Swimming post #37
Sassanian silver vase, women swimming (West Asia or Central Asia, 500-700 AD), now in the Louvre Museum, Paris (thanks to Julianna Lees)
From surviving Zoroastrian religious writings, we can get a sense of how the Parthians were thinking about swimming. Like the Persians, the Parthians believed that swimming and washing in flowing water befouled the water. Many Parthians thought of rivers as dangerous, too, worrying about the rivers’ swiftness and strength, and imagining that only the pure of heart could cross them safely.[i]
Over time, though, perhaps under the influence of the Roman Empire, some people living in the Parthian Empire did learn to swim. Herodotus tells us that the Persians believed fathers had a duty to teach their sons three things: to ride a horse, shoot an arrow, and tell the truth.[ii] By Late Antiquity, when Jews living in Babylon were writing a commentary on the Bible known as the Babylonian Talmud, they had tentatively added swimming to the list: "A father has the following obligations towards his son - to circumcise him, to redeem him, if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a craft or a trade. And there are some who say that he must also teach him how to swim."[iii] On this Parthian silver vase, women swim with their arms apart in what might even be a crawl stroke.
[i] Ervad Zadspram, trans. W.E. West, Selections, chapter 20.
[ii] Herodotus, 1.136.
[iii] Kiddushin 29a.
[iv] Talmud, Tractate Baba Bathra 74b.
