that in 1319 a toll was levied upon all goods coming into the town, in order to defray the cost of the repair to the roads necessitated by the constant traffic, and in 1332 a similar toll was levied on all goods passing over the bridge called Feldenbrigge near Atherstone. The September fair and Tuesday markets are still continued. In the reign of Edward III. a house of Austin Friars was founded at Atherstone by Ralph Lord Basset of Drayton, which, however, never rose to much importance, and at its dissolution in 1536 was valued at 30 shillings and 3 pence only.
ATHERTON, or Chowbent, an urban district in the Leigh parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 13 m. W.N.W. of Manchester on the London & North-Western and Lancashire & Yorkshire railways. Pop. (1901) 16,211. The cotton factories are the principal source of industry; there are also ironworks and collieries. The manor was held by the local family of Atherton from John’s reign to 1738, when it passed by marriage to Robert Gwillym, who assumed that name. In 1797 his eldest daughter and co-heiress married Thomas Powys, afterwards the second Lord Lilford. Up to 1891 the lord of the manor held a court-leet and court-baron annually in November, but in that year Lord Lilford sold to the local board the market tolls, stallages and pickages, and since this sale the courts have lapsed. The earliest manufactures were iron and cotton. Silk-weaving, formerly an extensive industry, has now almost entirely decayed. The first chapel or church was built in 1645. James Wood, who became Nonconformist minister in the chapel at Atherton in 1691, earned fame and the familiar title of “General” by raising a force from his congregation, uncouthly armed, to fight against the troops of the Pretender (1715).
ATHETOSIS (Gr. ἄθετος, “without place”), the medical term applied to certain slow, purposeless, deliberate movements of the hands and feet. The fingers are separately flexed and extended, abducted and adducted in an entirely irregular way. The hands as a whole are also moved, and the arms, toes and feet may be affected. The condition is usually due to some lesion of the brain which has caused hemiplegia, and is especially common in childhood. It is occasionally congenital (so called), and is then due to some injury of the brain during birth. It is more usually associated with hemiplegia, in which condition there is first of all complete voluntary immobility of the parts affected: but later, as there is a return of a certain amount of power over the limbs affected, the slow rhythmic movements of athetosis are first noticed. This never develops, however, where there is no recovery of voluntary power. Its distribution is thus nearly always hemiplegic, and it is often associated with more or less mental impairment. The movements may or may not continue during sleep. They cannot be arrested for more than a moment by will power, and are aggravated by voluntary movements. The prognosis is unsatisfactory, as the condition usually continues unchanged for years, though improvement occasionally occurs in slight cases, or even complete recovery.
ATHIAS, JOSEPH (d. 1700), Jewish rabbi and printer, was born in Spain and settled in Amsterdam. His editions of the Hebrew Bible (1661, 1667) are noted for beauty of execution and the general correctness of the text. He also printed a Judaeo-German edition of the Bible in 1679, a year after the appearance of the edition by Uri Phoebus.
ATHLETE (Gr. ἀθλητής; Lat. athleta), in Greek and Roman antiquities, one who contended for a prize (ἀθλον) in the games; now a general term for any one excelling in physical strength. Originally denoting one who took part in musical, equestrian, gymnastic, or any other competitions, the name became restricted to the competitors in gymnastic contests, and, later, to the class of professional athletes. Whereas in earlier times competitors, who were often persons of good birth and position, entered the lists for glory, without any idea of material gain, the professional class, which arose as early as the 5th century B.C., was chiefly recruited from the lower orders, with whom the better classes were unwilling to associate, and took up athletics entirely as a means of livelihood. Ancient philosophers, moralists and physicians were almost unanimous in condemning the profession of athletics as injurious not only to the mind but also to the body. The attack made upon it by Euripides in the fragment of the Autolycus is well known. The training for the contests was very rigorous. The matter of diet was of great importance; this was prescribed by the aleiptes, whose duty it also was to anoint the athlete’s body. At one time the principal food consisted of fresh cheese, dried figs and wheaten bread. Afterwards meat was introduced, generally beef, or pork; but the bread and meat were taken separately, the former at breakfast, the latter at dinner. Except in wine, the quantity was unlimited, and the capacity of some of the heavy-weights must have been, if such stories as those about Milo are true, enormous. In addition to the ordinary gymnastic exercises of the palaestra, the athletes were instructed in carrying heavy loads, lifting weights, bending iron rods, striking at a suspended leather sack filled with sand or flour, taming bulls, &c. Boxers had to practise delving the ground, to strengthen their upper limbs. The competitions open to athletes were running, leaping, throwing the discus, wrestling, boxing and the pancratium, or combination of boxing and wrestling. Victory in this last was the highest achievement of an athlete, and was reserved only for men of extraordinary strength. The competitors were naked, having their bodies salved with oil. Boxers wore the caestus, a strap of leather round the wrists and forearms, with a piece of metal in the fist, which was sometimes employed with great barbarity. An athlete could begin his career as a boy in the contests set apart for boys. He could appear again as a youth against his equals, and though always unsuccessful, could go on competing till the age of thirty-five, when he was debarred, it being assumed that after this period of life he could not improve. The most celebrated of the Greek athletes whose names have been handed down are Milo of Crotona, Hipposthenes, Polydamas, Promachus and Glaucus. Cyrene, famous in the time of Pindar for its athletes, appears to have still maintained its reputation to at least the time of Alexander the Great; for in the British Museum are to be seen six prize vases carried off from the games at Athens by natives of that district. These vases, found in the tombs, probably, of the winners, are made of clay, and painted on one side with a representation of the contest in which they were won, and on the other side with a figure of Pallas Athena, with an inscription telling where they were gained, and in some cases adding the name of the eponymous magistrate of Athens, from which the exact year can be determined.
Amongst the Romans athletic contests had no doubt taken place from the earliest times, but according to Livy (xxxix. 22) professional Greek athletes were first introduced at Rome by M. Fulvius Nobilior in 186 B.C. After the institution of the Actian games by Augustus, their popularity increased, until they finally supplanted the gladiators. In the time of the empire, gilds or unions of athletes were formed, each with a temple, treasury and exercise-ground of its own. The profession, although it ranked above that of a gladiator or an actor, was looked upon as derogatory to the dignity of a Roman, and it is a rare thing to find a Roman name amongst the athletes on inscriptions. The system was entirely, and the athletes themselves nearly always, Greek. (See also Games, Classical.)
Krause, Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen (1841); Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms, ii.; Reisch, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyc.
ATHLETIC SPORTS. Various sports were cultivated many hundred years before the Christian era by the Egyptians and several Asiatic races, from whom the early Greeks undoubtedly adopted the elements of their athletic exercises (see Athlete), which reached their highest development in the Olympic games, and other periodical meetings of the kind (see Games, Classical). The original Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain were an athletic race, and the earliest monuments of Teutonic literature abound in records of athletic prowess. After the Norman conquest of England the nobles devoted themselves to the chase and to the joust, while the people had their games of ball, running at the quintain, fencing with club and buckler, wrestling and other pastimes on green and river. The chroniclers of the succeeding centuries are for the most part silent concerning the sports of the folk, except such as were regarded as a training for war, as archery, while they love to record the prowess of the kings and
