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View Full Version : Self Respect, & Lessons from the Ancients



Girevik 69
01-31-10, 1:27 pm
The Suebi are by far the largest and most warlike of the German nations. It is said that they have a hundred cantons, each of which provides annually a thousand armed men for service in foreign wars. Those who are left at home have to support the men in the army as well as themselves, and the next year take their turn of service, while the others stay at home. Thus both agriculture, and military instruction and training, continue without interruption. No land, however, is the property of private individuals, and no one is allowed to cultivate the same plot for more than one year. They do not eat much cereal food, but live chiefly on milk and meat, and spend much time in hunting. Their diet, daily exercise, and the freedom from restraint they enjoy... combine to make them strong and as tall as giants. They inure themselves, in spite of the very cold climate in which they live, to wear not clothing but skins--and these so scanty that a large part of the body is uncovered--and to bathe in the rivers. --Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, Book IV, "Invasions of Germany and Britain"

When I read Caesar's description above, about the ancient Germanic tribes, I am staggered. Why? Take a look around you, the next time you're at the supermarket (or anywhere else, for that matter). What do you see? I see weak people, everywhere. Folks who abuse their bodies by living on sugar, white flour, and fast "food". The number of morbidly obese people in this country is genuinely alarming. I see folks so overweight that they need to get around in those electric scooters. I see that all the time. People--presumably through ignorance--are literally crippling themselves. It's a far cry from Caesar's time, when human beings--whether "civilized" Greeks and Romans, or "barbarian" Celts and Germans--were generally in much better overall shape.

That's where modern-day Physical Culture comes in. The bodily decay we see today didn't happen overnight. It was something that began at least as early as the Industrial Revolution, if not earlier. Early exponents of Physical Culture--folks like Eugen Sandow, Arthur Saxon, William Muldoon, George Hackenschmidt, Doctor von Krajewski, Martin "Farmer" Burns, et al--saw the writing on the wall, and chose to do something about it. Thanks to their efforts, we have options, to avoid such destructive lifestyles.

People have various reasons for lifting weights, but surely the "common ground" must be SELF IMPROVEMENT. Why do we toil endlessly with heavy weights? It's a matter of self-respect. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, a man who was out-of-shape was a man who didn't respect himself.

Physical Culture was crucial to ancient Greek and Roman society. It was through physical training, that the Romans were able to conquer a large part of the world. The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, commented succinctly on the Roman approach:

Anyone who will take a look at the organization of their army in general will recognize that they hold their wide-flung empire as a prize of valour, not the gift of fortune. They do not wait for war to begin before handling their arms, nor do they sit idle in peacetime and take action only when the emergency comes--but as if born ready armed they never have a truce from training or wait for war to be declared. Their battle-drills are no different from the real thing; every man works as hard in his daily training as if he was on active service. That is why they stand up so easily to the strain of battle: no indiscipline dislodges them from their regular formation, no panic incapacitates them, no toil wears them out; so victory over men not so trained follows as a matter of course. It would not be far from the truth to call their drills bloodless battles, their battles bloody drills.

And the physical requirements for recruits in the legions were outlined by Vegetius, in his Epitoma Rei Militaris ("Epitome of Military Science"):

So let the adolescent who is to be selected for martial activity have alert eyes, straight neck, broad chest, muscular shoulders, strong arms, long fingers, let him be small in the stomach, slender in the buttocks, and have calves and feet that are not swollen by surplus fat, but firm with hard muscle. When you see these points in a recruit, you need not greatly regret the absence of tall stature. It is more useful that soldiers be strong than big.

The ancient mindset is something, I think, that we all ultimately aspire to. Mainstream society--ignorant as usual--tends to view Physical Culture as something "unusual". Lifters were and still are largely misunderstood, in the bigger picture.

Not that such things matter. I offer the above as inspiration to my Brothers of the Iron. Train smart, and train hard. Stay strong!

Pax,

David/Girevik 69