"I never took you for someone skilled in games,
the kind that real men play throughout the world.
Not a chance. You’re some skipper of profiteers,
roving the high seas in his scudding craft,
reckoning up his freight with a keen eye out
for home-cargo, grabbing the gold he can!
You’re no athlete. I see that."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 8, lines 184-190. Broadsea mocks Odysseus when he politely delines an invitation to take part in the Phaeacian games. The ill-mannered Phaeacian says he can see that Odysseus is no athlete. He insults his manhood by suggesting he is not a "real" man, but some sort of pirate. Atheticism was important to the ancient Greeks and to them was a measure of how much a man you were.