What Was the Training Like for the Ancient Olympics?
#spacer{clear:left}#abc #sidebar{margin-top:1.5em}if(zs>0){zSB(3,3)}else{gEI(“spacer”).style.display=’none’;gEI(“sidebar”).style.display=’none’}We have a description of the training for the ancient Olympics from one of the ancient Stoic philosophers. Epictetus describes it in his “Golden Sayings”. He also injects his opinion of the games and says contestants are like apes: You would fain be victor at the Olympic games, you say. Yes, but weigh the conditions, weigh the consequences; then and then only, lay to your hand–if it be for your profit. You must live by rule, submit to diet, abstain from dainty meats, exercise your body perforce at stated hours, in heat or in cold; drink no cold water, nor, it may be, wine. In a word, you must surrender yourself wholly to your trainer, as though to a physician. Then in the hour of contest, you will have to delve the ground, it may chance dislocate an arm, sprain an ankle, gulp down abundance of yellow sand, be scourge with the whip–and with al
