PALAESTRA (Gr. aaXaiarpa)  , the name apparently applied by the Greeks to two kinds of places used for gymnastic and athletic exercises . In the one case it seems confined to the places where boys and youths received a general gymnastic training, in the other to a part of a gymnasium where the athletae, the competitors in the public games,, were trained in wrestling (aaXatav, to wrestle) and boxing . The boys' palaeslrae were private institutions and generally bore the name of the manager or of the founder; thus at Athens there was a palaestra of Taureas (Plato, Charmides) . The Romans used the terms gymnasium and palaestra indiscriminately for any place where gymnastic exercises were carried on .