The gymnasium and palaestra in ancient Greece

The word γυμνάσιον comes from γυμνός, which means “naked”. The verb γυμνάζω first meant “to train naked”. Greek men really did their sports without clothes. The historian Thucydides wrote that the Spartans started this custom. Before that, even athletes at the Olympic Games wore a belt around their waist.

A gymnasium needed a lot of space. It had a long track for running and open ground for throwing the discus and the ἀκόντιον, the javelin. Around the yards stood covered walkways with columns, called stoas. There the athletes could rest in the shade or train when it rained.

Athens had three big gymnasia, all outside the city walls: the Academy, the Lyceum and the Kynosarges. Each one was also a holy place, with a sanctuary of a god or a hero.

The παλαίστρα was smaller. Its name comes from πάλη, wrestling. It was a square yard covered with sand, with rooms and stoas all around it. Here boys and men practised wrestling, boxing and jumping. A palaestra could be part of a gymnasium, or a building of its own in the city.

Boys learned sport from a trainer called the παιδοτρίβης. Trainers carried a long stick and used it to point at a wrong arm or leg. Sometimes the athletes moved to the music of a flute, because the Greeks liked movement to be smooth and even.

We can still visit the palaestra at Olympia. It was built in the 3rd century BC. Wrestlers, boxers and jumpers trained in its yard, and the stoas around it were used as changing rooms. Next to it lies the gymnasium of Olympia, from the 2nd century BC. It was about 220 metres long, and runners and discus and javelin throwers trained there before the Games.

Greek athletes rubbed their bodies with olive oil, the ἔλαιον. They carried the oil in a small flask. In the sandy yard of the palaestra, dust and sweat soon stuck to the oily skin.

The Greeks had no soap. So after training, the athlete took a curved metal tool, the στλεγγίς, or strigil. He scraped it along his arms, legs and back, and the oil came off together with the dirt and sweat. Then he washed with water. Many strigils made of bronze have been found, and you can see them in museums today.

Vase painters liked to show these moments. On pots and cups we see young athletes pouring oil, scraping their skin or wrestling while a trainer watches. These pictures help us understand daily life in the palaestra.

The gymnasium was not only for sport. Men of all ages met there to watch, to chat and to hear news. In the 5th century BC, thinkers and teachers came to the gymnasia of Athens to talk with young men. In one of Plato’s books, Socrates comes back from war and goes straight to a palaestra, because he knows he will find his friends there.

In the 4th century BC, Plato taught in the Academy, and his student Aristotle taught in the Lyceum. Both were gymnasia. Later, the word γυμνάσιον could also mean a school. In the Hellenistic period, the gymnasium was where the ἔφηβοι, the young men of the city, were trained.

Many Greeks believed that a good ἀθλητής had to train his mind as well as his body. That is one reason why the names Academy, Lyceum and Gymnasium are still used for schools in many countries today.