gimnastic

Updated: June 11, 2025

But omitting to insist on the Spartan austerity, and especially on their gimnastic training for both sexes, and to take the milder methods of exercise in use among the Grecians, we find that the chace, that foot-races, and especially dancing, principally composed the amusement of the young ladies of that country; where, in the great days of Greece, no maxim ever more practically prevailed, than that sloth or inactivity was equally the parent of diseases of the body, as of vices of the mind.

Giovanni-Andrea Gallini - A Treatise on the Art of Dancing