Askesis was an athlete's word before it was a religious one. The exercises come down through anecdote: hot sand in summer, snow-covered bronze in winter, begging from statues to practise refusal. Nothing here purifies a soul or pleases a power — it is rehearsal, on the theory that misfortune only wounds people who have not tried it first. The same logic reappears in Stoic praemeditatio and, much later, in the exposure exercises of behavioural therapy; what the Cynics never had was an order, a rule or a calendar to do it in.