iately
of mud, for it is produced in the bodies of animals alone; but
a thousand living creatures rise from the mud. What need of many
instances? None ever found the spawn or egg of an eel; yet if you empty
a pit and take out all the mud, as soon as other water settles in it,
eels likewise are presently produced. Now that must exist first which
hath no need of any other thing that it may exist, and that after, which
cannot be without the concurrence of another thing. And of this priority
is our present discourse. Besides, birds build nests before they lay
their eggs; and women provide cradles, swaddling cloths and the like;
yet who says that the nest is before the egg, or the swaddling cloths
before the infant. For the earth (as Plato says doth not imitate a
woman, but a woman, and so likewise all other females, the earth.)
Moreover, it is probable that the first production out of the earth,
which was then vigorous and perfect, was self-sufficient and entire,
nor stood in need of those secundines, membranes, and vessels, which now
Nature forms to help the weakness and supply the defects of breeders.

QUESTION IV. WHETHER OR NO WRESTLING IS THE OLDEST EXERCISE.

SOSICLES, LYSIMACHUS, PLUTARCH, PHILINUS.

Sosicles of Coronea having at the Pythian games won the prize from all
the poets, gave us an entertainment. And the time for running, cuffing,
wrestling, and the like drawing on, there was a great talk of the
wrestlers; for there were many and very famous men, who came to try
their skill. Lysimachus, one of the company, a procurator of the
Amphictyons, said he heard a grammarian lately affirm that wrestling was
the most ancient exercise of all, as even the very name witnessed; for
some modern things have the names of more ancient transferred to them;
thus to tune a pipe is called fitting it, and playing on it is called
striking; both these names being transferred to it from the harp. Thus
all places of exercise they call wrestling schools, wrestling being the
oldest exercise, and therefore giving its name to the newer sorts. That,
said I, is no good argument, for these palaestras or wrestling schools
are called so from wrestling [Greek omitted] not because it is the most
ancient exercise, but because it is the only sort in which they use clay
[Greek omitted] dust, and oil; for in these there is neither racing nor
cuffing, but wrestling only, and that feature of the pancratium in
which they struggle on the ground,--