITISH

MUSEUM, LONDON, E 63. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.



dialogues, which include young men of leisure who combine exercise and philosophicaldiscussion.54 Each of the festival sanctuaries had complete facilities for the athletes, in-cluding gymnasia and palaestras as well as race tracks, baths, and housing and diningfacilities. Olympia had a set of gymnasia in Elis dedicated to the athletes’ training in themonth before the festival. Jüthner said that boys and panhellenic athletes did not use thesame facilities, but no evidence suggests so, and it seems more likely that a given facilitycould accommodate several groups, using different areas or working out at different times.55

An open space met the requirements for the first gymnasia at the beginning of thesixth century, but soon structures sprang up to serve growing needs. The Greeks used twoterms to refer to the buildings that housed athletic training, often carelessly and inter-changeably: gymnasium and palaestra. To refer to a large athletic complex they usuallyused the term gymnasium. But in careful use the term gymnasium referred specifically tothe running area, including an indoor and outdoor track, with plenty of open space forthrowing the javelin and discus, and the term palaestra referred to the area devoted towrestling and boxing. Both had structures associated with them that could include class-rooms and porticos. The palaestra could appear alone, and then resembles the moderngym as both have facilities for bathing, changing, massage, and various types of exercise.56

But the Greek gym could also have lecture and meeting halls, libraries, and gardens. As wehave seen, the pots frequently show athletes within palaestras or gymnasia.

The Social Standing of Early Greek Athletic TrainersIn a speech in honor of the Athenian dead at the end of the first year of the

Peloponnesian War, Pericles said, according to ThucydidesTaking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece,and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all themanifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner ofhis own person, and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptionalversatility.” (2.41.1, trans. Warner)

Training for grace and versatility implies a luxury and leisure available only to the few. Thecranky conservative author known as Pseudo-Xenophon complained that the Athenianpeople had built too many palaestras and gymnasia for the use of the people, just as therich had done for themselves ([Xen.] 2.10)—evoking the elitist sentiment of the Englishwho invented athletic amateurism in the late 1860s in order to exclude the working classesfrom competition.57 It would be good to know when paidotribai first figured in the staffs ofgymnasia and palaestras, but we simply cannot say until the latter fourth century. TheSpartans, the quintessential hoplites, dominated the first century of the Olympics, whichfeatured running first and foremost. But once the gymnasium began to offer athletictraining to more people throughout Greece, the Spartan system, which emphasized aretê(excellence) not technê (art), failed to keep up.58 Galen dated the rise of professionalathleticism to the late fifth century and linked the appearance of the new term for atrainer, gymnastês, to the need to identify the new profession (Thras. 33).

Now, a half century of scholarship has pretty well laid to rest, at least in academiccircles, the myth of Olympic amateurism with its decline from a pure sense of sport forsport’s sake among aristocrats in the archaic period to money-grubbing, low-class profes-sionals after the fifth century. Greek athletes might not have made their living from


Summer 2009 199

competition before the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but some of them certainly madea great deal of money from it, and all of them made training and competing a full-timeoccupation. Plato, in a discussion of the proper life of leisure, points out that an athletetraining for the Olympic or Pythian games has absolutely no time for anything else (Laws7.807c). H.W. Pleket, in a series of articles first debunking the myth of amateurism andthen debunking the overreaction against the myth,59 concludes that while Greek athleticcontests began as the purview of the elite—requiring as it did leisure and money to trainand travel—and always included a large number of contestants from the elite, it becameopen to ever more classes, thanks especially to the proliferation of the culture of the gym-nasium. Elites always dominated the hippic events. All early athletes of whose socialstatus we know anything belonged to the elite.60 Toward the end of the fifth century,however, Alcibiades pointedly scorned the low-class origins of some athletes in the gym-nastic events in order to explain his preference for the hippic events (Isoc. 16.33). Butthen, as Donald Kyle, a leading historian of athletics in ancient Athens, observes, “Withhis background, education, and egotism, Alcibiades could look down on almost any-one.”61 By the first century B.C.E. both elites and middle-to-lower-class athletes—someof the latter even illiterate—belonged to guilds or associations of athletes and victors. Inthe Hellenistic period the dedications show that many victors in the great games began asephêboi winning in local contests. Evidently the paidotribai of the gymnasia not only helpedtheir charges generally to become healthy and useful citizens but also helped a few of themto make the transition to competition. But to participate in contests abroad a boy’s familyhad to subsidize his travel and training. With one exception, we know of no instancewhere the state supported such travel: Therippides, the trainer (epimelêtês) of the son ofSemon, from Ephesus about 300 B.C.E., requested and received funds for training andper diem.62 Scholars have made much of this case without really noticing its uniqueness.Probably more commonly the state simply authorized paidotribai who had made properarrangements to cover their duties to their gymnasium and other pupils to leave the city inorder to accompany athletes to the stephanitic games, as provided for in a Milesian law ofabout 200 B.C.E.63

Pindar’s attitude toward trainers represents a deeply and doubly conflicted situation;for that reason he rarely mentions them, and other early sources all but ignore them.64

Pindar had to face the invasion of an anti- or non-aristocratic ideology into the world ofathletics. On the one hand he exalted the natural talent of his aristocratic clients: to admitthat art could enhance nature diminished the latter and potentially afforded the low-bornaccess to excellence. On the other hand his own project involved the claim that only thepoet’s art could complete the victor’s fame. Second, he had to find a comfortable place forthe servant, the craftsman, working for hire in a world of aristocrats, when the servantincluded not only the trainer but also the poet. An elitist ideology of athletics spread to allclasses of athletes, and the epinician poets assisted in this process. Of this ideology Pleketobserves, “Money won was very relevant to these gentlemen-athletes, money earned wasnot.”65

We can say very little about the social origins of the paidotribai, gymnastai, and aleiptaiwho worked in the gymnasia. Young properly emphasizes the complexity of social rela-tions and lack of clear distinctions among classes in terms familiar to us;66 hence the value



of recent sophisticated studies of Pindar’s aesthetic and commercial values just cited. WhenPhilostratus insists that the gymnastês needs some rhetorical training he implies that hemight not have much education (Gym. 25), and Galen decries the coarseness and lack ofeducation of the paidotribai (11.362). The fact that they received salaries (as opposed toprizes) automatically identified them as lower-class. So much for post-classical trainers.But the trainers whom Pindar honors and Plato and other sources mention look like theycome from the upper class, and we can identify none of them otherwise. Historian ofancient sport Nigel James Nicholson seems correctly to explain the silence about trainersin our sources as due to the ambivalence of their aristocratic patrons toward a relationshipof commodity exchange rather than family or friendship.67 But we can draw one obviousconclusion: these friends and relatives of the athletes themselves sometimes began as com-petitors.68 The transition from athlete to coach worked as naturally 2,500 years ago as itdoes now.

1Julius Jüthner, Die Athletischen Leibesübungen der Griechen, ed. Friedrich Brein, 2 vols.,Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, SB 249 vols. 1-2 (Berlin: HermannBöhlaus, 1965, 1968)—all citations here come from vol. 1; the articles on paidotribai and gymnastês in RE18 (1942): 2389-2396, 7.2 (1912): 2026-2030; idem, Philostratos über Gymnastik, SammlungWissenschaftlicher Kommentare zu griechischen und römischen Schriftstellern (Leipzig, Ger.: B.G.Teubner, 1909; reprint ed., Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner, 1969). On Philostrotus’ identity see Ludo deLannoy, “Le problème des Philostrate (État de la question),” ANRW (Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt) 34 (1997): 2362-2449.

2Jüthner, Leibesübungen, 161-182. For a recent valuable review of the terminology see David Pritchard,“Athletics, Education, and Participation in Classical Athens,” in Sport and Festival in the Ancient GreekWorld, eds. David J. Phillips and David Pritchard (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003), 303-306.

3Jüthner, RE 18 (1942): 2389; Philostratos, 161.4See also Erich Ziebarth, Aus dem griechischen Schulwesen: Eudemos von Milet und Verwandtes, 2nd ed.

(Leipzig: Teubner, 1914; reprint ed., Groningen: Broma, 1971), 33-37, for these as well as Delian palaestrasnamed for leaders but without identification.

5Jüthner (Leibesübungen, 162-163)—following Ziebarth who in turn follows Paul Girard, L’Éducationathénienne au Ve et au IVe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1891), 28-31. For the Nachleben of this idea see, e.g.,Clarence A. Forbes, Greek Physical Education (New York: Century Co., 1929), 66; Donald G. Kyle,Athletics in Ancient Athens, 2nd rev. ed., Mnemosyne suppl. 95 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 67, 141, 144.

6Fr. 66 Wehrli apud Diog. Laert. 5.35. [F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles 22: Aristoxenos (Basel,Ger.: B. Schwabe, 1967)]

7Chrysis Pelekidis, Histoire de l’éphébie attique des origines à 31 av. J.C. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1962);Oscar William Reinmuth, The Ephebic Inscriptions of the Fourth Century, Mnemosyne suppl. 14 (Leiden:Brill, 1971).

8Jüthner, Leibesübungen, 166.9Jüthner, Philostratos, 4.10Nigel M. Kennell, Ephebeia: A Register of Greek Cities with Citizen Training Systems in the Hellenis-

tic and Roman Periods, Nikephoros Beihefte, vol. 12 (Hildesheim, Ger.: Weidmann, 2006); for a com-plete list of cities that employed paidotribai see Kennell’s index, s.v.

11Jüthner, RE 18.2 (1942): 2391; Miletus: SIG3 577; Teos: SIG3 578.12Pl. Plt. 267e and 295c (gymnastês and gymnastikos, respectively, both paired with iatros); Laws

3.684c and 4.720e, 11.916a (gymnastês, paired with iatros); Phdr. 248d (gymnastikos, paired with anexpert in the body); Grg. 464a and Prot. 313d (gymnastikos, paired with a physician). Gal. Thras. 33;


Summer 2009 201

Galen also said that gymnastai massaged athletes, paidotribai boys (de simp. med. 2.5 [11.476 Kühn]).13Gal. Thras. 33.14Pl. Rep. 3.406a-b. For the chronology of Herodicus (the scholiast to Rep. 3.406a makes him

Hippocrates’ teacher, Plin. NH 29.4 his pupil) and discussion of his teaching see Jüthner, Philostratos, 9-16.

15Jüthner, RE 7.2 (1912): 2027.16A statue for Cratinus’ paidotribês (Paus. 6.3.6); a statue for the paidotribês Antigonus on Delos

(IvDel 1924) and a crown for a paidotribês (ibid., 1948); honorific for a boy victor and his paidotribês inAlexandria in the Troad (AthMitt 9.72).

17So Petr. 28.3, Epict. Disc. 3.20.10, 3.26.22. The neo-Atticists including Galen and Philostratusconsidered the word unclassical and avoided it. Louis Robert studied the Hellenistic use of epigraphicalcitations of athletic victories that acknowledge the role of trainer (aleiptês, paidotribês, or epistatês): ÉtudesAnatoliennes (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1937), 138 with n. 1, and CRAI 1974, 520; for the title epistatês seethe latter, 508-529, a study of SEG 38.489 (proxeny decree in favor of Chaerias of Bouthrotos). Ingeneral, Jüthner, Leibesübungen, 188-90. For more Roman trainers, especially with reference to Ephesusand the question of whether the epistatês actually trained young athletes or rather oversaw the city’sathletic program, see Stephen Brunet, “Olympic Hopefuls from Ephesos,” Journal of Sport History 30(2003): 219-235, esp. 224-227.

18Robert K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East (Baltimore Md.: Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press, 1969), 290-294, no. 57 (a letter of Mark Antony). See H.W. Pleket, “Some Aspects of theHistory of Athletic Guilds,” ZPE 10 (1973): 200-202.

19Jüthner, Philostratos, 7.20Gal. san. tu. 2.12.5, 2.11.27-28, 2.9.25, 2.11.37; Thras. 45; failed competitors: Thras. 37, 46.21Gal. 6.135, 143, 155-156; Thras. 38, 45 (the paidotribês serves the strategy of the gymnastês); san.

tu. 2.8-9, 6.135.22Phil. Gym. 14 with Jüthner, Philostratos, 220-225. For the rhetorical context of such texts from

the Roman imperial period see Jason König, Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2005).

23All the handbooks on ancient athletics treat the origins of athletics. See, e.g., Stephen G. Miller,Ancient Greek Athletics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004).

24Matth. hom. 33.6 (Migne PG 57.395). Similar sentiments in Lib. Or. 59.4.25Nigel James Nicholson, “Nemean 4.57-58,” Arethusa 34 (2001): 31-59; Nigel James Nicholson,

Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).Nicholson (Aristocracy and Athletics, 6-7) accepts the controversial and indemonstrable identification ofPindar’s Melesias as the father of the politician Thucydides (John Kenyon Davies, Athenian PropertiedFamilies, 600-300 B.C. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971], no. 9812; David Young, The OlympicMyth of Greek Amateur Athletics (Chicago: Ares, 1984), 148-149 n. 45. Pl. Meno 94c has the politicianThucydides pay Eudorus and Xanthas to train his sons.

26Gal. Thras. 33, Phil. Gym. 15.27Pritchard, “Athletics, Education, and Participation,” 302-306.28J.M.R. Cormack, “The Gymnasiarchal Law of Beroea,” Ancient Macedonia II, Second Interna-

tional Symposium, Thessaloniki, 19-24 August 1973 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1972),139-149; and Philippe Gauthier and Miltiadês B. Hatzopoulos, La loi gymnasiarchique de Beroia,Meletemata 16 (Athens: Center for Greek and Roman Antiquities, National Research Foundation, 1993).For a comprehensive survery see Kennell, Ephebeia.

29Iccus: Pl. Prot. 316d-e; Herodicus: Pl. Prot. 316d-e, Rep. 3.406a-b; Diotimus: Theophrastus’ trea-tise on sweating (Fr. 9.11); Theon and Tryphon: Phil. Gym. 47, 54; Gal. Thras. 47; Galen frequently citesTheon’s lost Gymnastica in his de sanitate tuenda. In general, Jüthner Philostratos 8-22.

30Phil. Gym. 47, Gal. Thras. 47.



31Only late authors mention this training period, but Nigel B. Crowther rightly puts it back to thefifth century: “The Olympic Training Period,” Nikephoros 4 (1991): 161-166. See also Christian Wacker,“Wo tranierten die Athleten in Olympia?” Nikephoros 10 (1997): 103-117; and Peter Siewert, “TheOlympic Rules,” in Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Olympic Games, 5-9 September 1988,eds. William Coulson and Helmut Kyrieleis (Athens: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1992), 113-117.

32Phil. Gym. 21 (the only source that mentions the role of Eryxias in Arrichion’s fatal victory), Imag.2.6; Paus. 8.40.1-2; Eus. Chron. 1 p. 202 Schöne.

33Phil. Gym. 20; Paus. 6.10.3 has Glaucon’s father instead of Philostratus’ gymnastês Tisias encour-age Glaucus.

34On the ideal body type and the aesthetic goal of training see Matthew W. Dickie, “Ðáëáéóôñßôçò/’palaestrita’: Callisthenics in the Greek and Roman Gymnasium,” Nikephoros 6 (1993): 105-151, and“Phaeacian Athletes,” in Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, ed. Francis Cairns, ARCA, 11: Classicaland Medieval Texts, Papers, and Monographs, 8 vols. to date (Liverpool, U.K.: Francis Cairns, 1977-) 4:237-276.

35Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum 65.45.36In general see Pritchard, “Athletics, Education, and Participation.”37Pl. Laws 839e-840a (the scholiast has a short list of athletes who did not marry), Ael. HA 6.1, VH

11.3.38Young, Olympic Myth, 140-147.39Diog. Laert. 8.12-13, 46. H.W. Pleket, “Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports,” Mededelingen van het

Nederlands Instituut te Rome 36, ns 1 (1974): 57-87, at 63, following Walter Burkert, Weisheit undWissenschaft (Nürnberg, Ger.: H. Karl, 1962), 167-168 with n. 153, 272 with n. 98; Eckart Mensching,Favorin von Arelate, pt 1: Texte und Kommentare, vol. 3 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963), 84-88 ad F14(Diog. Laert. 8.12).

40Disc. 3.15.3, Ench. 29.3, noticed by Louis E. Grivetti and Elizabeth A. Applegate, “From Olympiato Atlanta: A Cultural-Historical Perspective on Diet and Athletic Training,” in Journal of Nutrition 127(1997): 860S-868S.

41Jean Delorme, Gymnasion: Études sur les monuments consacrés a l’éducatione en Gréce (des origines àl’Empire romain), Bibliothéque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 196 (Paris: Éditions E. deBoccard, 1960), 15-26; cf. Philippe Gauthier, “Notes sur le rôle du gymnase dans les cités hellénistiques,”Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus, eds. Michael Wörrle and Paul Zanker (Munich: Beck, 1995), 1-11.

42Thomas F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), especiallychaps. 3 and 8; Paul Christesen, “The Transformation of Athletics in Sixth-Century Greece,” in Onwardto the Olympics: Historical Perspctives on the Olympic Games, eds. Gerald. Schaus and Stephen R. Wenn,Publications of the Canadian Institute in Greece no. 5 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,2007), 59-68, reviews the arguments.

43For surveys of relevant pots see Jüthner, Leibesübungen, 170-182; Nicholson, Aristocracy and Ath-letics, 124-127, 129-130, 161-162.

44Munich 2637; Beazley ARV2 322 no. 28. Cf. P. Wolters, “Sandalokratie,” AthMitt 30 (1905):399-407. BM B596 (JHS 22 [1902]: 43 fig. 1) may also have a paidotribês if not a judge brandishing asandal over a pair of wrestlers.

45Red-figure kotyle in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 10.176; L.D. Caskey, “Brygos as a Painter ofAthletic Scenes,” American Journal of Archaeology 19 (1915): 129-136, figs. 1-2 and pls. 7-8.

46Paus. 5.6.7-8; Phil. Gym. 17 (naming the mother Pherenice). Both sources use the term gymnastês.Donald Kyle warns against using this story as evidence for the question of whether women attended thegames: “Fabulous Females and Ancient Olympia,” in Onward to the Olympics, 135-138.

47Boston Museum of Fine Arts 01.8020; Beazley ARFV 83 fig. 51.48London, British Museum E78.


Summer 2009 203

49London: British Museum E63.50Delorme, Gymnasion, 15-16. In general, in addition to Delorme, see Christian Wacker, Das

Gymnasion in Olympia: Geschichte und Funktion, Würzburger Forschungen zur Altertumskunde, vol. 2(Würzburg, Ger.: ERGON Verlag, 1996).

51Theognis 1335-1336, trans. Scanlon (Eros and Greek Athletics, 211).52Delorme, Gymnasion, 254-255.53[Xen.] 2.10. This is the only evidence for private gymnasia alongside the public; see Delorme,

Gymnasion, 256-258.54Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 140.55Leibesübungen, 164.56Delorme, Gymnasion, 258-271; Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics, 176-185.57Young, Olympic Myth, 150.58Plut. Mor. 233e; Jüthner, Philostratos, 232.59Pleket, “Soziologie”; H.W. Pleket, “Games, Prizes, Athletes, and Ideology: Some Aspects of the

History of Sport in the Greco-Roman World,” Stadion 1 (1975): 49-89; idem, “The Participants in theAncient Olympic Games: Social Background and Mentality,” in Proceedings of an International Sympo-sium on the Olympic Games, 147-152; idem, “Sport and Ideology in the Graeco-Roman World,” Klio 80(1998): 315-324. See also Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 121-123, who sees a shift not from aristocratsto democrats but from elites by birth to elites by wealth. The overreaction comes from Young, OlympicMyth. Pritchard, “Athletics, Education, and Participation,” reviews the debate and persuasively con-cludes that social and economic limitations excluded non-elites from athletic education, training, andcompetition.

60Pleket, “Soziologie,” 65-66; “Participants in the Ancient Olympic Games,” 150. N. Benders, “Desociale status van de trainer in de Griekse wereld” (Examensarbeit for H. W. Pleket, Leiden, ca. 1978)counted over one hundred trainers known by name (cited by Wolfgang Decker, Sport in der griechischenAntike: Vom minoischen Wettkampf bis zu den Olympischen Spielen [Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995]); but as Icould not consult his work I do not know what conclusions Benders drew about the social status of thetrainers.

61Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 136 n. 64.62IvEph 2005; Robert, RevPhil 41 [1967] 20-21; Burnet, “Olympic Hopefuls,” 227-230.63Robert, RevPhil 41 (1967): 31 n. 3 ll. 54-58; Pleket, “Soziologie,” without justification identifies

the athletes in question as private adult pupils of the paidotribai.64On Pindar’s brilliant resolution of this conflict, see Sitta von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece

(London: Duckworth, 1995); Leslie Kurke, The Traffic in Praise (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1991); Bruno Gentili, Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece from Homer to the Fifth Century, trans. A.Thomas Cole (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); and Nicholson, “Nemean 4.57-58.” On the resounding silence of the ancient sources concerning early Greek trainers see Nicholson,Aristocracy and Athletics, esp. pt. 2.

65Pleket, “Participants in the Ancient Olympic Games,” 149.66Young, Olympic Myth, 150.67Nicholson, Aristocracy and Athletics.68Iccus won the pentathlon at Olympia before becoming a trainer and a theoretician (Pl. Prot. 316.2

with scholia, Laws 8.839e-40a; Paus. 6.10.5; Moretti 444; for discussion Jünther, Leibesübungen, 163;Young, Olympic Myth, 149 n. 45). Melesias of Athens won at the Nemean, Isthmian, and perhapsOlympic games (Moretti 307) before training in Aegina (Pind. [and scholia] Nem. 4.93-96, 6.64-66; Ol.8.53-66—where we learn his athletes have won thirty victories). Thucydides son of Melesias had his sonslearn wrestling from Xanhias and Eudorus, who were “among the greatest at wrestling at that time” (Pl.Meno 94c). In late sources: Ariston the wrestler trained Plato (Diog. Laert. Plato 3.4; Olymp. In Alcib.2.36-43; Alice Swift Riginos, Platonica: The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of Plato, Columbia



Studies in the Classical Tradition 3 [Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 1976], 35-36, 39-40); Hippomachus of Elis,paidotribês in the early third century, may have won in the boys’ boxing at the Olympics about 300(Athen. 13.47 584c; Ael. VH 2.6; Paus. 6.12.6; Moretti 506; for the identification see Jüthner,Leibesübungen, 163).