The Eternal Olympics: The Art and History of Sport

1979

Storage GV23 EU2

New York: Caratzas Brothers

Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC) was a great advocate of using massage for therapeutic healing and strongly advised his students to gain ‘hands-on’ experience. At the same time, athletics was developing in the ancient world and trainers and athletes came to realise the importance of massage in their training regimes. The iatraleiptes or ‘healer-anointer’ became an integral member of the ‘team’ behind successful athletes. Massage was used before training to warm up the muscles and afterwards to aid in muscle recovery. This scene, depicted on a Greek vase, was common in gymnasia all over ancient Greece.