Gymnastic exercises centred round two sorts of buildings which are often confused, the “gymnasium” and the “palaistra.” The former may be said to correspond to the whole series of fields and buildings intended for games, which surround a modern public school, including football and cricket grounds, running track and jumping pit, fives courts, and so forth. The “palaistra” often resembled little more than the playground of a village school: it only demanded a sandy floor, and sufficient privacy to protect the exercises from intrusion: such buildings could be run up at private expense in the smallest villages, and were often attached to private houses. A “gymnasium,” on the other hand, must have cost a vast sum to erect: even a great capital like Athens only possessed three in the fourth century; small towns must have been unable to afford them at all. But the gymnasia were public buildings, open to all; they were always full of citizens of all ages, practising or watching others practise; they were a fashionable place of resort, where Sophists lectured in the big halls, and philosophers taught in the shady gardens. For the trainer who wished to instruct his class of boys they were wholly unsuitable; besides, any casual stranger could stand by and get a lesson for nothing. Consequently, even at Athens, the boys were taught in palaistrai which could be closed to the public:[353] in the towns and villages there was no other place.
It is quite true that boys went to the gymnasia. Aristophanes[354] talks of “a nice little boy on his way home from the gymnasium.” In Antiphon,[355] some older boys are practising the javelin in a gymnasium; a younger boy, who had been standing among the spectators, being called by his paidotribes, runs across the course and is killed. If the reading “paidotribes,” for which K. F. Hermann would substitute “paidagogos,” is correct, we find a paidotribes and his class of younger boys present in a gymnasium, probably to practise javelin-throwing, which must have demanded a larger space than the palaistra often afforded. The elder boys are probably not under his tuition, for they are using real javelins, not the unpointed shafts which were employed at school. Paidotribai with small palaistrai may often have taken their classes to the free public gymnasia to practise the diskos, the javelin, and running, which required a large space. But none the less the palaistra was the usual scene of the teaching of boys.[356] It must not, however, be supposed that a palaistra was always reserved for boys. The “many palaistrai,” which the democracy built for itself,[357] were doubtless as much public buildings, open to all ages, as the Akademeia or Lukeion. The palaistrai owned or hired by private teachers must have been open to adults when the boys were not present; that which is the scene of the _Lusis_ was apparently attended by two classes, one of boys and the other of youths, who only met there on festival days. In the palaistra of Taureas, however, mentioned in the _Charmides_, the different classes seem all to meet in the undressing-room; but on that occasion the building may have been open for general practice, not for teaching. Some such arrangement into classes must have taken place in the village palaistrai.[358] The master who taught the boys in the palaistra was called the paidotribes, “boy-rubber”: he must have owed his name to the great part which rubbing, whether with oil or with various sorts of dust, played in athletics.[359] He was expected to be scientific. He had to know what exercises would suit what constitutions:[360] he is often coupled with the doctor.[361] His object was to prevent, the doctor’s to cure, diseases. He even prescribed diet. Besides health, he was expected to aim at beauty and strength.[362] His training, in Plato’s opinion, also served to produce firmness of character and strength of will: he must therefore know how much training to administer to each boy, for too much would cause excess of these qualities and lead to savage brutality, and too little would result in effeminacy.[363]
