[24]
Discerning, moreover, that those who train for
the footraces add nothing to their courage nor to their morale either, and that
those who practice boxing and the like ruin their minds as well as their bodies,
you have singled out the noblest and grandest of competitive exercises and the
one most in harmony with your natural gifts, one which approximates to the
realities of warfare through the habituation to martial weapons and the
laborious effort of running, in the magnificence and majesty of the equipment
simulates the might of the gods,1
1 Certain gods were represented as using chariots, particularly Ares and Poseidon.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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