Archery was regarded with the same contempt by the Greek hoplite of the fifth century, and though it formed part of the training of the Athenian Epheboi, it never entered largely into Greek sports. The diskos, however, was always and in all places a favourite exercise. Odysseus, as we have seen, to prove his strength to the Phaeacians, hurled far beyond all their marks a diskos larger than his hosts themselves ever threw.[16] The word diskos means nothing more than a “thing for throwing,” and the object thrown by Odysseus was a stone. Whether the artificial diskos of later times was known to the poet may be doubted, although the words “diskos” and “a diskos’ throw” are of frequent occurrence. In the later gymnasium there was no doubt always a supply of diskoi of various weights and sizes, like the supply of dumbbells in our own gymnasia. But we should hardly expect to find such a stock of athletic implements in the agora of the Phaeacians hard by the ships where these impromptu after-dinner sports took place. It seems more likely that the diskoi were merely the large round pebbles of the seashore, such as the Phaeacian fisher-folk used for holding down their nets and tackle laid out to dry in the agora, and such as every visitor to the seaside instinctively picks up and throws. A stone, a lump of metal, or a tree-trunk provides for early man a natural weapon in time of war, a test of strength in time of peace. From such simple forms are derived the weight, the hammer, and the caber of our modern sports. In Homer stones still played no small part in actual warfare. Even heroes use them. Diomedes hurls at Aeneas a “handful such as two men, as men now are, could scarcely lift,”[17] and with a similar rock, which he wields as lightly as a shepherd waves a fleece, Hector himself bursts in the gate of the Achaean wall.[18] But stones are more especially the weapon of the common soldiery, and when the fight grows general round the body of Cebriones the stones fly fast.[19] Naturally, then, throwing the stone forms a part of the Achaean sports. From the use of the term κατωμαδίοιο,[20] “thrown from the shoulder,” it has been supposed that the Achaeans put the weight from the shoulder. They may have done so; but “the whirl” with which Odysseus hurled the stone, and the distance that he threw it, clearly indicate an underhand throw.