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130 Pages
Page 112
In competitions mere crowns are offered for prizes, there is always training, and no one in training for wrestling or the pancration [677] practices the harp or flute. Certainly not Polydamas, who before his contests at the Olympic games used to make chariots at full speed stand still, and so kept up his strength. [678] Milo, too, could not be pushed off his greased shield, but, pushed as he was, held on as tightly as statues fastened by lead. [679] In one word, training was the preparation for these feats. Suppose they had neglected the dust and the gymnasia, and had given their minds to the strains of Marsyas or Olympus, the Phrygians, [680] they would never have won crowns or glory, nor escaped ridicule for their bodily incapacity. On the other hand Timotheus did not neglect harmony and spend his time in the wrestling schools. Had he done so it would never have been his lot to surpass all the world in music, and to have attained such extraordinary skill in his art as to be able to rouse the soul by his sustained and serious melody, and then again relieve and sooth it by his softer strains at his good pleasure. By this skill, when once he sang in Phrygian strains to Alexander, he is said to have roused the king to arms in the middle of a banquet, and then by gentler music to have restored him to his boon companions. [681] So great is the importance, alike in music and in athletics, in view of the object to be attained, of training....
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[677] i.e. wrestling and boxing together.
[678] Paus. VI. v. cf. Pers., Sat. i. 4.
[679] Paus. VI. xiv.
[680] Marsyas, the unhappy rival of Apollo, was said to be a native of Celaenae in Phrygia. Olympus was a pupil of Marsyas (Schol. in Aristoph. Eq. 9). By Plutarch (Mus. xi.) he is called archegos tes ;;Ellenikes kai kales mousikes. cf. Arist., Pol. VIII. v. 16.
[681] cf. Cic., Legg. ii. 15, Plutarch, De Mus. There are two Timothei of musical fame, one anterior to Alexander. It will be remembered that in Dryden's Alexander's Feast "the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy," after the "Lydian measure" had "soothed his soul to pleasures."
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=112
