gymnasium

In ancient Greece, originally a public sports ground. The gymnasium later formed a complex of buildings, with separate places for the various exercises, a stadium, baths, and a covered portico for use in bad weather. It also had an outer portico, where philosophers and other teachers expounded their views.

The athletes, who exercised naked, were supervised by a hierarchy of officials who were responsible for their morals, their exercises, and their health. The Romans in republican times regarded the gymnasium with suspicion, believing it to be conducive to immorality. The first public gymnasia at Rome were built by the emperors Nero and Commodus.

The gymnasium is to be distinguished from the palaestra, a private school where boys were trained in wrestling and other physical exercises; but the word ‘palaestra’ was regularly applied to that part of the gymnasium set aside for boxing and wrestling.