Of the education of Herodotus no more can be said than that it was thoroughly Greek, and embraced no doubt the three subjects essential to a Greek liberal education - grammar, gymnastic training and music. His studies would be regarded as completed when he attained the age of eighteen, and took rank among the eplzebi or eirenes of his native city.
In addition to the original Sokol Society (founded in 1862) there are the special organizations of the Labour (Socialist) and the Catholic Gymnastic Unions (under Sokol influence).
Every fourth year the festival was celebrated with peculiar magnificence; gymnastic sports were added to the horse races; and there is little doubt that Peisistratus aimed at making the penteteric Panathenaea the great Ionian festival in rivalry to the Dorian Olympia.
At Naples, in spite of increasing disease, he bravely sat out a gymnastic contest held in his honour, and then accompanied Tiberius as far as Beneventum on his way to Brundusium and Illyricum.
When the Romans became masters of the world, many of their upper classes, both before the close of the republic and under the empire, from a love of Greek manners and literature or from indolent and effeminate habits, resorted to Neapolis, either for the education and the cultivation of gymnastic exercises or for the enjoyment of music and of a soft and luxurious climate.
