PART II

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Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals

GREEK ATHLETIC SPORTS AND FESTIVALS

BY

E. NORMAN GARDINER, M.A.

SOMETIME CLASSICAL EXHIBITIONER OF C.C.C., OXON.

ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

1910

TO

F. E. THOMPSON

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ALL THAT THE AUTHOR

IN COMMON WITH MANY ANOTHER MARLBURIAN

OWES TO HIS TEACHING, HIS SYMPATHY

AND HIS FRIENDSHIP

PREFACE

It is my hope that the present volume may prove of interest to the

general reader as well as to the student of the past. For though its

subject may seem at first sight purely archaeological, many of the

problems with which it deals are as real to us to-day as they were to

the Greeks. The place of physical training and of games in education,

the place of athletics in our daily life and in our national life, are

questions of present importance to us all, and in considering these

questions we cannot fail to learn something from the athletic history of

a nation which for a time at least succeeded in reconciling the rival

claims of body and of mind, and immortalized this result in its art.

This is my first and perhaps my chief justification for the length of

this volume. My second is that there is no existing work in English on

the subject, nor even in the extensive literature which Germany has

produced is there any work of quite the same scope. The _Gymnastik u.

Agonistik_ of J. H. Krause is a masterpiece of erudition, accuracy and

judgment. But this work was published in 1841, and since that date

excavation and the progress of archaeology have brought to light such a

mass of new material as to change entirely our outlook on the past. The

excavations at Olympia have for the first time enabled us to trace the

whole history of the festival and to treat Greek athletics historically.

In the first part of this work I have endeavoured to write a continuous

history of Greek athletics. The attempt is an ambitious one, perhaps too

ambitious for one whose occupation has left him little time for

continuous study. The long period covered involves a multitude of

difficult and disputed problems, which it is impossible within the

limits of this work to discuss fully. In all these cases I have

endeavoured to sift the evidence for myself, and to form an independent

judgment. Many of the details may be obscure, and many of my conclusions

are doubtless open to criticism. Yet the general outline of the story is

clear, and I venture to think that it has a more than passing interest

and importance.

The second part is more technical, though it may perhaps appeal to those

who are actively interested in athletics. It consists of a number of

chapters, each complete in itself, dealing with the details of Greek

athletics. Many of the chapters are taken from articles published by me

in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_. The chapters on the Stadium, the

Gymnasium, the Hippodrome and Boxing are entirely new. In the first two

of these chapters will be found the latest results of excavations at

Delphi, Epidaurus, Priene and Pergamum, results which are not readily

accessible to the English reader.

The arrangement of the work has involved a certain amount of repetition,

and the introduction separately and in their historical order of certain

details which it would be clearer perhaps, and certainly more

picturesque, to group together. But it seemed to me worth while to

sacrifice something of clearness and effect in order to bring out the

historical aspect of the subject, an aspect which is completely obscured

in most of our text-books. Further, I have endeavoured clearly to

distinguish between what is certain and what is conjectural. The words

“perhaps” and “possibly” recur, I am only too conscious, with monotonous

persistence. But where the evidence is too inadequate or too

contradictory to admit of certainty, the only safe and honest course is

to confess ignorance and to hope that the discovery of some new

manuscript may dispel our doubts. The neglect of this distinction

between the conjectural and the certain has been a fertile source of

error.

Great importance has been attached to the evidence of contemporary

monuments, and illustrations have been given of the principal monuments

described. In their selection preference has been given _ceteris

paribus_ to objects in the British Museum, because these are likely to

be most accessible to the majority of readers. In the case of vases the

interpretation often depends on the composition, and whole scenes have

as far as possible been reproduced rather than single figures. Museum

references are appended to the illustrations wherever available, and

also some indication of the date of the objects illustrated. Literary

references will be found in the list of illustrations.

Many of the illustrations have been prepared expressly for this book,

and for these I am indebted to the careful and excellent work of Mr.

Emery Walker. A large number are reproduced from articles by myself and

others which have appeared in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, and in

expressing my thanks to the Council of the Hellenic Society for

permission to reproduce them I should like to render testimony to the

value of the Library of that Society to any one who, like myself, does

not live in the vicinity of any great Library. But for the generous

facilities which this Society affords for borrowing books, any work

which I have been able to do would have been almost impossible.

In spelling, consistency appears to be unattainable, and I have in the

main adopted the compromise recommended in the _Journal of Hellenic

Studies_. In the case of proper nouns, names of places, people,

buildings, festivals, the Latin spelling has been adopted, in the case

of other Greek words the Greek spelling, except where the Latin form is

so familiar that any other form would be pedantic. Names of months are

treated as purely Greek words. With regard to ει, _ei_ has been kept

where it occurs in the stem of a word, _e_ is employed _usually_ in

terminations.

It is impossible to mention here the many authors whose works I have

laid under contribution. Many of my debts are acknowledged in the notes.

But I cannot omit to mention three—Dr. J. H. Krause, of whose work I

have already spoken; Dr. Ernst Curtius, the writer of the chapter on the

history of Olympia in the great work which he edited with Dr. Adler; and

Dr. Julius Jüthner, whose _Antike Turngeräthe_ and edition of

Philostratus’ _Gymnastike_ published only last year are indispensable to

any student of the subject. To Dr. Jüthner I must also express my thanks

for his generous permission to make use of the illustrations in his

work.

Among the many friends who have helped me I should like especially to

thank Professor E. A. Gardner, Mr. G. F. Hill, and Mr. H. B. Walters for

their constant readiness to advise me and to give me the benefit of

their special knowledge of Greek sculpture, coins and vases. Many of the

illustrations of sculpture are taken from Professor E. A. Gardner’s

_Handbook of Greek Sculpture_, and the coins have been especially

selected for me by Mr. G. F. Hill. Nor must I omit to mention Louis

Dyer, whose death occurred while I was working on the early history of

Olympia. He had himself projected a work on Olympia, to which I hoped to

refer in confirmation of my views. His minute and accurate knowledge,

his readiness to impart his knowledge, his enthusiastic and unselfish

sympathy made his death an irreparable loss to me. Many corrections are

due to the conscientious care of another of my friends, Herbert Awdry,

who was engaged in reading my proofs almost up to the day of his death.

It is a fitting circumstance that this book should have been produced

under the auspices of Professor Percy Gardner, seeing that he was

unconsciously the originator of it. My interest in the subject was first

aroused by the chapter on Olympia in his _New Chapters from Greek

History_, which I read on my return from a cruise in the “Argonaut,” in

the course of which I had visited Olympia. Professor Percy Gardner has

read the book both in manuscript and in proof, and many improvements are

due to his suggestions. He is, however, in no wise responsible for the

views expressed, much less for any errors which I may have committed.

E. NORMAN GARDINER.

EPSOM COLLEGE,

SURREY.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations xv

List of Commonest Abbreviations xxv

PART I

A HISTORY OF GREEK ATHLETICS AND ATHLETIC

FESTIVALS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 393 A.D.

1. Introductory 1

2. Athletics in Homer 8

3. The Rise of the Athletic Festival 27

4. The Age of Athletic Festivals, Sixth Century 62

B.C.

5. The Age of the Athletic Ideal, 500-440 B.C. 86

6. Professionalism and Specialization, 440-338 122

B.C.

7. The Decline of Athletics, 338-146 B.C. 146

8. Athletics under the Romans 163

9. The Olympic Festival 194

10. The Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Festivals 208

11. The Athletic Festivals of Athens 227

PART II

THE ATHLETIC EXERCISES OF THE GREEKS

12. The Stadium 251

13. The Foot-Race 270

14. The Jump and Halteres 295

15. Throwing the Diskos 313

16. Throwing the Javelin 338

17. The Pentathlon 359

18. Wrestling 372

19. Boxing 402

20. The Pankration 435

21. The Hippodrome 451

22. The Gymnasium and the Palaestra 467

BIBLIOGRAPHY 511

INDEX 519

INDEX OF GREEK WORDS 531

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Boxer on steatite pyxis. Cnossus. (_B.S.A._ 10

vii. p. 95)

2. Armed combat on Clazomenae. Sarcophagus in 21

British Museum. (Murray, _Sarcophagi in B.M._,

Pls. ii., iii.)

3. Funeral games on Amphiaraus vase. Berlin, 1655. 29

(_Mon. d. I._ X., Pls. iv., v.)

4. Funeral games on Dipylon vase. Copenhagen. 30

(_Arch. Zeit._, 1885, Pl. viii.)

5. Plan of Olympia (after Dörpfeld) 35

6. Statue of girl runner. Copy of fifth-century 49

original. Vatican. (Helbig, _Führer_, 2nd Ed.,

384.) (From a photograph by Alinari)

7. Apollo, found at Tenea. Munich. (E. A. Gardner, 87

_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 20)

8. Statue by an Argive sculptor. Delphi. (_Greek 89

Sculpture_, Fig. 134; _Fouilles de Delphes_, ii.

1)

9. Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo. British Museum. 91

10. Figure from E. pediment of temple at Aegina. 92

Munich. (_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 41)

11. Bronze statuette from Ligourio. Berlin. 93

(_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 39)

12. Bronze statuette of Hoplitodromos. Tübingen. 94

(_Jahrb._, 1886, Pl. ix.)

13. Diskobolos, after Myron. (Photograph of 96

bronzed cast made in Munich)

14. Doryphoros, after Polycleitus. Naples. (_Greek 98

Sculpture_, Fig. 74)

15. Diadumenos from Vaison, after Polycleitus. 100

(_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 75)

16. Bronze head of ephebos. Fifth century. Munich, 102

Glyptothek, 457. (From a photograph by Bruckmann)

17. Scenes in palaestra. R.-f. kylix. Munich, 795. 105

(_Arch. Zeit._, 1878, Pl. xi.)

18. Bronze charioteer. Fifth century. Delphi. 113

(_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 138; _Fouilles de

Delphes_, II. xlix. 1)

19. The Apoxyomenos. Rome, Vatican. (_Greek 123

Sculpture_, Fig. 98)

20. Statue of Agias by Lysippus. Delphi. (_Greek 125

Sculpture_, Fig. 141; _Fouilles de Delphes_, II.

lxiii.)

21. Farnese Heracles, by Glycon. Naples. (_Greek 147

Sculpture_, Fig. 125)

22. Athletics under the Romans. Mosaic found at 177

Tusculum. Imperial period. (_Mon. d. I._ VI.,

vii., Pl. 82)

23. Professional boxer. Mosaic from the Thermae of 190

Caracalla. Rome, Lateran. (G. F. Hill,

_Illustrations to the Classics_, Fig. 400; Secchi,

_Musaico Antoniniano_)

24. Silver staters of Elis, in British Museum. 194

Fifth century, (_a_) Head of nymph Olympia; (_b_)

Victory seated, with palm

25. Judge crowning a victor. Interior of r.-f. 206

kylix. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 532. (_Arch.

Zeit._, 1853, lii. 3; Luynes, xlv.)

26. Phyllobolia. Interior of r.-f. kylix. Canino 206

Coll. (Gerh. _A. V._ 274, 1)

27. Copper coins of Delphi, in British Museum. 208

Imperial period. (_a_) Prize table, bearing crow,

five apples, vase and crown. (_b_) Ins. Πύθια in

crown of bay leaves. (_B.M. Coins_, Delphi, 39,

38)

28. Copper coin of Corinth, in British Museum. 214

Imperial period. Ins. Ἵσθμια in crown of pine

leaves. (_B.M. Coins_, Corinth, 603)

29. 30. Silver vase. Imperial period. Paris, 220,

Bibliothèque Nationale. (Le Prévost, _Mém. sur la 222

collection des Vases de Bernay_, Pls. viii., ix.)

31. Copper coin of Argos, in British Museum. 223

Imperial period. Ins. Νέμεια in crown of celery.

(_B.M. Coins_, Argos, 170)

32. Flute-players. Small Panathenaic (?) amphora, 231

in British Museum, B. 188. Sixth century

33. Panathenaic festival. B.-f. kylix, in British 233

Museum, B. 80. (_J.H.S._ i., Pl vii.)

34. Apobates. Votive relief. Hellenistic period. 238

Athens, Acropolis Museum. (_B.C.H._ vii., Pl.

xvii.)

35. Pyrrhic chorus. Monument of Atarbus. Fourth 240

century. Athens, Acropolis Museum. (Hill,

_Illustrations to the Classics_, Fig. 417; Beulé,

_L’Acropole d’Athènes_, ii., Pl. iv.)

36. Victorious boat on stele of Helvidius. 241

Imperial period. Athens, National Museum. (Ἐφ.

Ἀρχ., 1862, Pl. xxix.; von Sybel, _Katalog_, 3300)

37. Proclaiming a victor. Panathenaic amphora, in 243

British Museum, B. 144. Sixth century

38. Crowning a victor. Panathenaic amphora, in 244

British Museum, B. 138. Sixth century

39. Acrobatic scene. Panathenaic (?) amphora from 245

Camirus. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 243.

(Salzmann, _Nécropole de Cameiros_, Pl. lvii.)

40. Marble chair of judge at Panathenaea. (Stuart 246

and Revett, _Antiquities of Athens_, iii. 3, p.

20)

41. Portion of starting lines at Olympia. 253

(_Olympia_, Tafelb. i. 47)

42. The stadium of Epidaurus, S. E. corner, 255

showing starting lines and rectangular end. (From

a photograph by Mr. Emery Walker)

43. Plan of stadium at Epidaurus. (Πρακτικά, 1902, 258

Pl. i.)

44. Plan of stadium at Delphi. (_B.C.H._, 1899, 258

Pl. xiii.)

45. The starting lines at Delphi. (From a 260

photograph by Mr. Emery Walker)

46. The stadium of Delphi 262

47. Hoplitodromos starting. R.-f. amphora. Louvre. 274

(_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 270; _Bull. Nap. nouv. sér._

vi. 7)

48. Runner starting. R.-f. kylix. Formerly at 275

Naples. (_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 271;

Dubois-Maisonneuve, Pl. xxv.; Inghirami, _Mon.

Etrusc._ v. 2, Pl. lxx.)

49. Runner starting. R.-f. kylix. Chiusi. 276

(Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_, Fig. 6)

50. Dolichodromoi. Panathenaic amphora. Sixth 279

century. (_Mon. d. I._ I., xxii. 7 b)

51. Dolichodromoi. Panathenaic amphora. British 280

Museum, B. 609. Archonship of Niceratus, 333 B.C.

(Hill, _Illustrations to the Classics_, Fig. 390)

52. Stadiodromoi. Panathenaic amphora. Munich, 281

498. Sixth century. (_Mon. d. I._ X., xlviii.,

_l_, _m_)

53. Stadiodromoi. Panathenaic amphora. Fourth 283

century. (Stephani, _C. R. Atlas_, 1876, Pl. i.)

54. Hoplitodromoi, boxers, wrestlers. R.-f. kylix 286

of Euphronius. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 523.

(Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_, Pl. xvi.; _J.H.S._

xxiii. p. 278.) For interior _vide_ Fig. 115

55. Hoplitodromoi; the turn. R.-f. kylix. Formerly 287

in Berlin. (_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 278; _Jahrb._,

1895, p. 190)

56. Hoplitodromoi. R.-f. kylix. Berlin, 2307. 288

(_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 277; Gerh. _A.V._ 261)

57. Hoplitodromoi; the finish. R.-f. kylix. 289

British Museum, E. 818. (_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 285)

58. Hoplitodromoi. Panathenaic amphora. British 290

Museum, B. 608. Archonship of Pythodelus, 336 B.C.

(_Mon. d. I._ X., xlviii. _e_, 3)

59. Hoplitodromoi. R.-f. kylix. Munich, 1240. 292

(_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 284)

60. Leaden halter from Eleusis. Athens, National 298

Museum, 9075. (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1883, 190; Jüthner, _Ant.

Turn._ Fig. 1)

61. Photograph of halteres in British Museum, 299

(_a_) Cast of stone halter from Olympia (Jüthner,

Fig. 9). (_b_) Limestone halter from Camirus

(_B.M. Guide to Greek and Roman Life_, Fig. 41).

(_c_) Leaden halter (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p. 182)

62. Stone halter from Corinth. Athens, National 300

Museum. (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1883, p. 103; Jüthner, _Ant.

Turn._ Fig. 8)

63. Jumper and flute-player. R.-f. pelike. British 302

Museum, E. 427. (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p. 185)

64. Jumpers, akontistes, diskobolos, flute-player. 303

R.-f. krater. Copenhagen (?). (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p.

185; _Annali_, 1846, M.)

65. Jumpers practising and paidotribes. R.-f. 304

kylix. Bologna. (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p. 186; Jüthner,

_Ant. Turn._ Fig. 16)

66. Jumpers, diskobolos, paidotribai. R.-f. kylix. 305

Bourguignon Coll. (_Arch. Zeit._, 1884, xvi.) For

interior _vide_ Fig. 80

67. Jumper about to land. B.-f. amphora. British 306

Museum, B. 48. (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p. 183, ii. p. 219;

Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 15)

68. Jumper running. R.-f. kylix. Chiusi. (_J.H.S._ 307

xxiv. p. 188; Klein, _Euphronios_, p. 306)

69. Standing jump without halteres. R.-f. pelike 309

belonging to Dr. Hauser. (_J.H.S._ xxiii. p. 272;

_Jahrb._, 1895, p. 185)

70. Youth swinging halteres. R.-f. oinochoe. 311

British Museum, E. 561. (_J.H.S._ xxiv. p. 192)

71. Diskobolos holding stone diskos. B.-f. 314

amphora. British Museum, B. 271. (_J.H.S._ xxvii.

Pl. i.) For reverse _vide_ Fig. 141

72. Bronze diskos found at Aegina. Berlin. 315

(Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 20)

73. Bronze diskos of Exoïdas. British Museum, 3207 317

74. Marking the throw of diskos. (_a_) R.-f. 320

kylix. Chiusi. (_b_) R.-f. kylix of Hischylus.

Würzburg, 357, A. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 11; Jüthner,

_Ant. Turn._ Fig. 27)

75. The standing diskobolos. Vatican. Copy of 321

fifth-century original. (From a photograph by

Anderson)

76. Palaestra scene; diskobolos, akontistes. R.-f. 323

kylix. British Museum, E. 6. (_J.H.S._ xxiii. p.

273)

77. Diskobolos, flute-player. B.-f. kelebe. 324

British Museum, B. 361. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 15)

78. Diskobolos. R.-f. krater of Amasis. Corneto. 324

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 16; Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_,

Fig. 56 a)

79. Diskobolos and paidotribes. R.-f. pelike. 325

British Museum, E. 395. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. Pl. iii.)

80. Diskobolos. Interior of Fig. 66 326

81. Bronze statuette of diskobolos. Fifth century. 326

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 18; _Burlington Fine Arts

Club_, 1903, Pl. 50)

82. Diskobolos, paidotribes. B.-f. lekythos. 328

British Museum, B. 576. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. Pl. ii.)

83. Bronze statuette of diskobolos. New York. 329

(_Bulletin of Metropolitan Museum of Art_, iii. p.

32)

84. Bronze statuette of diskobolos. British 330

Museum, 675. Fifth century. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p.

22)

85. Diskobolos. R.-f. kylix. Louvre. (_J.H.S._ 331

xxvii. p. 27; Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_, lxiii. 2)

86. Coins of Cos, in British Museum, representing 332

diskobolos. Fifth century. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 30)

87. Diskobolos. Panathenaic amphora. Naples, Race. 333

Cum. 184. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 32; Jüthner, _Ant.

Turn._ Fig. 31)

88. Diskobolos, flute-player, paidotribes, youth 334

fastening amentum, skapanai. B.-f. hydria. British

Museum, E. 164. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 32; _B.C.H._,

1899, p. 164)

89. Diskobolos. R.-f. kylix. Boulogne, Musée 335

Municipale. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 33; _Le Musée_,

ii. p. 281)

90. Diskobolos. B.-f. hydria. Vienna, 318. 336

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 34)

91. Youth fastening amentum. R.-f. kylix. 340

Würzburg, 432. (Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 37)

92. Various methods of attaching the amentum. 341

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 250)

93. Warrior holding spear by amentum. B.-f. kylix. 342

British Museum, B. 380. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 252)

94. Warriors throwing spears with amenta. François 343

vase, Florence. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 253;

Furtwängler, _Vasenmalerei_, Pl. xiii.)

95. Illustrations of use of the throwing thong. 344

(_a_, _b_) Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Figs. 47, 48.

Reconstruction of throw, (_c_) Detail from _B.M.

Vases_, B. 134. (_d_) The ounep of New Caledonia.

96. Palaestra scene; a wrestling lesson, 345

preparations for javelin-throwing. R.-f. psykter.

Bourguignon Coll. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 259; _Antike

Denkmale_, ii. 20)

97. Akontistes. B.-f. stamnos. Vatican. (_J.H.S._ 346

xxvii. p. 261; _Mus. Greg._ II. xvii.)

98. Mounted warriors throwing javelins by means of 347

amenta. B.-f. vase. Athens, Acropolis Museum, 606.

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 261; B. Graef. _Die antiken

Vasen v. d. Acropolis_, Pl. xxxi.)

99. Diskobolos, akontistes, boxer fastening 348

himantes. R.-f. amphora, in British Museum, E.

256. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. Pl. xix.)

100. Akontistai. R.-f. kylix. Munich, 562 A. 349

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 262; Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._

Fig. 41)

101. Akontistai. R.-f. kylix. Berlin, 3139 inv. 350

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 263; Hartwig,

_Meisterschalen_, Pl. xlvi.)

102. Akontistes. R.-f. kylix. Torlonia, 270 (148). 351

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 264; Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._

Fig. 49)

103. Akontistes, diskobolos, skapane. R.-f. 353

amphora. Munich, 408. (_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 265;

Furtwängler, _Vasenmalerei_, xlv.)

104. Akontistes. R.-f. kylix. Rome(?) (Jüthner, 354

_Ant. Turn._ Fig. 43)

105. Akontistes. R.-f. kylix. Berlin, 2728. 355

(_J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 268; Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._

Fig. 42)

106. Throwing the javelin on horseback. 357

Panathenaic amphora. British Museum. (_J.H.S._

xxvii. Pl. xx.)

107. Pentathlon. Panathenaic amphora. British 360

Museum, B. 134. Sixth century. (_J.H.S._ xxvii.

Pl. xviii.)

108. Pentathlon. Panathenaic amphora. Leyden. 361

Sixth century. (_Arch. Zeit._, 1881, ix.)

109. Wrestling types on coins, in British Museum. 372

(_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 271.) (_a_, _b_, _c_) Aspendus,

fifth and fourth centuries; (_d_) Heraclea in

Lucania, fourth century; (_e_, _f_) Syracuse,

_circa_ 400 B.C.; (_g_) Alexandria, Antoninus Pius

110. One of a pair of wrestling-boys, generally 379

known as diskoboloi. Hellenistic period. Naples.

(From a photograph by Brogi)

111. Wrestling. Panathenaic amphora. British 381

Museum, B. 603. Archonship of Polyzelus, 367 B.C.

(_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 263)

112. Theseus and Cercyon wrestling. R.-f. kylix. 382

British Museum, E. 84. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 264)

113. Wrestling group from b.-f. amphora. British 383

Museum. B. 295. _Vide_ Fig. 143. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p.

270)

114. The flying mare. R.-f. kylix. British Museum, 384

E. 94. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 268)

115. The flying mare. Interior of Fig. 54 385

116. Wrestling groups. Prize vase. R.-f. krater of 386

Andocides. Berlin, 2159. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 270;

_American Journal of Archaeology_, 1896, p. 11)

117. Wrestling. R.-f. krater. Oxford, Ashmolean 387

Museum, 288. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 274; _Catalogue of

Ashmolean Museum_, Pl. xiii.)

118. Reverse of Fig. 143 388

119. Peleus and Atalanta. B.-f. amphora. Munich, 389

584. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 275; Gerh. _A. V._ 177)

120. Wrestling, cross-buttock. Panathenaic 390

amphora. Boulogne, Musée Municipale, 441. Sixth

century. (_Le Musée_, ii. p. 275, Fig. 15)

121. Wrestling groups. B.-f. amphora. Munich, 391

1336. (_J.H.S._ xxv. Pl. xii.)

122. Wrestling group, paidotribes. R.-f. kylix. 392

Philadelphia. (_Trans. of University of

Pennsylvania_, 1907, Pl. xxxv.)

123. Wrestling groups, brabeutes. B.-f. amphora. 393

Munich, 495. (_J.H.S._ xxv. Pl. xii.)

124. Theseus and Cercyon. R.-f. kylix. British 394

Museum, E. 48. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 285)

125. Theseus and Cercyon. R.-f. kylix. British 394

Museum, E. 36. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 285)

126. Theseus and Cercyon. Metope of Theseum. 395

(_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 286; _Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 66)

127. Bronze wrestling group. Paris. (Clarac, 802, 396

2014; Reinach, _Musée de Saint-Germain-en-Laye_,

124)

128. Wrestling, cross-buttock. B.-f. amphora. 397

Vatican. (_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 288; _Mus. Greg._ xvii.

1, _a_)

129. Bronze wrestling group. British Museum. 398

(_J.H.S._ xxv. Pl. xi.)

130. Bronze wrestling group. St. Petersburg. 399

(Stephani, _C.R._, 1867, i. 1, 5; _J.H.S._ xxv. p.

290)

131. Bronze wrestling group. Constantinople. 400

(_J.H.S._ xxv. p. 291; _Jahrb._, 1898, xi.)

132. Boxers taking the oath. R.-f. kylix. British 403

Museum, E. 63. (Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 54)

133. Boxing scenes. R.-f. kylix of Duris. British 404

Museum, E. 39. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. Pl. xii.; Jüthner,

_Ant. Turn._ Fig. 53)

134. Interior of Fig. 151 406

135. Boxers. Panathenaic amphora. British Museum, 407

B. 607. Archonship of Pytliodelus, B.C. 336.

(_Mon. d. I._ X., xlviii. _e_, 2; Jüthner, _Ant.

Turn._ Fig. 67)

136. Statue of boxer seated. Rome, Terme Museum. 408

(From a photograph by Anderson)

137. Right hand of boxer from Sorrento. Naples. 409

(Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 63)

138. Caestus from mosaic in the thermae of 411

Caracalla. Rome, Lateran. (Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._

Fig. 74)

139. Boxers (?) fighting over prize. Bronze 412

situla. Watsch. (Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 61;

_Mitth. d. Central. Comm._, 1883, Pl. ii.)

140. Boxers fighting over tripod. Fragment of 413

b.-f. situla from Daphnae. British Museum, B. 124.

(_Tanis_, ii. 30)

141. Boxer giving signal of defeat. B.-f. amphora 416

in British Museum, B. 271. For reverse _vide_ Fig.

71

142. Boxers, runners, jumper, wearing loin-cloth. 418

B.-f. stamnos. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 252.

(De Ridder, _Catalogue des Vases peints_, i. p.

160)

143. Boxers, wrestlers. B.-f. amphora of 420

Nicosthenes. British Museum, B. 295. _Vide_ Figs.

113, 118

144. Boxers. Panathenaic amphora. Berlin, 1831. 422

Sixth century. (Jüthner, _Ant. Turn._ Fig. 60)

145. Boxers. Panathenaic amphora. Campana Coll. 423

Sixth century. (Stephani, _C.R._, 1876, 109, 44)

146. Boxers. R.-f. kylix of Pamphaeus. Corneto. 424

(Marquardt, _Pentathlon_, Pl. i.; _Mon. d. I._

XI., xxiv.)

147. Boxers. Panathenaic amphora. Louvre, F. 278. 425

Sixth century. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. p. 222)

148. Boxers. Panathenaic amphora. British Museum, 427

B. 612. Fourth century

149. Marble head of boxer, with ear-lappets. 433

Formerly in possession of Fabretti. (Schreiber,

_Atlas_, xxiv. 8; Fabretti, _De Columna Trajani_,

p. 267)

150. Boxers, akontistes, diskobolos, runners. 433

B.-f. hydria. British Museum, B. 326. (Marquardt,

_Pentathlon_, Pl. ii.)

151. Pankration, boxing, hoplitodromos. R.-f. 436

kylix. British Museum, E. 78. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. Pl.

xiii.)

152. Pankration. R.-f. kylix. Baltimore. (_J.H.S._ 437

xxvi. p. 9; Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_, Pl. lxiv.)

153. Pankration. Fragment of R.-f. kylix. Berlin. 438

(_J.H.S._ xxvi. p. 8; Hartwig, _Meisterschalen_,

Fig. 12)

154. Pankration. Panathenaic amphora. Sixth 439

century. (_Mon. d. I._ I., xxii.)

155. Pankration. Panathenaic amphora. Sixth 440

century. (_Mon. d. I._ I. xxii.)

156. Heracles and Antaeus. B.-f. hydria, Munich, 441

114. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. p. 21; _Arch. Zeit._, 1878,

x.)

157. Pankration. Panathenaic amphora of Kittos. 442

British Museum, B. 604. Fourth century. (_J.H.S._

xxvi. Pl. iii.)

158. Pankration. Panathenaic amphora. British 443

Museum, B. 610. Archonship of Nicetes, 332 B.C.

(_J.H.S._ xxvi. Pl. iv.)

159. Pankration. Panathenaic amphora. Lamberg 444

Coll. (_J.H.S._ i. Pl. vi.)

160. Heracles and Triton. B.-f. amphora. British 445

Museum, B. 223. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. p. 15)

161. Heracles and Antaeus. R.-f. kylix. Athens. 446

(_J.H.S._ x. Pl. i.; xxvi. p. 11)

162. Wrestling groups on Graeco-Roman gems in 447

British Museum. (_J.H.S._ xxvi. p. 10)

163. Marble group of pankratiasts. Uffizi Palace, 449

Florence. (Photograph by Brogi)

164. Plan of Aphesis in Hippodrome at Olympia. 453

(After Weniger. _Clio_, 1909, p. 303)

165. Four-horse chariot-race. Panathenaic amphora 456

found at Sparta. Sixth century. (_B.S.A._ xiii.

Pl. v.)

166. Two-horse chariot-race. Panathenaic amphora. 458

British Museum, B. 132. Sixth century

167. Coins of Philip II. of Macedon, in British 459

Museum, (_a_) Silver tetradrachm; victorious

jockey with palm branch, (_b_) Gold stater;

two-horse chariot

168. Silver tetradrachm of Rhegium, in British 460

Museum. Early fifth century. Mule chariot

169. Riding-race. Panathenaic amphora. British 461

Museum, B. 133. Sixth century

170. Silver staters of Tarentum, in British 462

Museum. Third century. (_a_) Mounted torch-bearer.

(_b_) Apobates dismounting

171. Silver tetradrachms of Catana, in British 464

Museum. Fifth century. Four-horse chariot

172. Silver decadrachms of Sicily, in British 465

Museum. Four-horse chariot, (_a_) Agrigentum,

413-406 B.C. (_b_) Syracuse, 400-360 B.C.

173. Scenes in gymnasium. Boxers, wrestlers, 473

paidotribai, diskobolos, akontistes. R.-f. kylix.

Canino Coll. (Gerh. _A. V._ 271)

174. Riding lesson in gymnasium. R.-f. kylix. 474

Munich, 515. (_Arch. Zeit._, 1885, xi.)

175. Scenes in apodyterion of gymnasium. R.-f. 475

kylix. Copenhagen. (Gerh. _A. V._ 281)

176. Scene in apodyterion. R.-f. krater. Berlin, 476

2180. (_Arch. Zeit._, 1879, 4)

177. Boxing, massage. Bronze cista. Vatican. 477

(_Mus. Greg_. i. 37)

178. Korykos. Small r.-f. amphora. St. Petersburg, 478

Hermitage, 1611. (_Annali_, 1870, R.)

179. Korykos. Ficoroni cista. Kirchner Museum, 479

Rome. (Müller-Wieseler, _Denkmäl. d. alt. Kunst_,

i. 61, 309)

180. Men washing at fountain. B.-f. hydria. 480

Leyden, 7794 b. (Roulez, _Choix de vases peints du

Musée de Leyde_, Pl. xix.)

181. Youths washing at a public basin. R.-f. vase. 481

(Tischbein, _Vases Hamilton_, i. 58)

182. Youths washing at a basin. R.-f. kylix. 482

British Museum, E. 83. (Gerh. _A. V._ 277; Tucker,

_Life in Ancient Athens_, Fig. 36)

183. Strigil in British Museum, inscribed with 483

owner’s name Κέλων. Fifth century. (_B.M.

Bronzes_, 256)

184. Plan of gymnasium at Delphi. (_B.C.H._, 1899, 484

Pl. xiii.)

185. Plan of palaestra at Olympia. (_Olympia_, 487

Taf. lxxiii.)

186. Stele of Diodorus, a gymnasiarch; showing 490

oil-tank, crown, palms, votive tablets, and

wrestler’s cap. Found at Prusa. Imperial period.

(_Berichte d. Sächsischen Gesellschaft d.

Wissenschaften_, 1873, Pl. i.; Schreiber, _Atlas_,

xxi. 6)

187. Plan of lower gymnasium, Priene. (_Priene_, 493

Fig. 271)

188. Bath-room in gymnasium, Priene. (_Priene_, 495

Fig. 278)

189. Plan of gymnasia at Pergamum. (Simplified 499

from _Ath. Mitth._ xxix. Pl. viii.; xxxiii. Pl.

xviii.)

190. Stele representing victorious crew. Athens. 508

Hellenistic period. (_J.H.S._ xi. p. 149)

LIST OF THE COMMONEST ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

_Arch. Zeit_ Archäologische Zeitung.

_Ath. Mitth._ Mittheilungen des Deutschen Arch. Inst.,

Athenische Abtheilung.

_B.C.H._ Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique.

_Berl. Vas._ Furtwängler, Beschreibung der

Vasensammlung zu Berlin.

_B.M. Bronzes_ British Museum Catalogue of Bronzes.

_B.M.C._ British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins.

_B.M. Vases_ British Museum Catalogue of Vases, 1893,

etc.

_B.S.A._ Annual of the British School at Athens.

_C.I.G._ Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum.

_C.R._ Comptes rendus de l’Académie des

Inscriptions.

Dar.-Sagl. Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des

antiquités.

Ditt. _Syll._ Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum

Graecarum.

Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική.

Gerhard, _A. V._ Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder.

_Greek Sculpture_ E. A. Gardner, Handbook of Greek

Sculpture.

_I.G._ Inscriptions Graecae.

_Jahrb._ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen

Instituts.

_J.H.S._ Journal of Hellenic Studies.

Krause, _Gym._ J. H. Krause, Die Gymnastik und

Agonistik der Hellenen.

_Mon. d. I._ Monumenti dell’ Instituto.

_Ol._ Olympia. Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung.

_Ol. Ins._ Die Inschriften von Olympia = Textb. v.

of “Die Ergebnisse.”

_Ox. Pap._ Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

_Rev. Arch._ Revue Archéologique.

_Röm. Mitth._ Mittheilungen des Deutschen

Archäologischen Instituts, Römische

Abtheilung.

PART I

A HISTORY OF GREEK ATHLETICS AND ATHLETIC FESTIVALS FROM THE EARLIEST

TIMES TO 393 A.D.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The recent revival of the Olympic games is a striking testimony to the

influence which ancient Greece still exercises over the modern world,

and to the important place which athletics occupied in the life of the

Greeks. Other nations may have given equal attention to the physical

education of the young; other nations may have been equally fond of

sport; other nations may have produced individual athletes, individual

performances equal or superior to those of the Greeks, but nowhere can

we find any parallel to the athletic ideal expressed in the art and

literature of Greece, or to the extraordinary vitality of her athletic

festivals. The growth of this ideal, and the history of the athletic

festivals, are the subject of the following chapters.

The athletic ideal of Greece is largely due to the practical character

of Greek athletics. Every Greek had to be ready to take the field at a

moment’s notice in defence of hearth and home, and under the conditions

of ancient warfare his life and liberty depended on his physical

fitness. This is especially true of the earlier portion of Greek

history, but is more or less true of the whole period with which we are

concerned. Greece was never free from war—wars of faction, wars of state

against state, wars against foreign invaders—and ancient warfare made no

distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Every citizen was a

soldier, physical fitness was a necessity to him, and his athletic

exercises were admirably calculated to produce this fitness. Running and

jumping made him active and sound of wind; throwing the diskos and the

spear trained hand and eye for the use of weapons; wrestling and boxing

taught him to defend himself in hand-to-hand warfare.

The practical value of these exercises explains their importance in

Greek education. They constituted what the Greeks described as

“gymnastic,” the term “athletics” being properly confined to

competitions. Gymnastic trained the body as music trained the mind.

There was no artificial separation, no antagonism between the two such

as has disfigured much of our modern education. The one was the

complement of the other: together they comprised the whole of Greek

education. An ill-trained body was as much a sign of an ill-educated man

as ignorance of letters, and the training of the body by athletic

exercises distinguished the Greek from the barbarian. The training began

often as early as seven, but it did not end at the age when boys leave

school. The Greek did not consider his education finished at the age of

sixteen or seventeen, and he continued the training of body and mind

till middle age or later, daily resorting to the gymnasium for exercise

and recreation.

Music and gymnastic reacted on one another. The tone and manly vigour

which athletic exercises gave saved the Greek from the effeminacy and

sensuality to which the artistic temperament is prone. At the same time

the refining influence of music saved him from the opposite faults of

brutality and Philistinism. The Greek carried the artist’s love of

beauty into his sports. Mere strength and bulk appealed to him no more

in the human body than they did in art. Many of his exercises were

performed to music, and he paid as much attention to the style in which

he performed as to the result of his performance. This love of form

refined even his competitions. Hence, in spite of his love of

competition, the Greek was no record-breaker. In this we have one of the

principal differences which distinguished Greek from modern athletics,

in which the passion for records is becoming more and more prevalent.

The Greek did not care for records, and he kept no records. It is

futile, therefore, to try to compare the performances of Greek athletes

and of modern. But of the effect which athletic training produced on the

national physique in the fifth century, we can judge from the art which

it inspired. The sculptors of this period portrayed the most perfect

types of physical development, of strength combined with grace, that the

world has ever seen. The athletic art of Greece is the noblest tribute

to the results of Greek education at its best.

A further difference between modern and Greek athletics results from the

practical character of the latter. The Greek regarded athletics as an

essential part of his education and life; we usually regard them as

recreation or play, and it is only of late years that their educational

value has been realized. Consequently in England athletic games have to

a large extent superseded athletics proper. In some respect games have a

decided advantage; their interest is more varied, there is more scope

for combination, and they are undoubtedly superior as a training of

character. On the other hand, they do not produce the same all-round

development as an athletic system like that of the Greeks produced. In

many cases the benefit derived from them is confined to the skilled

players. They tend to become too scientific, and when this is the case

require an expenditure of time and an amount of organization which put

them beyond the reach of most men when they have left school.

The interest which is somewhat wanting in pure athletics was provided in

Greece by innumerable competitions. The love of competition was

characteristic of the Greek. In whatever he did, he sought to excel his

fellows, and the rivalry between cities was as keen as that between

individuals. On the table on which the prizes were placed at Olympia,

the figure of Agon or Competition was represented side by side with that

of Ares. There were competitions in music, poetry, drama, recitation. At

some places there were beauty competitions for men, or boys, or women.

We hear of competitions in drinking and in keeping awake. Strangest of

all was a competition in kissing, which took place at the Dioclea at

Megara. But no competitions were so numerous or so popular as athletic

and equestrian competitions. The Greek was always competing or watching

competitions; yet, strange to say, among all the evils produced by

over-competition, betting was not found.

Competitions were from an early time associated with religious

Festivals. And it is to this association with religion that Greek

athletics owed their wonderful vitality. The connexion between sport and

religion dates from the early custom of celebrating a chieftain’s

funeral with a feast and games. Sometimes the chieftain’s tomb became a

religious and political centre for the neighbouring tribes, where a

festival was held in his honour at stated periods. Some of these

festivals retained their local character, others gradually extended

their influence till they became national meeting-places for the whole

Greek race.

These Panhellenic festivals played an important part in the politics of

Greece. They appealed to those two opposite principles which determine

the whole history of Greece, the love of autonomy and the pride of

Hellenism. The independent city states felt that they were competing in

the persons of their citizens, whose fortunes they identified with their

own. At the same time, the gathering of citizens from every part of the

Greek world quickened the consciousness of common brotherhood, and kept

them true to those traditions of religion and education which

distinguished Greek from barbarian.

Enough has been said to show the importance of athletics in the whole

life of the Greeks, and their intimate connexion with their education,

their art, their religion, and their politics. It is by virtue of this

many-sided interest that the subject deserves the attention of all who

are interested in the life and thought of Greece.

At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the athletic ideal which

we have described was only realized during a short period of the fifth

century, under the purifying influence of the enthusiasm evoked by the

war with Persia. Even then, perhaps, it was only partially realized. We

must not close our eyes to the element of exaggeration inherent in all

such ideals. Before the close of the fifth century the excessive

prominence given to bodily excellence and athletic success had produced

specialization and professionalism. From this time sport, over-developed

and over-specialized, became more and more the monopoly of a class, and

consequently ceased to invigorate the national life. The old games, in

which all competed in friendly and honourable rivalry, gave place to

professional displays, in which victory was too often bought and sold,

where an unathletic crowd could enjoy the excitement of sport by proxy.

Yet in spite of specialization, professionalism, corruption, in spite of

all the vicissitudes through which Greece passed, the athletic festivals

survived. The athletic ideal, often and long obscured, but never wholly

lost, reappeared from time to time in different parts of the Greek

world, till, under the patronage of the Antonines, the Panhellenic

festivals recovered some semblance at least of their olden glory.

The extraordinary vitality of those festivals gives interest to the

attempt to trace their history. This history extends over some 1200

years. We are apt to limit our conceptions of Greek history to the few

centuries comprised in the curricula of our universities and schools,

and to forget that Greek history does not end with the death of

Alexander, or even with the loss of Greek independence, but that, under

the rule of Rome, the life of Greece, its institutions and festivals,

went on, to a great extent, unchanged, acquiring more and more hold over

her conquerors, till the whole Roman world was Hellenized, and with the

founding of Constantinople the centre of the empire itself was

transferred to Greek soil. To such a narrow conception of history it is

a wholesome corrective to trace the story of one branch of Greek

activity from beginning to end. And nowhere can the continuity of Greek

life be traced more clearly than in the history of her athletic

festivals. That we are able to do so is chiefly due to the excavations

conducted at Olympia under the auspices of the German government, which

are still being continued by Dr. Dörpfeld. It is for this reason that in

the following chapters the history of Olympia forms the basis of the

history of Greek athletics.

The story of Greek athletics has a peculiarly practical interest in the

present day in view of the development of athletics which has taken

place in the last fifty years, and of the revival of the Olympic games.

There are striking resemblances between the history of modern athletics

and of Greek. The movement began in the sports of our public schools and

universities, spread rapidly through all English-speaking lands, and is

now extending to the Continent. Athletics are as popular among us as

they were in Greece, and for us, as for the Greeks, they have been a

great instrument of good. Unfortunately the signs of excess are no less

manifest to-day than they were in the times of Xenophanes and Euripides.

History repeats itself strangely. We have seen the same growth of

competition, the same hero-worship of the athlete, the same publicity

and prominence given to sport out of all proportion to its deserts, the

same tendency to specialization and professionalism. Sport has too often

become an end in itself. The hero-worship of the athlete tempts men to

devote to selfish amusement the best years of their lives, and to

neglect the true interests of themselves and of their country. The evil

is worse with us, because our games have not the practical value as a

military training which Greek sports had. Still more grievous than this

waste of time and energy is the absorbing interest taken by the general

public in the athletic performances of others. The crowds which watch a

professional football match, the still larger crowds of those who think

and read of little else, the columns of the daily press devoted to

accounts of such matches, are no proof of an athletic nation, but rather

of the reverse. They are merely a sign of an unhealthy love of

excitement and amusement, and of the absence of all other interests. Of

the evils of professionalism this is no place to speak. They are well

known to any one who has followed the history of boxing, wrestling, or

football. The history of football during the last two years is ominous.

On the one hand we see the leading amateur clubs revolting from the

tyranny of a Football Association conducted in the interests of various

joint-stock companies masquerading as Football Clubs; on the other hand

we see the professional players forming a trades-union to protect

themselves against the tyranny of this same commercialism. The Rugby

Union has struggled manfully to uphold the purity of the game, and has

often received but scanty encouragement for its efforts. Fortunately

there are signs that public opinion is changing, and is beginning to

appreciate the efforts of the amateur bodies controlling various sports.

The very existence of these bodies proves how real the danger is. Under

these circumstances the history of the decline of Greek athletics is an

object-lesson full of instruction.

What has been said above explains perhaps why the revival of the Olympic

games has not been received in England with any great amount of

enthusiasm. The promoters of these games were inspired by the ideal of

ancient Greece, and wished to establish a great international athletic

meeting which would be for the nations of the world what Olympia was for

Greece. We must all sympathize with their aspirations. Unfortunately

they do not seem to have realized the full lesson of Greek athletics,

nor did they realize the dangers of competition on so vast a scale under

the more complicated conditions of modern life. In England, where

athletics have already developed to an extent unknown on the Continent,

we have begun to realize the dangers of over-competition. The experience

of recent years has taught us that international competitions do not

always make for amity, and do not always promote amateur sport. The

events of the last Olympic games, and the subsequent performances of

some of the victors of these games, particularly of the fêted heroes of

the so-called Marathon race, have gone far to justify the forebodings of

those who feared that one of the chief results of such a competition

would be an increase in professionalism.

CHAPTER II

ATHLETICS IN HOMER

Greek civilization is regarded by modern authorities as the result of a

fusion between two races—a short, dark, highly artistic race belonging

to that Eurafrican stock which seems at one time to have peopled not

only the Aegean, but all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and a tall,

fair-haired, athletic race the branches of which penetrated by

successive invasions into the southern extremities of Europe, while

their main body spread over central Europe westwards as far as our own

islands. It was to the physical vigour and restless energy of the latter

race that the Greeks owed their colonial activity and their love of

sport. And it is perhaps no mere accident that these same

characteristics have been so marked in our own history. But if the

Greeks owed to the fair-haired invaders from the North the athletic

impulse, the development and persistence of Greek athletics is largely

due to the artistic temperament of the original inhabitants.

The practical character of Greek sports indicates a nation of warriors.

The chariot-race and foot-race, boxing, wrestling, throwing the stone

and the spear, were as naturally the outcome of the Homeric civilization

as the tournament and the archery meeting were of the conditions of

fighting in the middle ages, or the rifle meeting of those of our own

day. Moreover, the myths with which Greek fancy invested the origin of

their sports point to an age of fighting and conquest. Olympia, as we

shall see, stood on the highway of the northern invaders, and at Olympia

the institution of the games is connected with such tales as the

conquest of Cronus by Zeus, of Oenomaus by Pelops, of Augeas by

Heracles, and the return of the Heracleidae, tales which clearly had

their rise in the struggles of rival races and religions. Again, Greek

athletics were chiefly, though not entirely, the product of the

Peloponnese. Three of the four great festivals were in the Peloponnese,

including the Olympic festival, the prototype of all the rest; the

athletic school of sculpture originated in the Peloponnese, and physical

training was carried to its highest point in Sparta. Now it was in the

Peloponnese that the invading races established themselves most

strongly; the fair-haired Achaeans made themselves masters of the

Mycenaean world, and their Dorian successors preserved their own

characteristics in their greatest purity at Sparta. These considerations

justify us in ascribing the athletic impulse to the northern invaders.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. Fragment of Steatite Pyxis. Cnossus.]

Excavations on Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean sites furnish some testimony,

chiefly negative, in favour of this view. The civilization disclosed by

the excavations at Cnossus and other Cretan sites is an Aegean product

influenced possibly by Egypt and the East, but certainly not by the

mainland of Greece, though its own influence was probably extensive.

Cretan civilization, like Egyptian, seems so much a thing apart that it

hardly comes into our subject. In Egypt, indeed, we find depicted in the

tombs of Beni-Hassan a varied array of athletic sports and games,

including a most wonderful series of over 300 wrestling groups, but even

Herodotus does not venture to ascribe Greek athletics to the Egyptians.

At Cnossus the favourite sport seems to have been a sort of

bull-baiting.[1] A fresco discovered by Dr. Evans represents a girl

toreador in a sort of cowboy costume in the act of being tossed by a

bull, while a youth appears to be turning a somersault over the animal’s

back into the arms of a girl who stands behind the bull. Sometimes on

gems a youth is depicted “springing from above, and seizing the bull’s

horns in cowboy fashion.” The latter scene has also been found in a

fresco at Tiryns, and a similar sport known as ταυροκαθαψία survived in

historical times in Thessaly.[2] These purely acrobatic feats have

nothing distinctively athletic about them, any more than dancing,

another favourite Minoan spectacle, for which possibly was intended a

square theatre surrounded by rows of seats at the north-west of the

palace. Indeed, such scenes are the very reverse of athletic; for

history has shown that the peoples who find pleasure in such

performances have ceased to be, even if they ever have been, themselves

athletic. The only form of true athletics represented is boxing, which

occurs on some clay sealings, on a steatite relief (Fig. 1), and in

conjunction with a bull-hunting scene on a steatite rhyton found at

Hagia Triada.[3] The boxers are muscular and athletic-looking, their

attitude is decidedly vigorous. They wear, according to Dr. Evans, a

kind of glove or caestus, but the illustrations do not enable us to

determine its character, and I do not feel sure that any such covering

is intended. Anyhow, the Minoan boxer has a distinctly gladiatorial

look, which is quite in harmony with the bull-baiting scenes. We shall

probably not be far wrong in assuming that Minos, like oriental despots,

kept his own prize-ring, and that his courtiers preferred to be

spectators of the deeds of others rather than to take any active part in

sports themselves. Sports and games, of course, existed in Crete as in

all countries, but there is no evidence in Crete of anything from which

Greek athletics could have developed. The unathletic character of the

Aegean people is confirmed by the absolute absence of anything athletic

at Mycenae and Tiryns, if we except the bull scenes, a fact which

certainly supports the modern view that the Mycenaean civilization was

due chiefly to the conquered inhabitants, and not to the Achaean

conquerors, whom we know from Homer to have been skilled in all games.

In Homer we find ourselves at once in an atmosphere of true sport, of

sport for the simple love of the physical effort and the struggle. The

wrestling and boxing may be “distressful,” but just as every sportsman

finds a “hard game” the most enjoyable, so the struggle in Homer is a

joy to the young man who makes trial of his strength, a joy to the

veteran who, as he watches, revives in memory the triumphs of his youth,

and a joy too to the poet.[4] It is this feeling that makes the

description of the games of Patroclus a perpetual delight to any one who

has ever felt himself the joy of sport, and that almost justifies the

words of Schiller, that he who has lived to read the 23rd _Iliad_ has

not lived in vain. The joy is never quite the same afterwards. Even in

Pindar it is no longer unalloyed. With the stress of competition other

feelings and motives have entered in, and something of the heroic

courtesy is lost: side by side with the joy of victory we are conscious

of the bitterness of defeat. In Homer we feel only the joy, the joy of

youth.

The description of the games in the _Iliad_ could only have been written

by a poet living among an athletic people with a long tradition of

athletics, and such are the Achaeans. Sports are part of the education

of every Achaean warrior, and distinguish him from the merchant. “No,

truly, stranger,” says Euryalus to Odysseus, “nor do I think thee at all

like one that is skilled in games whereof there are many among men,

rather art thou such an one as comes and goes in a benched ship, a

master of sailors that are merchantmen, one with a memory for his

freight, or that hath the charge of a cargo homeward bound, and of

greedily gotten gains; thou seemest not a man of thy hands.”[5]

Euryalus is a Phaeacian, and the Phaeacians, be it remarked, are not

Achaeans. Who they are we know not—whether, as Victor Bérard assures us,

Phoenicians, or a branch of that Aegean folk whose wondrous civilization

has been revealed to us at Cnossus, or a creation of the poet’s brain.

In Homer they are a mysterious folk, and this is not the place to try

and solve the mystery. One thing is certain: they are not true Achaeans,

and though the poet ascribes to them much of the manners of the

Achaeans, including their games, he lets us know with a delightful

humour that they are not quite the real thing. Their love of sport is

assumed, and consequently somewhat exaggerated. “There is no greater

glory for a man,” says Laodamas, “than that which he achieves by hand

and foot.”[6] We can hardly imagine such a sentiment from one of the

heroes of the _Iliad_, or from the Odysseus of the _Odyssey_. The

Phaeacian, however, is somewhat of a braggart, and wishes to pose as a

sportsman before a stranger, who is no longer young, and whom he

certainly does not suspect of being an athlete. “Let us make trial,”

says Alcinous, “of divers games, that the stranger may tell his friends

when home he returneth how greatly we excel all men in boxing and

wrestling, and leaping and speed of foot”[7]—a harmless boast and safe

apparently. But Odysseus, stung by their taunts, picks up a diskos

larger than the Phaeacians ever threw and hurls it far beyond their

marks, and then in his anger challenges any of the Phaeacians to try the

issue in boxing, or in wrestling, or any sport except running, for

which, after his buffeting in the sea, he is not quite in condition. At

once the tune changes, and Alcinous confesses that after all the

Phaeacians are no perfect boxers nor wrestlers, but (a safe boast after

what Odysseus has said!) speedy runners and the best of seamen. And then

the truth comes out: “Dear to us ever is the banquet, and the harp and

the dance, and changes of raiment, and the warm bath and love and

sleep!” Clearly the Phaeacians are no sportsmen, nor Achaeans, and we

have really no concern with them; but I may be pardoned for dwelling on

this delightful scene, because through it all we can trace the truth

that to the poet every warrior is a sportsman, a man of his hands, and

that the sportsman is not occupied with “greedily gotten gains.”

The same scene tells us, too, that sports are no new thing among the

Achaeans. Odysseus, when challenging the Phaeacians, recalls the prowess

of his youth, just as in the _Iliad_ the aged Nestor recalls his

victories in the games which the Epeans held at Buprasium at the funeral

of Amarynces. But there is a yet remoter past in which heroes and gods

contended. “There were giants in those days” is always the theme of the

aged sportsman, and Odysseus, though more than a match for all his

contemporaries, confesses that with the men of old he would not vie,

with Heracles and Eurytus, “who contended with the immortal gods.”

But though the Achaeans were an athletic race with a long tradition of

athletes, we must beware of the common fallacy of introducing into Homer

the ideas and arrangements of later Greek athletics. Homeric tradition

undoubtedly influenced Greek athletics, but to talk of the Homeric

gymnasium, the Homeric stadium, the Homeric pentathlon, or solemnly to

explain Homer in the light of these institutions, is as ridiculous as to

talk of King Arthur’s school of physical training or Robin Hood’s

shooting gallery. The Homeric Greek had no gymnasium, no race-course, no

athletic meeting. There was nothing artificial about his sports: they

were the natural product of a warlike race, part of the daily life of

the family. They were the education of the boys, the recreation of the

men, and even the elders took their share in teaching and encouraging

the younger. For physical vigour and skill in military exercises were

indispensable to the chieftain in an age when battles were won by

individual prowess. No elaborate arrangements were necessary; the

courtyard would serve for a wrestling ring, the open country for a

race-course, and when sports were to be held on a larger scale a

suitable space could be quickly cleared. For though there were no

athletic meetings, there were friendly gatherings for sports in plenty.

On the occasion of any gathering, whether to entertain a distinguished

guest, to offer a sacrifice, or to pay the last rites to a departed

chieftain, sports formed part of the programme. Sometimes prizes were

offered—a victim or an ox-hide for the foot-race, a woman or a tripod

for the chariot-race. Particularly was this the case in the funeral

sports, when the prizes were rich and numerous.

The value of the prizes seems intended to mark the generosity of the

giver of the games, and to show honour to the dead rather than to

attract or reward competitors. That they were rather gifts, mementoes of

the dead, than prizes, is clear from the fact that at the games of

Patroclus every competitor receives a prize, in one case even without a

competition. Sometimes, as in the days of the tournament, a weighty

issue might be decided by an athletic contest. Instances of this are

frequent in the legends of the Greeks: in Homer we have the fatal

contest with the bow of Odysseus by which Penelope proposed to decide

between her importunate suitors. But whatever the occasion, the Homeric

games differed entirely from the athletic festival or meeting. They were

impromptu, almost private entertainments, in which only the invited

guests, or, in the case of a prince’s funeral, the neighbouring princes

or leaders of the army took part. When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar,

craved leave to try the bow, the request was met with a storm of protest

from the suitors.

From what has been said it is clear that the Homeric games were chiefly

aristocratic: it was the sceptred kings and their families who excelled

in all games, and who alone entered for competitions, though, as we

shall see, the common soldiers too had their sports.

In considering the different events of the Homeric sports, it will be

convenient to follow the description of the funeral games of Patroclus

in the _Iliad_. First in order of time and of honour comes the

chariot-race, the most aristocratic of all the events, the monopoly of

chieftains who went to war in chariots. Too important an event for

casual gatherings, it was especially connected with great funeral games.

Here, as we have noticed, rich prizes were offered, and the possession

of a fine stud of horses was a source of considerable profit. Thus

Agamemnon enumerates among the gifts with which he hopes to appease

Achilles twelve “prize-winning” steeds who have already won him no small

fortune.

In the _Odyssey_ we have no mention of the chariot-race; and naturally

so, for Ithaca (wherever it be) is no land “that pastureth horses,” nor

does it possess “wide courses or meadow-land.” In the _Iliad_ it is

otherwise; the plains of Thessaly and Argos, the homes of Achilles and

the Atreidae, were always famed for their horses, and in the plain of

Troy the Greek charioteers found ample scope. It is interesting, too, to

note that, except at Troy, the only other chariot-races mentioned in the

_Iliad_ are in spacious Elis,[8] which was in Homeric times the land of

the Epeans, where the lords of Ithaca kept studs of horses, and in

historic times the scene of the Olympic festival. It was at Buprasium in

Elis that Nestor competed at the funeral games of Amarynces; and on a

former occasion his father Neleus had gone to war with Augeas because

the latter had seized four horses which he had sent to Elis to compete

in the games for a tripod. The mention of four horses is suspicious, for

the chariot in which the Achaean heroes raced was the two-horse

war-chariot. There are also other reasons for supposing the passage to

be a late interpolation subsequent to the institution of the Olympic

chariot-race.

For the chariot-race Achilles provides five prizes—“for the winner a

woman skilled in fair handiwork and a tripod, for the second a

six-year-old mare in foal, for the third a goodly caldron untouched by

the fire, for the fourth two talents of gold, for the fifth a

two-handled urn.” For the five prizes there are five competitors. On the

details of the competitors and of their horses we must not linger, nor

on the lecture on the art of driving which the aged Nestor reads to his

son Antilochus. Critics complain that it interrupts the narrative; but

the rambling, prosy speech is delightfully characteristic of the

garrulous old sportsman, and so human! Its point seems to consist in

certain information which he gives about the course; for it is no

regular race-course, like the later hippodrome. It is a natural course

selected for the occasion like that of a point-to-point race, save that

in this case the chariots after rounding the goal return to the starting

point. On such a course local knowledge is invaluable. The point

selected for the goal is a withered tree-stump with a white stone on

either side of it—a monument of some dead man, or a goal for the race

set up by men of old—and round it is smooth driving ground. At this

point, which is just visible from the start, the two tracks meet—not

necessarily parallel tracks, for chariots cannot take a bee-line from

point to point, but must follow the lie of the ground. Here Achilles

places an umpire, godlike Phoenix, “to note the running and tell the

truth thereof”; for though the goal is just visible, the track is

sometimes lost to the spectators’ view, and as the chariots round the

mark they disappear from sight for a time. The track, like Greek roads

in general, is not of the smoothest, and in one part has been partially

washed away by a torrent, so that there is no room for two chariots to

pass. Possibly the road in this part, as is often the case, passed along

the actual bed of the winter torrent.

The charioteers draw lots for their places, and then the chariots take

their place in a line. Commentators gravely debate whether the Greek

means “in a line” or “in file,” like a row of hansom cabs! But there is

no subject wherein commentators are so rampant as in athletics, and

there is no athletic absurdity which they do not father upon the Greeks,

who, after all, really did know a little about sports. We are not told

how the horses were started—we must hurry on with the poet to the

finish. How Apollo made Tydeides drop his whip, and how Athene restored

it to him and then made the leader’s horses run off the course and wreck

his chariot; how Antilochus when they came to the broken part of the

course “bored” Menelaus and deprived him of the place; how the

spectators quarrelled as to which chariot was leading, and Idomeneus

offered to bet Aias a caldron or a tripod; how Antilochus apologised for

his youthful impetuosity and Menelaus generously forgave him; how every

man received his prize, even he whose chariot was broken,—all this is

known to every reader of Homer; to retell it would be sacrilege.

Particularly charming is the scene where Achilles presents Nestor with a

prize which has been left over as a “memorial of Patroclus’ burying.” In

recalling his youthful victories at Buprasium the old man mentions that

he was defeated in the chariot-race by the two sons of Actor, one of

whom held the reins while the other plied the whip. Here apparently we

have a hint of an earlier form of the chariot-race, where, as in war,

the chieftain was accompanied by his charioteer. In Achilles’ time there

is already a difference between the sport and the reality.

The next two events—the boxing and the wrestling matches—are described

as ἀλεγεινός, “hard” or “distressful,” an epithet which, as before

observed, seems rather a recommendation than otherwise. Indeed these two

sports, which are always mentioned together, already held the position

of pre-eminence which they held at the time of Pindar, and they formed

the chief part of the Achaean chieftain’s athletic education. For boxing

and wrestling are essentially exercises of skill. The child and the

savage hit, kick, tear, scratch, bite, and from this primitive

rough-and-tumble the Greek in later time developed the scientific

pankration; it is only the civilised man who distinguishes boxing and

wrestling, who uses the fist to strike and conducts a fight by rules. In

Homer both wrestling and boxing are already arts, and though in their

rougher form popular sports, the science of them seems to have been the

monopoly of the chieftains, perhaps, like the Japanese jiu-jitsu,

jealously handed down from father to son. The importance of the art of

self-defence in those unsettled times is obvious from the many legends

of robbers and bullies who challenged strangers to a bout of wrestling

or boxing, till their career of murder was cut short by a Heracles, a

Theseus, or a Polydeuces, in whose victories later art and story

represented the triumph of science and Hellenism over brute force and

barbarism. Such a victory Odysseus himself is said to have won in Lesbos

over Philomeleides, whom he threw mightily, and all the Achaeans

rejoiced.[9] In Homer, Polydeuces is already “the boxer,” and Odysseus

“of many counsels” wins glory both as boxer and wrestler.

For the boxing Achilles offers two prizes. Epeius at once advances and

claims the first prize. In his somewhat brutal arrogance, and his

admission that, though superior to all in boxing, he falls short in

actual warfare, we have perhaps a foretaste of the later professional

boxer. But mock modesty is no characteristic of the Greeks, and poetic

nemesis was not to be meted out; moreover, his boastfulness is atoned

for by his courtesy in his victory. Still, in the contrast between real

war and the sport we seem to see the poet’s judgment that athletics are

man’s recreation, not his business. The challenge of Epeius is accepted

by Euryalus, who came of a boxing stock; for his father Mecisteus had

formerly defeated all the Cadmeans at the burial of Oedipodes. Their

friends help to gird them, and bind on the well-cut thongs of oxhide.

The loin-belt was, as we shall see, discarded later on, but the thongs

remained unchanged till the fifth century, when we shall find them

constantly depicted on the vases. Then the two “lifted up stalwart hands

and fell to. And noble Epeius came on, and as the other cast a glance

around, smote him on the cheek, nor could he much more stand, for his

fair limbs straightway failed under him, and as when beneath the north

wind’s ripple a fish leapeth on a tangle-covered beach, and then the

black wave hideth it, so leapt Euryalus at that blow. But the

great-hearted Epeius took him in his hands and set him upright, and his

dear comrades stood around him and led him through the ring with

trailing foot, spitting out clotted blood, drooping his head awry, and

they set him down in his swoon among them.” The description is perfectly

clear. Epeius forced the fighting, and catching his opponent off his

guard knocked him out in orthodox, or, as some purists would say,

unorthodox, fashion with a swinging uppercut on the point of the jaw.

A yet better description of a fight with a similar finish occurs in the

_Odyssey_.[10] Odysseus, returning to his home disguised as a beggar,

finds installed there the professional beggar Irus, who at once picks a

quarrel with him. The suitors, delighted and amused at the prospect of a

fight between a pair of beggars, form a ring round the pair and egg them

on, promising to the winner a haggis that is cooking at the fire. But

when the beggars strip and gird up their rags they see that they are

mistaken in one of their men. Odysseus strips like an athlete, clean and

big of limb, and the suitors marvel. Irus too, despite his bulk,

marvels, and would fain withdraw. But it is too late: the suitors will

not be baulked of their fun, and the fight starts. Of course it is a

foregone conclusion, and Odysseus himself knows it. He knows, too, what

he can do; his only doubt is whether he shall kill the braggart

outright, or strike him lightly to the earth. He decides on the latter

course, and proceeds to dispose of him in most artistic fashion. Irus

leads off with a clumsy left-hander at Odysseus’ right shoulder, and

Odysseus cross-counters with a blow on the neck below the ear which

knocks him out. Fights of this sort were doubtless common occurrences,

and a little science must have been a very useful possession. That the

Achaeans did possess something of the science is clear from the two

fights described in Homer, though their science seems rather of the

unconventional American type, and does not commend itself to staunch

supporters of the orthodox English school.

For wrestling also two prizes are offered, a tripod valued at twelve

oxen, and a “woman skilled in all manner of work” valued only at four

oxen. For the two prizes there are two competitors, no less persons than

Odysseus and Ajax, the types respectively of cleverness and strength.

The match is conducted under definite rules, the rules of what was

called “upright wrestling,” in which, the object being to throw the

opponent, ground wrestling was not allowed. Girding themselves the two

advanced “into the midst of the ring, and clasped each the other in his

arms with stalwart hands like gable rafters of a lofty house.” The

attitude is identical with that adopted by Westmorland and Cumberland

wrestlers to-day. Then came the struggle for a closer grip; but when

after much striving neither could gain an advantage, Ajax suggested an

expedient that each in turn should allow the other to obtain a fair grip

and try to throw him by lifting him off the ground. There is here no

suggestion of unfairness, but undoubtedly the advantage is with the

heavier man. Odysseus, however, was equal to the occasion, and as Ajax

lifted him, not forgetful of his art, he struck him with his foot behind

the knee, in technical language “hammed” him, and so brought him to the

ground, falling heavily upon him. As both wrestlers fell together the

bout was inconclusive. Next came Odysseus’ turn: unable to lift his

bulky opponent off the ground “he crooked his knee within the other’s,

and both fell sideways.” The chip employed was apparently “the hank” or

“the inside click” of the modern wrestler. But the fall was what is

known as a dog-fall, and inconclusive. The two were proceeding to the

third bout when Achilles put an end to the contest, and awarded to each

an equal prize.

Futile efforts have been made to explain the verdict by showing that

Odysseus won the first bout and Ajax the second; the explanation given

above rests on the simple supposition that when both wrestlers fell, no

fall was scored. If each had won one bout, the excitement would have

been too intense for the contest to be stopped, but two inconclusive

bouts were naturally tedious to the spectators.

The foot-race need not detain us long. There were three prizes and three

competitors; among them, in spite of his recent exertions, the veteran

Odysseus. The course was of the same impromptu type described for the

chariot-race, round some distant mark and back to the starting place,

where the ground was wet and slippery with the blood of the oxen

slaughtered for sacrifice. It was a great race. Ajax, the son of Oeleus,

led, while Odysseus followed closely in his track amid the cheers of the

Achaeans. As they neared the finish Odysseus prayed to Athene, who “made

his limbs feel light, both feet and hands”—a delightful description of

the spurt; but not content with such legitimate aid, she caused Ajax,

just as they reached the prize, to slip in the victim’s blood. But in

Homer there is no ill-feeling at such incidents; the defeated rivals

merely comment good-humouredly on the interference of the goddess, just

as the modern sportsman, not always so good-humouredly, on his

opponent’s luck. “Friends, ye will bear me witness when I say that even

herein the immortals favour elder men.” What the moderns ascribe to

luck, the Achaeans, like all the ancients, ascribed to the direct action

of the gods: it is a later age that makes fortune a goddess.

Of the four remaining events, three at least—the single combat between

Ajax and Diomede, throwing the solos, and the contest with the bow—are

admitted even by the most conservative critics to be a late

interpolation; the fourth event—throwing the spear—is usually assigned

to the earlier account of the games, though one of the arguments

adduced, that spear-throwing formed part of the Homeric pentathlon,

seems singularly weak! There is no suggestion in Homer of any such thing

as the pentathlon, a competition consisting of five events in which the

same competitors competed, and to talk of the Homeric pentathlon merely

because Nestor happens to mention five events in the games at Buprasium

is quite unhistorical and most misleading. It would be more to the point

to urge that spear-throwing, throwing the solos or diskos, and archery

go together, because these same three events are mentioned together in

the 2nd _Iliad_.[11] But this is no place for the details of Homeric

criticism. For our present purpose we can learn nothing from the passage

about Homeric spear-throwing, for the simple reason that the competition

never came off, Achilles out of courtesy to his leader assigning the

first prize to Agamemnon without a contest.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Scene from Clazomenae Sarcophagus in British

Museum.]

It is unnecessary to consider in detail the confused and lifeless

descriptions of these events, but a word must be said of the events

themselves. The combat between armed men is depicted on a sixth-century

sarcophagus from Clazomenae, now in the British Museum (Fig. 2).[12]

Here, among chariots in full course, or preparing for the race, we see

pairs of warriors fighting. They are armed with helmet, spear, and

shield, and between each pair stands a youth playing the pipes to show

the nature of the fight. At either end stands a pillar bearing a bowl

for the prize, while against the pillar rests a naked figure leaning

dejectedly upon a staff, the spirit apparently of the dead man in whose

honour the games were held. The armed combat was alien, however, to the

spirit of the Greeks; we hear of it, indeed, in later times at Mantinea

and at Cyrene, but it found no place in any of the great Greek

festivals.[13] It was probably connected exclusively with funeral rites,

a substitute for human sacrifices. In the earlier part of the book

Achilles slays twelve Trojan captives upon the pyre of his friend; in

the latter part armed warriors fight in his honour. The one scene is but

the later doublet of the other.

The description of the archery competition is simply ludicrous. The

first prize is for the man who hits a dove fastened by a cord to the top

of a mast, while the second prize is for the man who performs the

infinitely harder feat of severing the cord. The choice of ten double

axes for the first prize and ten single axes for second suspiciously

suggests a reminiscence of the more serious competition with Odysseus’

bow in the _Odyssey_, where the twelve axe-heads to be shot for are part

of the treasures that Odysseus had once won as prizes.[14] In the

_Odyssey_ the bow holds an honourable place, but in the _Iliad_, though

a few heroes are famed for their skill in archery, the bow is rather the

weapon of the soldiery, and especially of the Trojans, and skill with it

is regarded by the Achaean noble who fought in his chariot with the same

not unnatural dislike and contempt, not unmingled with fear, as it was

by the chivalry of France in the days of Agincourt.[15]

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.

The weight hurled at the games of Patroclus was no stone but an

unwrought metal of mass, probably the contents of one of the open-hearth

furnaces of the Mediterranean world. This “pig of iron,” which had been

taken by Achilles from Eetion of Thebes, is not only the weight to be

thrown but the prize, and contrary to the courteous Achaean custom the

only prize, although there are four competitors. “The winner’s shepherd,

or ploughman,” says Achilles, “will not want for iron for five years.”

But in spite of its weight Polypoetes hurls it as far as a herdsman

flings the _bola_[21] “when it flieth whirling through the herds of

kine.” The word _solos_ occurs only in this passage and in later

imitators of Homer; the passage is, as has been said, a very late one,

so late that the writer seems to be consciously archaizing, and I

believe that, wishing to give the description a primitive appearance, he

substituted the solos for the athlete’s diskos, with which he was

undoubtedly familiar. The word seems to be connected with the Semitic

_sela_, a rock, but at an early date to have been used to describe the

pigs of iron produced on the island of Elba and elsewhere. In late

writers it is sometimes a poetical synonym for the diskos.

The chariot-race and the strictly athletic events, such as boxing,

wrestling, and running, were essentially the sports of the nobles; but

though the latter excelled the common soldiery in throwing the spear,

heaving the weight, and shooting with the bow, as they did in everything

else, there is in these three events a distinctly popular element. The

bow, the javelin, and the stone were the weapons of all alike, and so,

when Achilles was sulking in his tent, his folk, we read, “sported with

diskos, with casting of spears, and archery.” The diskos and the spear

were also the favourite recreation of the suitors of Penelope, who had,

we may suppose, no taste for more strenuous exercises. Their popular

character is clearly indicated by the use of the terms “a diskos throw”

or “a spear throw” as measures of distance.[22]

Jumping, which was an important event in the later pentathlon, is in

Homer only mentioned as one of the sports in which the nimble Phaeacians

excelled. Among these we meet with ball-play, a favourite amusement of

the Greeks in all ages. Not only do Nausicaa and her maidens disport

themselves with the ball on the seashore, but all her brothers give a

display of their skill before Odysseus, and in both cases the players,

as they toss the ball from one to another, move in a sort of rhythmic

dance to the strains of music in a way which would have delighted the

heart of some modern professors of physical culture.[23] Dance and song

were always dear to the Greeks. We have also hints of acrobatic shows

that remind us of the Cretan scenes. On the shield of Achilles was

wrought “a dancing place like unto that which once in wide Cnossus

Daedalus wrought for Ariadne of the fair tresses ... and among the

dancers as the minstrel played two tumblers whirled.”[24] “Verily,” says

Patroclus to Meriones, as smitten by a stone he falls from his chariot,

“verily there are tumblers among the Trojans too.”[25] Still more

suggestive of the circus is the comparison of Ajax rushing over the

plain to a man driving four horses and leaping from horse to horse as

they fly along.[26]

With the origin of the Homeric poems we are not here concerned. Whether

we regard them as the work of a single poet or as evolved by a series of

poets, whether as a contemporary picture of the Mycenaean age or as

based upon tradition, it is generally agreed that the state of society

described is separated by a long interval from any of which we have

historical knowledge in Greece, and that, despite slight discrepancies,

this description is in its general features consistent. Of this society

the games are the natural product. Just as in the Homeric polity we can

trace the elements from which the various later institutions were

evolved, and yet the polity as a whole is distinct from all later

developments, so in athletics the events are the same as are found in

the later festivals, but the spirit that pervades them is purely Homeric

and separated by a wide interval from the spirit of the Olympic games.

Critics tell us that the chief passages referring to the sports are

comparatively late, later than the founding of the Olympic games in 776

B.C. If this is so, the poet must have followed closely traditions of a

much earlier date. Otherwise we can hardly explain the contrast between

the Homeric and the Olympic games, and the absence, with one doubtful

exception, of any allusion to the latter. This silence is especially

remarkable when we remember the large part played in the games of the

_Iliad_ by Nestor and the Neleidae, who lived in the neighbouring Pylos,

and the close connexion in the _Odyssey_ between Elis and Ithaca.

The distinctive character of the Homeric games may be summed up in two

words—they are aristocratic and spontaneous. They are spontaneous as the

play of the child, the natural outlet of vigorous youth. There is no

organized training, no organized competition, and sport never usurps the

place of work. They are aristocratic because, though manly exercises are

common to all the people, excellence in them belongs especially to the

nobles; and when sports are held on an elaborate scale at the funeral of

some chieftain, it is the nobles only who compete.

Footnote 1:

_B.S.A._ vii. p. 94; viii. pp. 74, 77; ix. p. 56; x. p. 41. R. M.

Burrows, _Discoveries in Crete_, Pl. i.

Footnote 2:

The ταυροκαθαψία proper is a feat rather of the hunting-field than of

the circus, and should be connected rather with the bull-snaring

scenes on the Vaphio cups, _vide_ E. Gardner, _Greek Sculpture_, p.

61, or with the feat known as βοῦς αἴρεσθαι depicted in Tischbein ii.

3, and referred to in inscriptions relative to the Epheboi. The only

representation that I know of this sport is on a late relief from

Smyrna in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, No. 219. The performers are

represented pursuing bulls on horseback, leaping on to their backs,

and seizing their horns, by twisting which they throw them on to the

ground. The Greek bull was clearly a small animal, but must still have

been a formidable opponent. The records of the gladiatorial shows

afford abundant proof that man could by the aid of skill triumph over

the strongest animal. The principles of jiu-jitsu could be applied

against animals as easily as against men.

Footnote 3:

_B.S.A._ vii. p. 95, Fig. 31; ix. p. 57, Fig. 35.

Footnote 4:

_Od._ iv. 626, xvii. 168, 174; _Il._ ii. 774.

Footnote 5:

_Od._ viii. 153 sq. (Butcher and Lang’s translation).

Footnote 6:

_Od._ viii. 147.

Footnote 7:

_Od._ viii. 100.

Footnote 8:

_Il._ xi. 697, xxiii. 630.

Footnote 9:

_Od._ iv. 341 sq.

Footnote 10:

_Od._ xviii. 15 sq.

Footnote 11:

_Il._ ii. 774.

Footnote 12:

Murray, _Sarcophagi in British Museum_, Pl. ii., iii.

Footnote 13:

Athenaeus, pp. 153, 154. The true Hoplomachia, as described in Homer

and practised apparently by the Mantineans and Cyrenaeans, must not be

confounded with the later so-called Hoplomachia, competitions in which

were held at the Athenian Thesea between boys of all ages as well as

men, and which was regularly taught in the gymnasia by officials known

as Hoplomachoi. The latter was merely a military training in the use

of arms, and the competitions therein were probably as harmless as

modern fencing competitions. The Spartans at all events regarded the

Hoplomachia as unpractical and useless for a nation of soldiers, and

Plato, though he recommends the armed combat between men in heavy or

light armour as preferable to the pankration for his ideal state, yet

has no great regard for the fashionable exponents and teachers of the

art in his time. Plato, _Laches_ 182, _Gorg._ 456, _Leg._ 834. Cp.

Dar.-Sagl, _s.v._ “Hoplomachia.”

Footnote 14:

_Od._ xxi. 4, 61.

Footnote 15:

_Il._ xi. 385.

Footnote 16:

_Od._ viii. 186 sq.

Footnote 17:

_Il._ v. 302.

Footnote 18:

_Il._ xii. 445.

Footnote 19:

_Il._ xvi. 774. In Professor Furtwängler’s reconstruction of the

Aegina pediment one of the fallen warriors holds a stone which he is

about to hurl. Stone-throwing by hand and with the sling is mentioned

as part of the peltast’s training by Plato, _Leg._ 834 A.

Footnote 20:

_Il._ xxiii. 431; but cp. _Od._ viii. 189; _Il._ xxiii. 840.

Footnote 21:

For this interpretation of καλαῦροψ, and for the discussion of the

terms diskos and solos, _vide infra_, p. 313.

Footnote 22:

_Il._ xxiii. 431, 529; xvi. 589.

Footnote 23:

_Od._ vi. 100, viii. 370.

Footnote 24:

_Il._ xviii. 605 (= _Od._ iv. 18).

Footnote 25:

_Il._ xvi. 742, 750.

Footnote 26:

_Il._ xv. 679.

CHAPTER III

THE RISE OF THE ATHLETIC FESTIVAL

The athletic meeting was unknown to Homer: in historic times it is

associated with religious festivals celebrated at definite periods at

the holiest places in Greece. If the growth of the athletic festival was

due to the athletic spirit of the race, its connexion with religion may

be traced to those games with which the funeral of the Homeric chieftain

was celebrated. Though the origin of the great festivals is overgrown

with a mass of late and conflicting legends in which it is difficult to

distinguish truth from fiction, there is no reason for discrediting the

universal tradition of their funeral origin, confirmed as it is by

survivals in the ritual of the festivals, by the testimony of the

earliest athletic art, and by later custom.[27] So we may conjecture

that these games, originally celebrated at the actual funeral, tended

like other funeral rites to become periodical, and as ancestor-worship

developed into hero-worship became part of the cult of heroes, which

seems to have preceded throughout Greece the worship of the Olympian

deities. When the latter superseded the earlier heroes, they took over

these games together with the sanctuaries and festivals of the older

religion.

The custom of celebrating funerals with games and contests is not

confined to Greece. Among the funeral scenes that decorate the walls of

Etruscan tombs we see depicted chariot-races, horse-races, boxing,

wrestling, and other athletic sports, together with contests of a more

brutal nature.[28] From the Etruscans the custom spread to the Romans,

who borrowed from the same people their gladiatorial games, which were

likewise possibly of funeral origin. Funeral games are found in

Circassia, in the Caucasus, among the Khirgiz, and yet further afield in

Siam and in North America.[29] But the most instructive example for our

purpose is furnished by the old Irish fairs, which lasted from pagan

times down to the beginning of the last century.[30] These fairs,

founded in memory of some departed chieftain, took place at stated

intervals commonly in the neighbourhood of the ancient burial-place.

Thus the triennial fair of Carman, near Wexford, was instituted in

fulfilment of the dying charge of Garman “as a fair of mourning to bear

his name for ever.” These fairs, which lasted several days, and to which

people of all classes flocked from every part of Ireland, and even from

Scotland, furnished an opportunity for the transaction of a variety of

business public and private. Laws were promulgated, councils and courts

were held, marriages were arranged and celebrated.

There was, of course, buying and selling of every sort, but the

principal business of these gatherings was the holding of sports and

competitions. Of these there was an endless variety—horse-races,

athletic exercises, games, pastimes, special sports for women,

competitions in music, in the recitation of poems and tales. There were

shows and performances by jugglers, clowns, acrobats, circus-riders, and

for everything there were prizes, “for every art that was just to be

sold, or rewarded or exhibited or listened to.” Like the sacred month of

the Olympic festival, the time of the fairs was “one universal truce,”

during which all quarrels and strife were repressed, no distraint for

debt, no vengeance was allowed, and the debtor might enjoy himself with

impunity. “The Gentile of the Gael,” says an old writer, “celebrated the

fair of Carman without breach of law, without crime, without violence,

without dishonour.” On the introduction of Christianity the Church took

over the old pagan fairs; the pagan rites were abolished, each day began

with a religious service, and the fair concluded with a grand religious

ceremonial. In every detail the history of these fairs bears an

extraordinary resemblance to that of the Greek athletic festivals.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Amphiaraus Vase. Berlin, 1655.]

[Illustration: Fig. 4. Dipylon Vase. Copenhagen.]

In Greek lands there is everywhere evidence of the existence of funeral

games at all periods, from the legendary games of Pelias to those

celebrated at Thessalonica in the time of Valerian, or perhaps in his

honour.[31] The games of Pelias and those celebrated by Acastus in

honour of his father were represented respectively on the two most

famous monuments of early decorative art—the chest of Cypselus dedicated

in the Heraeum at Olympia, and the throne of Apollo at Amyclae. Both

works are lost, and known to us only from the descriptions of Pausanias,

but the manner in which the games of Pelias were represented can be

judged from the similar scene on a sixth-century vase, the Amphiaraus

vase in Berlin (Fig. 3).[32] A still earlier representation of funeral

games occurs on a geometric cup from the Acropolis, possibly dating from

the eighth century (Fig. 4).[33] On one side are two naked men, with one

hand holding each other by the arm, and with the other preparing to stab

one another with swords, a mimic fight perhaps rather than a real one,

but one which, like the Pyrrhic dance depicted on the other side, may

recall more sanguinary funeral contests. On the reverse stand two boxers

in the centre between a group of warriors, and a group of dancers; an

armed dancer leaping off the ground to the accompaniment of a

four-stringed lyre, and two others holding possibly castanets. A similar

scene occurs on a silver vase from Etruria, said by Furtwängler to be of

Cyprian origin; while the wide distribution of funeral games is further

shown by the Clazomenae sarcophagus already described, and by a fragment

of a sixth-century vase manufactured at Naucratis (Fig. 140).[34] The

games depicted on these monuments are very similar to those described in

Homer. The prizes are generally tripods and bowls which stand between

the combatants or at the finish of the course. The contests were not

confined to athletics and chariot-races. Hesiod tells us that he was

present at Chalcis at the games held in honour of Amphidamas by his

sons, and himself won a tripod as a prize for a “hymn.”[35] At Delphi,

too, the only contests previous to the sixth century were musical.

Of periodical games in memory of the dead the earliest example, apart

from the great festivals, is furnished by the games of Azan in Arcadia,

where, according to Pausanias, the chariot-race was the oldest

event.[36] At Rhodes the festival of the Heliea seems to have originated

in the funeral games of Tlepolemus.[37] In more historical times we

frequently find the memory of generals and statesmen kept alive by games

founded in their honour by their countrymen, or those whom they had

benefited. Miltiades was honoured by games in the Chersonese, Leonidas

and Pausanias at Sparta, Brasidas at Amphipolis, Timoleon at Syracuse,

Mausolus at Halicarnassus. Kings and tyrants followed the example:

Alexander instituted games in honour of his friend Hephaestion. Those,

too, who had fallen in war were often commemorated by their states with

athletic festivals. The Pythia were reorganized by the Amphictions as a

funeral contest in honour of those who fell in the first Sacred war, in

memory of which the victors received crowns of bay cut in the Vale of

Tempe, and the Eleutheria at Plataea were established by the victorious

Greeks to commemorate those who had died in battle against the Persians.

At Athens, too, a festival was held in the Academy under the direction

of the polemarch in memory of those citizens who had died for their

country.[38]

The origin of funeral games is too difficult a question to be discussed

here. Many explanations have been offered. Roman critics held the

Etruscan combats, from which their own gladiatorial games were borrowed,

to have been originally a substitute for human sacrifice; and this

explanation has been suggested above in connexion with the armed fight

in the games of Patroclus. This view receives some support from the

occurrence of the armed fight, whether real or mimic, and of the armed

Pyrrhic dance, which was certainly a mimicry of battle, on some of the

monuments representing funeral games, perhaps, too, from the prominence

in these games of boxing, which may be regarded as a further

modification of the more brutal combats. Plutarch suggests

apologetically that in early days such fights took place even at

Olympia,[39] and the lads of the Peloponnese, we are told, every year

lashed themselves upon the grave of Pelops till the blood ran down. But

the significance of the latter rite is doubtful. Another view connects

these contests with those fights for succession with which Dr. Frazer’s

_Golden Bough_ has made us familiar. In support of this we may cite the

famous chariot-race between Pelops and Oenomaus for the hand of

Hippodameia, or such later myths as the wrestling match by which Zeus

won from Cronus the sovereignty of heaven. Connected with the idea of

succession is the credit and popularity accruing to the heirs from the

magnificence of the games with which they celebrated their dead

predecessor. The costly prizes offered must assuredly have caused no

less pleasure to the living than to the dead. Comparatively late is the

idea that the dead man somehow assisted as spectator and enjoyed the

games held in his honour.[40] In all these views there is probably some

truth, the amount of which varied in different places; but whatever

truth there is in any or all of them as applied to the Greeks, they

afford no adequate explanation of the variety and importance of Greek

funeral games unless full account be taken also of the intense love of

competition and the strong athletic spirit of the race. But whatever the

origin of funeral games, there can be no doubt that they adequately

account for the close connexion between athletics and religion; nor is

this view discredited by doubts as to the particular funeral legends

which later invention attached to particular festivals.

The athletic festival required for its growth fairly settled conditions

of life, and during the troubled period which intervened between the

time of Nestor and the first Olympiad no progress was possible. Long

before the Homeric poems were composed, love of adventure, quickened

perhaps by pressure from the North, had driven the Achaeans and other

kindred tribes forth from the mainland of Greece to find fresh homes in

the islands and on the eastern shores of the Aegean. Other tribes,

Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians, followed, and for centuries the stream of

colonization flowed eastwards, carrying Greek civilization to every part

of the Aegean. This civilization gathered fresh life from contact with

the East. There, while Greece itself was paralyzed by wars and

migrations, great cities grew and flourished, cities great not only in

material prosperity but in art and literature and science. Of the

history of these cities unfortunately we know nothing; we can only judge

of their greatness by the results which we find in the seventh and sixth

centuries when the rise of the Lydian and Persian empires first brought

them into conflict with these powers. But of one thing we may be

sure—the Greek settlers brought with them their love of sport. This must

be a truism to all who hold that the 23rd _Iliad_ was composed in the

Eastern Aegean; it is confirmed by the many victories gained in later

days at Olympia by athletes from the cities and islands of the East, and

by the numerous athletic festivals existing in those parts in historical

times.

Under the settled and luxurious conditions of Eastern life it is

probable that the athletic festival developed at an early date,[41]

though owing to the same conditions athletics never attained in the East

to the position which they occupied in the Peloponnese, and the athletic

business was often secondary to the other business of the festivals.

This at least is suggested by the history of the Delian festival. The

antiquity of this festival is vouched for by the Homeric _Hymn to

Apollo_. At a time when Olympia was still little more than a local

gathering, the long-robed Ionians were already flocking to Apollo’s isle

with their children and their wives. Even from the mainland of Greece

choirs came with hymns to Apollo. We still possess a fragment of

Eumelus, a Bacchiad of Corinth, said by Pausanias to have been written

for the Messenian choir sent to Delos in the eighth century.[42] “There

when the games are ordered they rejoice to honour Apollo with boxing and

dance and song.” The picture in the _Hymn to Apollo_ is full of joy and

grace: the fair ships drawn up by the water’s edge, the costly

merchandise spread out upon the shore, the throng of long-robed men and

fair-girdled women, and in the background the slopes of Mount Cynthus,

halfway up which stands out the rocky archway of Apollo’s ancient

shrine. A fair scene truly, and typical no doubt of many another

festival where men of kindred race gathered together for sacrifice and

song, for sport and traffic. But in this joyous festival of the jovial

Delians we feel that athletics hold but a secondary place. For the more

serious business of athletics we must go to the sterner, more strenuous

festivals of the Peloponnese—above all to Olympia.

“Best of all is water and gold as a flaming fire in the night shineth

eminent amid lordly wealth: but if of prizes in the games thou art fain,

O my soul, to tell, then as for no bright star more quickening than the

sun must thou search in the void firmament by day, so neither shall we

find any games greater than the Olympic whereof to utter our voice.”[43]

The sanctity of Olympia and its festival go back to days far earlier

than the coming of the Dorians, perhaps of any Greek race; but the

growth of the festival dates from the time when, after the Dorian

invasion, the movements of the peoples ceased and the land became

settled, and its greatness is largely due to the athletic ideal and the

genius for organization which characterized that race. “It is not the

least of the many debts which we owe to Heracles,” says Lysias in his

_Panegyric_, “that by instituting the Olympic games he restored peace

and goodwill to a land torn asunder by war and faction and wasted by

pestilence.” Pausanias uses similar language of the restoration of the

games by Iphitus and Lycurgus, whose action another tradition ascribes

to the advice of the Delphic oracle. But though we can hardly credit the

founders of the games, whoever they were, with this far-sighted

Panhellenic policy at so early a date, the tradition is founded upon

facts: the first Olympiad does mark the settlement of Greece, and the

festival did promote the unity of Greece. Its growth, though not its

origin, was due to the Dorians.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Plan of Olympia.]

Olympia lies about ten miles from the sea on the northern bank of the

Alpheus, at the point where its valley spreads out into a wide and

fertile plain. In an angle formed by this river with its tributary the

Cladeus, which rushes down from the mountains of Elis between steep

banks formerly shaded with plane-trees, at the foot of the pine-clad

hill of Cronus, stood the grove of wild olive-trees, brought there

according to tradition by Heracles from the land of the Hyperboreans,

the sacred grove from which the Altis took its name. The slopes of the

neighbouring hills were covered with a variety of trees, and in the rich

undergrowth of flowering shrubs the wild boar, deer, and other game

found cover. It was to Scillus, only a few miles distant, that the

veteran Xenophon retired to spend his old age in literature and sport.

In old days the vegetation was far more luxuriant than now; besides the

olive groves, the white poplars, from which alone the wood for the

sacrifice to Zeus and Pelops might be cut, and even the palm-tree

flourished there. The rich well-watered plain was covered with vines and

crops, while its meadows afforded abundant pasturage for horses and for

cattle.[44]

To the modern traveller Olympia seems too much out of the way to be the

scene of a great national gathering; even to the Greek of the fifth

century it must have seemed to stand outside the busy centres of Greek

life, and perhaps it was this very remoteness, combined with its ancient

sanctity, that saved Olympia, like Delphi, from being the battle-ground

between the rival states of Greece. But it had not been so always. The

flat, rich, alluvial plains of the western Peloponnese had not formerly

lagged behind the rest of Greece. The long, almost unbroken curves of

sandy shore offered little harbourage for the triremes of a later day.

But the earlier mariner or trader from the East who coasted around

Greece had no love for deep land-locked harbours; all he wanted was a

sandy shore where he could beach his ships sheltered by some convenient

headland as at Triphylian Pylos, or at the open mouth of some river like

the Alpheus. Hence there is no reason to doubt the traditions that

connect Cretans and Phoenicians with Olympia.[45] The coastline has

advanced considerably since those days, and the small boats of these

ancient mariners could advance up the river with perfect safety through

the flat open plain as far as Olympia. This accessibility of Olympia by

sea had yet more important consequences at a later age when the festival

attracted men from the great colonies of Italy and Sicily. Olympia may

even have been associated with the founding of these colonies; for the

coast road round Elis and the shores of the gulf of Corinth connected it

with Sicyon, Corinth, and Megara. May we not suppose that, as the

colonists sailed down the gulf of Corinth, many of them would turn aside

before they bade farewell to their native shores to visit the venerable

grove of Olympia and consult its ancient oracle?

Again, Olympia stood full in the way of the Achaean tribes as they

pressed southwards from their first settlement at Dodona. In speaking of

the Achaeans we are using the word provisionally for convenience’ sake

to denote the pre-Dorian Greeks of the Peloponnese as opposed to the

original inhabitants and the later Dorians. In the _Odyssey_ they have

spread over the islands, over Pleuron by the sea and rocky Calydon, over

Elis and Messenia. So close was the connexion between the islands and

Elis, then the land of the Epeans, that the princes of Ithaca used its

broad plains for breeding cattle and horses. The narrow straits offered

no obstacle to this adventurous people, and for centuries before the

passage of Oxylus, the one-eyed Aetolian from Naupactus, the Achaeans

and others had been crossing over in larger or smaller companies till

they had spread over the whole Peloponnese. Hence for the Achaeans in

the Peloponnese Olympia stood in the same position as Dodona in northern

Greece. The Dorians, indeed, seem to have failed in their attempt to

follow in the same course; but legend connected with the return of the

Heracleidae the invasion of their Aetolian allies under Oxylus, who

dispossessed the Epean lords of Elis. The quarrel between these

newcomers and the earlier settlers for the possession of Olympia lasted

for centuries, but through all the changes of population, though many

fresh cults were added by the invaders, the superstition with which all

newcomers in those days regarded the gods and sanctuaries of the earlier

inhabitants preserved the old cults inviolate, so that in the buildings

and altars of Olympia, and the ritual of its festival, all the various

strata of its history are plainly visible.

Lastly, though remote from the struggles of later history, no place in

the Peloponnese was more accessible to other parts. Besides the

coast-route that connected it with Messenia and the gulf of Corinth, the

valleys of the Alpheus and its tributaries afforded a natural means of

communication with all parts of the interior, and it was to the athletic

character of the inhabitants of the Peloponnese that the athletic fame

of the festival in the first place was due. Without this native talent

it could never have attracted competitions from northern Greece or from

the colonies of the West, nor could it ever have acquired its peculiar

sanctity but for the position it had held in the earlier migrations.

It is unnecessary here to discuss the various myths which Greek

imagination wove about the beginnings of Olympia, and the perplexing

problems which they raise. Two propositions may be regarded as fairly

established. In the first place, Olympia was a holy place before the

Achaeans came to the Peloponnese. In the second place, the beginning of

the games was earlier than the Dorian invasion, but later probably than

the coming of the Achaeans.

The antiquity of Olympia is proved by the presence there of those

elements of primitive religion which preceded the worship of the

Olympian deities. The altar of Cronus on the hill top which bore his

name recalled a sovereignty earlier than that of Zeus. An ancient oracle

of earth preceded the oracle of Zeus. Of the worship of the powers of

the underworld there is abundant evidence at Olympia, as in the rest of

the Peloponnese; the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, for example, was

exempted from the rule that excluded women from Olympia, and had her

place of honour in the stadium opposite the seats of the Hellanodicae.

In Hera, whose worship at Olympia was earlier than that of Zeus, we may

probably recognize a Hellenized form of the great Mother Goddess of the

Aegean world. Lastly, that Pelops claimed precedence of Zeus is clear

from the fact that the athletes sacrificed to Pelops first and then to

Zeus. At his tomb within the Altis, originally a barrow, only afterwards

enclosed in a shrine, he was worshipped with all the ceremonial due to

the dead, and every year the youths of the Peloponnese lashed themselves

upon his grave till the blood ran down.[46] Yet it does not follow that

the cult of Pelops was pre-Achaean. We cannot clearly draw the line

between what belonged to the Achaeans and what to the original

inhabitants. There was no violent breach, but rather a gradual fusion of

the races, in the course of which the Achaeans made their own much of

the earlier civilization. Certainly the cult of heroes continued all

through Greek history; in later days even noted athletes were canonized.

The ancient writings of the Eleans, according to Pausanias, ascribed the

institution of the games to the Idaean Heracles, one of the Cretan

Curetes to whom the infant Zeus was entrusted. But to Pindar and

Bacchylides the games are associated with the tomb of Pelops. Pelops, as

the story goes, came to Olympia as a suitor for the hand of Hippodameia,

whose father Oenomaus challenged all her suitors to a chariot-race, and

slew with his spear all whom he defeated. Thirteen suitors had been

slain when Pelops came and, by the aid of Myrtilus, the charioteer of

Oenomaus, who removed the lynch-pins from his master’s chariot wheels,

slew him and won his bride and kingdom. This story, afterwards

represented on the chest of Cypselus and on the pediments of the temple

of Zeus, was commemorated by the earliest monuments of the Altis.

Besides the tomb of Pelops himself, there was an ancient wooden pillar

said to be the only remnant of the house of Oenomaus, which was struck

by lightning,[47] and also the Hippodamium, apparently a funeral mound,

surrounded afterwards by a wall, where the women of Elis every year

offered sacrifice.

It was at the ancient tomb of Pelops, Pindar tells us, that Heracles the

son of Zeus, returning from his victory over Augeas, founded the

Olympian games. There “he measured a sacred grove for the Father, and

having fenced round the Altis marked the bounds thereof. There he set

apart the choicest of the spoil for an offering from the war and

sacrificed and ordained the fifth year feast.” “In the foot-race down

the straight course was Likymnius’ son Oeonus first, from Nidea had he

led his host; in the wrestling was Tegea glorified by Echemus; Doryclus

won the prize of boxing, a dweller in the city of Tiryns, and with the

four-horse chariot Samos of Mantinea, Halirrhothius’ son; with the

javelin Phrastor hit the mark; in distance Eniceus beyond all others

hurled the stone with a circling sweep, and all the warrior company

thundered a great applause.”[48]

The poet has glorified into a Peloponnesian festival what can have been

no more than a local gathering in which the neighbouring chieftains took

part, and the introduction of Heracles may have been an invention of the

Eleans; for, according to Pausanias, it was Iphitus who first induced

the Eleans, or, as he should have said, the Pisatans, to sacrifice to

Heracles whom they had before regarded as their enemy. Yet there is

probably some truth in the connexion of the games with Pelops’ grave, a

tradition which we find also in Pindar’s great rival Bacchylides. But

who was Pelops? Was he god, man, or hero? Like the oracle of Delphi when

asked a similar question about Lycurgus, we may well doubt. Yet in spite

of certain modern authorities, who see local gods in most of the heroes

of legend, it is perhaps safer to accept the universal belief of the

Greeks that he was a man, some chieftain who after his death was

worshipped as a hero. Moreover, the tradition of his Phrygian origin is

a strong argument against the view that he was a native pre-Achaean god

of the Peloponnese, though it is by no means incompatible with his

connexion with the Achaeans in view of the original kinship of the

latter with the Phrygians. At all events Pelops is pre-Dorian, and the

victors in these games, according to Pindar, are pre-Dorians.

The existence of the games in pre-Dorian times agrees entirely with the

athletic character of the Achaeans in the Peloponnese as described in

Homer; and if we find in the poet no mention of Olympia, his silence is

easily explained by the simple, local character of the festival at this

time. It will be remembered that in the funeral games of the

north-western Peloponnese chariot-racing played a prominent part. The

antiquity of this sport at Olympia is confirmed by the discovery of a

number of very early votive offerings, many of them models of horses or

chariots, found in a layer that extends below the foundations of the

Heraeum. This temple was founded, it is said, by the people of Scillus

some eight years after the coming of Oxylus; and even if we cannot go so

far as Dr. Dörpfeld, who assigns it to the tenth or eleventh centuries,

there is no doubt of its great antiquity, and that the Scilluntines were

of an Arcadian, not a Dorian stock.

Before the building of the Heraeum we must picture Olympia as a sacred

grove surrounded by a hedge interspersed with open spaces where stood

the barrow of Pelops and sundry earth altars, such as the great altar of

Zeus, or the six double altars at which the competitors offered

sacrifice. Thither the country-folk resorted to inquire of the future

from the ancient earth oracle, or perhaps, as at Dodona, from the

rustling of the leaves. These oracles were interpreted by certain

hereditary families, the Iamidae and Clytidae, who maintained their

privileges even when Dorian influence had prevailed. Thither at set

times the neighbouring tribes flocked to take part in the games held at

the tomb of Pelops. The sanctuary and festival of Olympia were in the

territory of the Pisatae, a tribal group of village communities possibly

nine in number situated on either side of the Alpheus valley, and

loosely bound together by the common worship of the hero Pelops.[49]

They took their name from the village of Pisa, perhaps on account of its

nearness to Olympia.

The Pisatae were one of many such tribal groups, or amphictyonies in the

Peloponnese, in parts of which this form of life continued into the

fifth century or later. Such were the groups of nine cities mentioned in

the catalogue of the ships in the _Iliad_, the nine Arcadian cities

grouped round the tomb of Aepytus, the nine Pylian cities of Nestor’s

kingdom, the nine Argive cities under Diomed, the nine Lacedaemonian

cities under Sparta. Such, too, were the Caucones, a wandering tribe

whose hero Caucon was in later times supposed to be buried near Lepreum;

such were the Epeans of Elis; while the Eleans who supplanted them

retained this form of government till the founding of the city-state of

Elis in the fifth century. Like all such clans these leagues were

intensely aristocratic: the chieftains were regarded with superstitious

reverence, and the tribal centre was often the tomb of some departed

hero-chief. Of cities, properly speaking, there were none in the western

Peloponnese. A few strong fortresses served as residences for powerful

chieftains and as refuge for their followers in danger; but most of the

people lived in unwalled villages like the Scotch Highlanders. Their

wealth consisted largely in horses and cattle, which they bartered with

the islanders or with Cretan or Phoenician traders who landed at Pylos

or sailed up the Alpheus to Olympia. In search of pasturage they ranged

in winter over the lowland plains, retiring in summer to the sheltered

upland valleys. The constant pressure of newcomers kept them constantly

on the move, southwards and eastwards. This shifting of the tribal

centres may be traced in the places that bore the name of Pylos.

Settling originally in Elean Pylos, the gateway of the netherworld,

these Pylians, united by some netherworld cult, were forced to move

first to Triphylian Pylos, probably the Pylos of Nestor, and at a later

stage to Messenian Pylos. Of their raids and cattle-lifting, their feuds

and their reprisals, we have a vivid picture in the _Odyssey_. Such, we

may suppose, was the life of the Pisatae and their neighbours, the

pre-Dorian inhabitants of Elis, Triphylia, Arcadia and Messenia. The

Pisatae perhaps enjoyed a position more established than the rest,

thanks to the superstitious reverence which alone saved the rich valley

of Olympia from attack, but under these unsettled conditions the real

development of the festival was impossible, though the prestige which it

had already acquired is shown in the building of the Heraeum by the

Scilluntines.

The coming of the Dorians brought order into the Peloponnese, but only

after a long and bitter struggle. The settling of Oxylus and his

Aetolians in Elis checked the stream of migration from the north-west,

and the power of the Dorians prevented further aggression from other

quarters. Meanwhile such of the earlier inhabitants as clung to their

independence were driven into the mountains of Arcadia and Achaea, or

into Messenia. In the south-west the civilization, of which we have a

glorified picture in Nestor’s kingdom, lasted perhaps till the final

conquest of the country by the Spartans; in the mountains the

inhabitants developed into a race of hardy mountaineers and shepherds,

fond of sport and war, clinging tenaciously to their ancient customs and

manner of government, but playing no part in the history of Greece save

as mercenaries in the pay of more progressive states.

In the long struggle that preceded the final settlement even Olympia was

involved. The Eleans—as we may call the newcomers from Aetolia—strove

hard to wrest from the Pisatans the control of the sanctuary; but the

latter doggedly maintained their rights, which had been recently

vindicated by the building of the Heraeum, and religious feeling was on

their side. Still, the prestige of the festival suffered to such an

extent that the games, it is said, were neglected and forgotten. At

length, weary of incessant strife and a pestilence that followed it, the

contending factions, on the advice, according to one story, of the

Delphic oracle, resolved to re-establish the Olympic games as a means of

restoring goodwill and unity to the land. This work was ascribed to

Iphitus, king of Elis, a descendant of Oxylus, to Cleosthenes, king of

Pisa, and to Lycurgus of Sparta. The ordinance regulating the festival

was engraved on a diskos preserved in the temple of Hera down to the

time of Pausanias, on which the names of Iphitus and Lycurgus were still

legible in the days of Aristotle.[50] The antiquity of the diskos is

unquestionable, but it may well be doubted if it was contemporary with

the event described. More probably it dated from the seventh century,

when Sparta, as we shall see, took an active part in the games. The

introduction of Sparta and Lycurgus at this early date is certainly

suspicious. Be this as it may, the organization of the festival by

Iphitus and Cleosthenes may be regarded as the first definite historical

fact in its history.

From this date the festival was held every fourth year until its

abolition by the emperor Theodosius at the close of the fourth century

A.D. It took place at the time of the second or third full moon after

the summer solstice in the Elean months Apollonios and Parthenios, which

correspond approximately to August and September. For the sacred month

(ἱερομηνία) in which the festival took place, a holy truce (ἐκεχειρία)

was proclaimed beforehand by the truce-bearers of Zeus (σπονδοφόροι).

During this truce there was to be peace throughout the land, no one was

permitted to bear arms within the sacred territory, and all competitors,

embassies, and spectators travelling to Olympia were regarded as under

the protection of Zeus and sacrosanct. The effect of this truce, at

first purely local, spread with the growth of the festival to all the

states taking part in it till the whole Greek world felt its influence.

Any violation of the truce, any wrong inflicted on the pilgrims of Zeus,

was punished by a heavy fine to Olympian Zeus. The Spartans at the time

of the Peloponnesian war, having entered the sacred territory during the

truce under arms, were condemned to pay a fine of two minae for every

hoplite; on their refusal to pay they were excommunicated. Even

Alexander condescended to apologize and make restitution to the Athenian

Phrynon, who had been seized and robbed by some of his mercenaries on

his way to Olympia.[51]

By the truce of Iphitus the control of the festival seems to have been

divided between the Eleans and Pisatans, vested probably at an early

date in a joint council representing the various village communities.

The council certainly existed in later days as a final court of appeal,

and the fact that the earliest building under the new régime was the

council-house, part of which dates from the middle of the sixth century,

points to the antiquity of such a body. The dual control was recognized

in the appointment of two executive officials, the Hellanodicae. The

royal robes of purple worn by these officials indicate that they were

originally the kings of the respective tribes. One of them, according to

Elean tradition the only one, was always a descendant of Oxylus; but the

official position of the Pisatae survived in later times in the priestly

families of the Iamidae and Clytidae. As was to be expected, the dual

control did not work smoothly. The Pisatae, mindful of their ancient

rights, and jealous of the interference of the Eleans, made repeated but

futile efforts to regain the sole control. But the superior might of the

Eleans, supported at first at all events by the Spartans, prevailed more

and more, till shortly after the Persian wars the Eleans laid waste the

revolting cities of Triphylia, destroyed Pisa itself, and remained

henceforth sole masters of Olympia, save for a spasmodic effort of the

Pisatans and Arcadians in Ol. 104 (364 B.C.).

The view of Olympian history taken above differs considerably from the

orthodox view taken from Pausanias and Strabo, and based on “the ancient

writings of the Eleans.” This priestly fiction may be summarized as

follows. The games originally established by Oxylus were refounded by

Iphitus and Lycurgus, and were under the management of the Eleans. In

Ol. 8 the Pisatans called in Pheidon, king of Argos, and with his help

dispossessed the Eleans, but lost their control in the next Olympiad. In

Ol. 28 Elis, being at war with Dyme, allowed the Pisatans to celebrate

the games. In Ol. 34 Pantaleon, king of Pisa, celebrated the games at

the head of an army. According to one account the Pisatans had control

of the festival for twenty-two successive Olympiads, from the 30th to

the 51st. Finally, somewhere between Ols. 48 and 52, the Eleans defeated

the rebellious Pisatans, destroyed Pisa, laid waste Triphylia, and

henceforth held undisputed control of Olympia with the exception of Ol.

104, which was celebrated by the Arcadians and Pisatans. In consequence

this Olympiad, together with the 8th and 34th, were expunged from the

register and reckoned as Anolympiads. Till Ol. 50 there was only one

Hellanodicas, a descendant of Oxylus; at this date a second was

appointed, and both were chosen by lot from the whole number of the

Eleans.

This story is obviously a pious fraud invented by the priests of Elis to

justify their usurpation by asserting a prior claim, a claim

contradicted by all the evidence, and expressly denied by Xenophon.[52]

For the same reason the part played by Cleosthenes in the truce of

Iphitus is omitted by Pausanias, though fortunately preserved in another

account. It is only possible to point out briefly some of the

inconsistencies and absurdities in the priestly story. Elis is

represented throughout as in control of Olympia, which is situated

outside its boundaries in Pisatis, an independent state with a king of

its own, and this independent state is represented as continually trying

to usurp what is its own. The story of the Anolympiads is discredited by

the fact that in the Olympic register, a document of at least equal

value, these Olympiads were reckoned and the names of the victors were

given. The part played by Pheidon is involved in all the obscurity that

surrounds that most tantalizing character, but that the great tyrant,

whenever he lived, did try to increase his prestige by seizing control

of the Olympia, is rendered probable by the connexion of similar tyrants

with Olympia and the other festivals. The story of the addition of the

second Hellanodicas in Ol. 50, at the very time when Pisa is said to

have been destroyed, is a manifest absurdity. The two Hellanodicai

represent a dual monarchy, and a dual monarchy represents a union of

races. Assuming, what is now generally admitted, the pre-Dorian origin

of the festival, the original Hellanodicas must have been a Pisatan, the

second must have been added when Elis secured a share in the government.

Moreover, the selection of the two officials by lot, a thoroughly

democratic institution, is unthinkable in Elis, at that time an

oligarchy of oligarchies, though it may well have been introduced when

the democrats of Elis obtained the mastery. Lastly, the date of the

final destruction of Pisa, about which Pausanias is obviously confused,

is contradicted by the direct statement of Herodotus, who speaks of the

war in which it took place as “in my days” (ἐπ’ ἐμέο).[53] The earlier

date has been supported by reference to a sixth-century inscription at

Olympia recording a treaty for mutual defence between Elis and Heraea,

by the terms of which either party failing to help the other is liable

in case of need to a fine of a talent of silver to Olympian Zeus.[54]

Too much, perhaps, has been made of this inscription, which is probably

one of many such local treaties, the record of which has perished.

Moreover, it seems highly probable that Heraea, so far from being

opposed to Pisa, was a member of the early Pisatan league. The original

claims of Pisa are admitted by all modern historians; all further

difficulties vanish on the supposition of a subsequent dual control, in

which Elis gradually became the predominant partner until, in the fifth

century, she ousted Pisa completely.

The regulations for competitors may be traced back to the earliest

times. No one in later days was allowed to compete who was not of pure

Greek parentage on both sides, or who had neglected to pay any penalty

incurred to Olympian Zeus, or who had incurred ceremonial pollution by

manslaughter, committed, we may suppose, in the sacred territory. These

restrictions had their origin in a religious festival that formed a bond

of union between neighbouring communities, which was gradually extended

through the sacred truce-bearers till it embraced the whole Greek race.

That this local or tribal exclusiveness grew into a Panhellenic

exclusiveness, was due partly to the influence of the Dorians, partly to

the close connexion of the colonies with Olympia. In the fifth century

Alexander, the son of Amyntas, was not allowed to compete at Olympia

until he had first satisfied the Hellanodicae that he was of Greek

descent.

Similarly, the exclusion of women from Olympia was doubtless due to some

religious taboo rather than to any sense of modesty or decorum. Such a

feeling cannot have existed in these times. Certainly the Ionian women

attended the festival of Delos, and Spartan girls took part in all

athletic exercises with the boys. Pausanias in one passage tells us that

the restriction did not extend to unmarried girls, but the truth of his

statement is at least doubtful. We never hear of any unmarried women

being present at the festival, and Olympia can have afforded little or

no accommodation for them. The only certain exception is in the case of

the priestess of Demeter, Chamyne, an exception that is quite consistent

with the idea of an ancient taboo. Otherwise no woman was allowed to

cross the Alpheus during a stated number of days. The penalty for so

doing was death, the transgressor being thrown from the Typaean rock.

Only one instance is recorded of this rule being broken. Pherenice, a

member of the famous family of the Diagoridae, in her anxiety to see her

son Peisirodus compete in the boys’ boxing, accompanied him to Olympia

disguised as a trainer. In her delight at his victory she leapt over the

barrier and so disclosed her sex. The Hellanodicae, however, pardoned

her in consideration for her father and brothers and son, all of them

Olympic victors, but they passed a decree that henceforth all trainers

should appear naked.[55]

Yet, though personally excluded from the games, women were allowed to

enter their horses for the chariot-race, and even to set up statues for

their victories. They had also their own festival at Olympia, the

Heraea.[56] Every four years a peplos was woven for Hera by sixteen

women of Elis, and presented to the goddess. At the festival there were

races for maidens of various ages. Their course was 500 feet, or

one-sixth less than the men’s stadium. The maidens ran with their hair

down their backs, a short tunic reaching just below the knee, and their

right shoulder bare to the breast. The victors received crowns of olive

and a share of the heifer sacrificed to Hera. They had, too, the right

of setting up their statues in the Heraeum. There is in the Vatican a

copy of a fifth-century statue of one of these girl victors, represented

just as Pausanias describes them (Fig. 6). She seems to be just on the

point of starting. Unfortunately the arms of the statue are restored,

and we cannot feel certain of the motive. The Heraea were said to have

been instituted by Hippodameia in gratitude for her marriage with

Pelops. Of their real origin and history we are unfortunately ignorant.

According to Curtius the Heraea were the prototype of the Olympia, and

races for maidens were earlier than those for men, but this is most

improbable. The weaving of the peplos reminds us, of course, of the

similar ceremony at the Panathenaea, while the races for maidens suggest

Dorian influence. Certainly we can hardly make the Dorians responsible

for the exclusion of women from Olympia, which may be safely referred to

the earlier non-Greek race.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. Statue of Girl Runner. Vatican. Copy of

fifth-century original.]

In early days athletes wore the loin-cloth which Cretan excavations have

shown to have been worn generally in the Mediterranean world. The

Homeric Greeks girded themselves for sports, and on some of the earliest

athletic vases the loin-cloth is depicted (Figs. 128, 142). Generally,

however, the Greek athletes were absolutely naked. This custom is

ascribed to an accident. Orsippus of Megara, in Ol. 15, 720 B.C.,

accidentally or on purpose dropped his loin-cloth in the race. The

advantage which he gained thereby produced such an impression that from

this date all runners discarded the loin-cloth. This story was

commemorated by an epigram, written possibly by Simonides, which was

inscribed on his tomb. The practice does not seem to have been adopted

by all athletes till a later date, for Thucydides states that the

abandonment of the loin-cloth even at Olympia dated from shortly before

his own time.[57]

The prizes were originally tripods and other objects of value. It was in

Ol. 7 that the crown of wild olive was first introduced on the advice of

the Delphic oracle. The branches of which the crowns were made were cut

from the sacred olive-trees with a golden sickle, by a boy whose parents

were both living. This was henceforth the only prize given at Olympia.

Of the rewards and honours bestowed by the victor’s countrymen, and of

other details connected with the games, we shall speak in another

chapter. Our knowledge is not sufficient for a description of the

festival at this early period.

The athletic records of Olympia date from the year 776 B.C., the 28th

Olympiad from the organization of the games by Iphitus. This Olympiad,

in which Coroebus of Elis won the foot-race, is counted as the first

Olympiad in the Olympic register,[58] and from this date we have a

complete list of winners in this race copied by Eusebius from the work

of Julius Africanus, who brought the register down to the year 217 A.D.

The register was originally compiled by Hippias of Elis at the close of

the fifth century. It was revised and brought up to date by various

writers from Aristotle and Philochorus down to Phlegon of Tralles in the

time of Hadrian and Julius Africanus in the third century A.D. A list of

victors was set up at Olympia by Paraballon, an Olympic victor, and the

father of the boy victor Lastratidas, whose date is fixed by Hyde in the

first half of the fourth century B.C.[59] It was not till the third

century B.C. that the Olympic register was used as a means of reckoning

dates, the year being dated by the number of the Olympiad and the name

of the winner of the stade-race. Hence the preservation by Eusebius of

the names of the winners of this race. The earlier lists, as we know

from fragments of Phlegon and a fragment recently found on an

Oxyrhynchus papyrus, contained the names of winners in other events.

The value of the early portions of the register has been called in

question by Mahaffy, Busolt, and Körte, who, starting from Plutarch’s

sceptical remark that Hippias had no sure basis for his work, contend

that no credit should be attached to the records previous to the sixth

century. They have proved that the register was imperfect—it could

hardly have been otherwise; that the task of compiling it was

difficult—men like Hippias and Aristotle would not otherwise have

devoted their time to it. But we can hardly believe that Hippias could

have imposed a purely fictitious list of victors on the critical Greek

world at the end of the fifth century, or that Aristotle would have

revised it without some evidence for his work. What sort of record was

kept by the priests of Olympia, and when it began, we cannot say. The

use of writing at Olympia is proved for the seventh century by the

diskos of Iphitus and the decrees or Ϝράτραι of the Eleans with regard

to the sacred truce. The official register of Athenian archons dates

from 683 B.C., if not earlier, and recent discoveries as to the

antiquity of writing in Crete make us hesitate to deny the existence of

written records for the eighth century. Besides official lists there

must have been many local lists of victors, family records, genealogies,

besides inscriptions on monuments. Of the first sixteen victors in the

register four at least are connected by Pausanias with monuments or

inscriptions, possibly not contemporary with the people commemorated but

yet valuable as evidence. If you set up a monument to your

great-grandfather, it may be of great importance to a future antiquarian

in making out your genealogy. Most people in the present day have no

knowledge of their great-grandfathers, or prefer to forget their

existence; but in a tribal society with intense respect for birth it is

very different, especially in a poetical race. Their only history is the

history of the family and clan; family traditions and genealogies are

remembered and handed down with a care and accuracy unknown to our

cosmopolitan civilization. Such were the sources from which the sophist

must have collected material for his register in his travels, and though

his list may have been imperfect and often inaccurate, it is yet

sufficiently accurate to afford valuable indications of the growth and

development of the festival.

In two points we may certainly reject the evidence of the register, and

of Elean tradition. During the period of war and confusion preceding

Iphitus, they said, the games had been forgotten. For many Olympiads the

only competition was the stade-race, but gradually, as the memory of the

old games came back to them, one event after another was added. In Ol.

14 the double race (δίαυλος) was added, in Ol. 15 the long race

(δολιχός), in Ol. 18 the pentathlon and wrestling, in Ol. 23 boxing, in

Ol. 25 the four-horse chariot-race, in Ol. 33 the pankration and the

horse-race, in Ol. 37 the first events for boys, the foot-race and

wrestling, in Ol. 38 the pentathlon for boys, which, however, was not

repeated, in Ol. 41 the boys’ boxing, in Ol. 65 the race in armour.

After this date various events for horses and mules were introduced at

different times, competitions for heralds and trumpeters, and in Ol. 145

the pankration for boys.

The first part of this account is obviously absurd in view of the

evidence given above for funeral games. There can be no doubt that in

the first Olympiad the programme included at least all the events

described by Pindar, the foot-race, the diskos, the spear, boxing,

wrestling, and the chariot-race. If the Olympic games did develop from a

single event, it was probably not from the foot-race, but from the armed

fight or the chariot-race. Probably the compiler dated the introduction

of each new event from the first occasion on which he found a mention of

it. This may explain the number of first events won by Sparta, a state

particularly well known to Hippias, one, too, where we should expect

athletic records to be kept with especial care. On the other hand, there

is no doubt that the programme received many additions, variations of

the foot-race such as the double race and the long race, complicated

events such as the pentathlon and pankration, especially boys’ events,

and there is no valid reason for doubting the date of such additions.

Connected with this story of the evolution of the games is the

precedence given to the stade-race, the winner of which gave his name to

the Olympiad. This custom, as we have seen, is not earlier than the

third century, and arose not from the excessive importance of that

event, but from the mere accident of its coming first on the programme

and also on the list of victors. The Greek sportsman had doubtless long

been in the habit of dating the years by reference to the victory of

some famous athlete, especially if he were a fellow-countryman.

Thucydides twice quotes in dates Olympic victories, each time victories

in the pankration, an event very popular at Athens. In the earliest

inscription that uses the Olympiads for chronology the pankration is

also the event mentioned.[60] Hence one is inclined to suspect the

completeness of the list of winners in the stade-race. Possibly early

records and traditions often stated the fact of a victory without

mentioning the event in which it was won, and the compiler of the

register, having adopted his theory of development, assumed that all

such victories were won in the foot-race.

In 776 B.C. Olympia itself had as yet changed but little. The only

building was the Heraeum, a long, low, narrow temple built originally of

wood. One of the wooden pillars was still standing in the time of

Pausanias. As the wooden pillars decayed they were replaced by stone

pillars. Hence the pillars, many of which are still standing, differed

in size, in material, in their fluting and their capitals, the earliest

belonging in style to the seventh or sixth centuries, the latest to the

Roman period. The temple was a treasure-house. There was kept the diskos

of Iphitus, and at a later period the chest of Cypselus, and the table

of ivory and gold on which the crowns for the victors were placed. Of

the wealth of votive offerings and statues that once adorned this temple

nearly all have perished; but there, at the exact spot described by

Pausanias, the German excavators found the Hermes of Praxiteles, which

represents the most perfect type of that physical beauty and harmonious

development that Greek athletics produced.

The number of altars had no doubt grown. The altar of Zeus already

rivalled, if it did not eclipse, the earlier altar of Hera and the tomb

of Pelops. This altar stood on a double elliptical base of stone, the

lower base 125 feet, the upper 32 feet in circumference. The altar

itself was built up of the ashes of the victims which were brought once

every year by the seers from the Prytaneum, kneaded with water from the

Alpheus and deposited on the altar. In the time of Pausanias it had

reached a height of 22 feet.

There was as yet no race-course at Olympia. The races and games must

have taken place in the open space that stretched from the altar of Zeus

and tomb of Pelops, below the slopes of the hill of Cronus, from which

the spectators doubtless looked on. The races probably finished at the

altar, and there, under the immediate protection of Zeus, the victors

were crowned. The race, according to a tradition related by

Philostratus,[61] originated in a torch-race, in which the competitors,

starting from the distance of a stade, raced with lighted torches to the

altar, the one who arrived first and lighted the fire receiving the

prize; similarly for the double race or diaulos, the runners raced from

the altar to summon to the sacrifice the deputations from Greek states

and then raced back to the altar; while the long race originated in the

practice of the heralds whose office it was to carry declarations of war

to different parts of Greece. Of such ceremonial races we shall find

examples in many parts of Greece, but the tradition deriving from them

the races at Olympia may be rejected as a late invention, which perhaps

had its origin in the fact that before the stadium was constructed the

races did finish at the altar. Certainly in Pindar’s time boxing and

similar events still took place there, and it is doubtful whether they

were ever transferred to the stadium.

For the first half-century Olympia remained the local festival of the

Elean and pre-Dorian countryfolk of the West. The first victor was

Coroebus of Elis,[62] whose tomb appropriately marked the boundary

between Elis and Heraea, a symbol of the truce between the two races.

Yet the Eleans could not appeal to their athletic records in support of

their claims. Of the first eleven victors only one other was an Elean,

while the older race was represented by seven Messenians, one Achaean

from Dyme, and one native of Dyspontium, a town near the mouth of the

Alpheus that belonged to the Pisatan league. According to a scandalous

tradition quoted by Athenaeus, Coroebus was a cook, but the scanty

records which we possess of these earlier victors prove that the games

still maintained their aristocratic character, and the tradition may be

set aside as the invention of the enemies of Elis, or the anti-athletic

party of a later age.

After Ol. 11 only one Messenian victory is chronicled till the

restoration of Messenia in the fourth century. Hypenos, who won the

double race on its introduction in Ol. 15, was a Pisatan, though Elis

tried to claim him. With these exceptions the old stock disappears, and

the Eleans are too supine, or too much occupied with feuds with Argos,

to take their place. Yet the athletic vigour of the old race reappears

afterwards from other quarters in families like the Diagoridae of Rhodes

who were descended from a daughter of the Messenian patriot Aristomenes,

in colonies like Achaean Croton, in the late successes of Arcadia at a

time when athletics had become a sufficiently lucrative profession to

tempt from their poor homes these hardy mountaineers and shepherds.

Perhaps the long roll of Spartan successes owed something to the

Messenians whom they had conquered. The records of their ancient

successes were doubtless jealously treasured by those who had left their

homes, and we may well suppose that from such records the early part of

the Olympic register was compiled.

The eclipse of the “home counties,” as we may call them, was partly due

to the growing importance of the festival, partly to the pressure of

Argos and Sparta. Of the part played by Argos we know but little; what

we do know is that Pheidon of Argos, whenever he lived, like other

tyrants tried to exploit the festival for the extension of his own

dominion, that he espoused the cause of the Pisatans, and that there was

a feud between the Eleans and the Argives,[63] which perhaps explains

the complete absence of Argos in the list of early victors. Elis found a

natural ally in Sparta. The valleys of the Eurotas and the Alpheus form

a direct means of communication between Sparta and Olympia, and the

control of this route by Sparta after the conquest of Messenia gave her

a natural advantage over her rival.

The influence of Olympia spread first along the northern coast of the

Peloponnese, secondly to Sparta. In the second half-century, Ol. 13-25,

Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sicyon, Hyperesia, Athens, Thebes, figure in

the list of victors, and yet farther east, Smyrna. All these places

communicate with Olympia by the Gulf of Corinth. It is significant that

this extension of its influence eastwards coincides with the founding of

the first Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. The Corinthians, passing

along the north coast of the gulf to Corcyra, crossed over and founded

Syracuse 734 B.C. Six years later the Megarians founded a new Megara

beside the hills of Hybla, and a century later the two Megaras combined

to colonize Selinus. The Achaeans, making a stepping-stone of Zacynthos,

founded the rich cities of Sybaris and Croton, and later Metapontum, and

built on the Lacinian promontory south of Croton a temple of Hera, which

became a centre of worship for the Greeks of Italy. Even the Eastern

Greeks of the islands took part in this movement. Gela was colonized by

settlers from Rhodes and Crete. All these colonies and many others

played a great part in the history of Olympia, the importance of which

we can see, not only in their list of victories, but in the remains of

the so-called treasuries which they built there, and it is hardly

fanciful to suppose that their connexion with Olympia dated from the

time when the settlers were leaving the shores of Greece.

The victory of Onomastus of Smyrna in Ol. 23 is no less significant of

the full communication existing between the mainland and the East at the

commencement of the seventh century.[64] Eastern despots sent offerings

to Delphi; poets from the islands and Asia Minor brought into Greece the

Phrygian and Aeolian modes of music; even the alphabet came from the

East. At Olympia, when the victors’ friends held revel in their honour

in the evening, they sang down to the time of Pindar the triumphal song

of Heracles composed by Archilochus of Paros.[65] Smyrna, at that time

the foremost city of the Eastern coast, was closely connected with the

Peloponnese. The poet Mimnermus tells us that his race had come from

Neleian Pylos to Colophon first, and had then dispossessed the Aeolian

inhabitants of Smyrna.[66]

The first appearance of Thebes is on the occasion of the introduction of

the chariot-race in Ol. 25. As we have seen, the chariot-race seems to

have been one of the earliest, if not the earliest, event at the

Olympia, and one is inclined to suspect that the innovation consisted in

the substitution of the four-horse chariot for the older two-horse

chariot, which was revived at Olympia in later times.

Thus we see that within a century of the first Olympiad, Olympia had

become a centre to which competitors came not only from the Peloponnese,

but from Athens, Thebes, and even from the East.

The long list of Spartan successes begins in Ol. 15 (720 B.C.), and

continues till Ol. 50 (576 B.C.), from which date they cease almost

entirely. During most of this period the superiority of Sparta is

undisputed. This superiority may be partially explained by the careful

records of athletic victories kept in that most methodical of states,

whereas the records of other states were less careful and less

accessible to the historian. Yet making full allowance for our imperfect

knowledge of other states, the Spartan successes are sufficiently

remarkable, and their sudden cessation hardly less so. Aristotle has

given us the explanation of these facts.[67] Sparta was the first Greek

state to introduce a systematic physical and military training, which

for a time made her unrivalled in sport and war; when other states

followed her example, her superiority disappeared. Moreover, in the

seventh century Sparta was still a progressive, enlightened state, fond

of poetry and music, taking an energetic part in all the manifold

activities of Greek life; only the good effects of her system were yet

apparent; its iron rule had not yet produced that narrow spirit of

exclusiveness which was fatal to progress.[68] Hence Spartan

participation in the Olympic festival not only raised the prestige of

the festival, but gave a new importance and seriousness to athletics.

Hitherto they had been a diversion of the nobles; henceforth they were

to be part of the education of the people. The physical education of

Greece was largely due to Spartan example. At the beginning of the sixth

century we find Solon making laws for the palaestrae and gymnasia, and

we may suspect that most important cities possessed these institutions.

Sparta is credited with no less than five victories in events said to be

introduced for the first time—the long race in Ol. 15, wrestling and the

pentathlon in Ol. 18, the boys’ wrestling in Ol. 37, and the boys’

pentathlon in Ol. 38. The latter event was abolished in the next

Olympiad owing to Elean jealousy at the success of the Spartan boy

Eutelidas. Perhaps the various events for boys were introduced for the

benefit of the home counties which had been ousted by increased

competition from without, and if so we can understand a certain feeling

of soreness at the Spartan success, especially as Eutelidas won the

boys’ wrestling in the same Olympiad. The statue in his honour at

Olympia was the oldest of all the statues of athletes; it seems to have

stood originally on the site occupied by the temple of Zeus, and on the

building of the temple to have been moved to the south.[69] Special

notice is due to Hipposthenes, the victor in the boys’ wrestling in Ol.

37, who subsequently won five more victories in wrestling at Olympia,

and who had a temple built in his honour at Sparta. His son almost

equalled his father’s record, winning five victories in wrestling.[70]

Another equally famous athlete was Chionis, who won four victories in

the stade-race and three in the double race, besides victories in other

sports, Ols. 28-31. He is said to have taken part with Battus in the

colonization of Cyrene, and his exploits were commemorated at a later

date by his countrymen on stone pillars at Sparta and at Olympia, where

they also set up in his honour a statue, the work of Myron.

Meanwhile, during the period of Spartan pre-eminence, the influence of

Olympia had been steadily spreading, especially among the colonies of

the West. In Ol. 33 two new events were added—the riding race, which was

won by a Thessalian from Crannon, and the pankration, a combination of

boxing and wrestling, which was won by Lygdamis of Syracuse, who was

said to have had the proportions of Heracles, his foot, like that of the

hero, being exactly an Olympic foot. The various events for boys were

introduced between Ol. 37 and Ol. 41, and in the boys’ boxing the first

winner came from Sybaris. Croton had already begun her victorious

career. From Miletus in Ol. 46 came the boy runner Polymnestor, who, as

a shepherd boy, was said to have captured hares by speed of foot; while

from Samos came the effeminate-looking Pythagoras with his long hair and

purple robes. Rejected from the boys’ boxing as a weakling, he entered

for the men’s competition and won it. So rapid was the progress of the

colonies, and so keen their participation in the Olympic festival, that

from Ol. 50 they outstripped the mother country, and the following

century may be described as the colonial period of Olympia. The first

attempt made by any Greek state to secure for itself a local habitation

at Olympia was the building of a treasury by the Geloans at the close of

the seventh century. Before the close of the sixth their example had

been followed by Metapontum, Selinus, Sybaris, Byzantium and Cyrene, the

only representatives of the Peloponnese being the Megarians. Nothing

indicates more clearly the predominance of the colonies than this line

of treasuries, or rather communal houses,[71] standing on a terrace at

the foot of the hill of Cronus between the Heraeum and the entrance of

the later stadium, and commanding a view of the Altis, of the altars,

and the games. One wonders if the Spartans indulged in lamentations over

the decay of Spartan athletics. I think not, for that reserved and

silent people had too much pride and dourness; moreover athletics to

them were but a means to an end, the training of soldier citizens.

Certainly from this date they ceased to figure in the victors’ lists,

engrossed perhaps in more serious contests and schemes of

aggrandizement, or else estranged from the festival by the new

democratic, Panhellenic spirit introduced there by the colonies, and

unwilling to suffer defeat at the hands of upstarts.

The influence of the colonies was great. Their competition gave a fresh

impulse to that wave of athleticism which reached its height in the

sixth century. To Olympia they gave a Panhellenic character as a

meeting-place for all the scattered members of the Greek race, and

thereby tended to preserve and strengthen that feeling of unity which

contact with other nations had already quickened into life. No foreigner

could enter as a competitor at Olympia, no barbarous potentates sent

offerings to its shrines or consulted its oracle. Olympia remained

throughout its history purely and exclusively Hellenic. Again, the

colonies brought Olympia into touch with the democratic spirit of the

age, and broke down the barriers of Elean and Spartan exclusiveness. The

colonial claimed admission purely by virtue of his Greek birth, and no

distinctions of rank or caste or wealth were known in the Olympic games.

Sport, especially national sport, is a great leveller of social

distinctions.

The political importance of such a festival, which drew competitors and

spectators from all quarters of the Greek world, could not escape the

notice of the clear-sighted and ambitious tyrants and nobles of the

seventh century. But the sanctity of the place and the new democratic

spirit of the festival were too strong for them. Pheidon of Argos had

tried to make himself master of Olympia by force of arms. Other tyrants

tried more peaceful means, seeking to win popularity among the assembled

crowds and influence with the powers of Olympia by victories in the

chariot-race, or by sumptuous offerings to Olympian Zeus. In the middle

of the seventh century Myron of Sicyon won a victory in the chariot-race

and commemorated his success by dedicating two treasure-chests of solid

bronze, one of which weighed 500 talents. These treasure-chests were

afterwards placed in the treasure-house of the Sicyonians, built in the

fifth century possibly in the place of some more ancient structure. The

excavations of Olympia have revealed the solid floor intended to bear

the weight of these treasure-chests. His grandson Cleisthenes, himself a

victor, took advantage of the festival to proclaim the famous

competition for the hand of his daughter Agariste, which Herodotus

describes. Cypselus of Corinth, too, dedicated at Olympia a golden

statue of Zeus made in the style of the early metal-workers, of beaten

gold plates riveted together. His son Periander was victor in the

chariot-race, and gave to Olympia the famous chest of Cypselus in which,

according to the story, the infant Cypselus had been hidden by his

mother from the assassins sent by the oligarchs of Corinth to murder

him. From Athens came the would-be tyrant Cylon, who won the diaulos

race in Ol. 35; and in the next generation the chariot-race was won by

Alcmaeon, the son of that Megacles who was responsible as archon for the

death of Cylon and the consequent pollution of the Alcmaeonidae, and the

father of Megacles, the successful suitor of Agariste. Yet, in spite of

their victories and their offerings, no tyrant secured influence at

Olympia, no building there bore a tyrant’s name. The so-called

treasuries were the communal houses of states, that of the Megarians,

which dates about this time, being set up probably not by the tyrant

Theagenes but by the people after his fall, and before their power was

weakened by the successes of Athens.

Thus at the beginning of the sixth century Olympia had acquired a unique

position as the national festival of Hellas. Competitors and spectators

of all classes gathered there from every part of Greece. The sacred

truce-bearers proclaimed the month of peace throughout the Greek world,

and in response, cities of Asia and of Sicily vied with one another in

the splendour of the official embassies (θεωρίαι) sent to represent them

at the festival. The old aristocratic character survived in the

chariot-race and horse-race, which afforded to tyrants and nobles an

opportunity of displaying their riches and their power. The athletic

programme was now practically complete, the only important innovation of

later times being the race in full armour introduced 520 B.C., and this

programme was truly democratic. In athletic events noble and peasant met

on equal terms. The aristocratic prejudice against these popular

contests did not yet exist; and though the honour of the Olympic crown

was open to the poorest citizen of Greek birth, such was the prestige of

the festival that it was coveted even by the highest. The representative

character of Olympia was due to a variety of causes. The geographical

position of the place, its ancient sanctity, the athletic vigour of the

pre-Dorian Greeks, the discipline and training of the Spartans, the

enthusiastic patriotism of the colonies, the ambition of tyrants, the

new spirit of democracy,—these and other causes contributed to the

result, and the importance of the result was recognized by the founding

within the next half-century of three other Panhellenic festivals at

Delphi, at Nemea, and at the Isthmus, and of many another festival

which, like the Panathenaea, aspired to but never attained Panhellenic

dignity.

Yet, despite the growth of the festival and the development of

athletics, there was little change in the appearance of the Altis or the

organization of the games. Some of the wooden pillars of the Heraeum

were perhaps replaced by stone, but no fresh building appeared till the

treasuries, the earliest of which date from the close of the seventh

century. The games still took place near the altar, where a course could

be easily measured and marked out before each meeting. The new events

added were merely variations of those which we find in Homer. Popularity

and competition had no doubt improved the standard of performance, but

athletic training did not yet exist. In the towns, indeed, gymnasia and

palaestrae were already springing up; but these were educational rather

than athletic, intended to train and discipline the young as useful

soldiers rather than to produce champion athletes. The bulk of the

population living an open-air country life in which war, hunting, and

games played a considerable part, had no need of training. Thus, though

athletics had become popular, they still maintained the spontaneity and

joy of the Homeric age: they were still pure recreation.

Footnote 27:

Frazer, _Pausanias_, i. 44, 8; Rouse, _Greek Votive Offerings_, pp. 4,

10; Körte, “Die Entstehung der Olympionikenliste,” _Hermes_, xxxix.,

1904, pp. 224 ff.; Krause, _Die Pythien, Nemeen, und Isthmien_, pp. 9,

112, 171.

Footnote 28:

Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, 2nd Ed. i. 374; ii. 323,

330.

Footnote 29:

Frazer, _loc. cit._

Footnote 30:

P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ireland_, ii. pp. 435 ff.

Footnote 31:

_C.I.G._ 1969, ἀγὼν ἐπιτάφιος θεματικός.

Footnote 32:

_Berl. Vas._ 1665. _Mon. d. I._ X. Pl. iv., v.

Footnote 33:

_Arch. Zeit._, 1885, Pl. viii. The vase is now at Copenhagen. The

silver cup referred to below is in the Uffizi Palace, and is

reproduced in Schreiber’s _Atlas_, xiii. 6, and Inghirami, _Mon. Etr._

iii. 19, 20.

Footnote 34:

_B.M. Vases_, B. 124.

Footnote 35:

Hesiod, _Op._ 654.

Footnote 36:

Paus. viii. 4, 5.

Footnote 37:

Pindar, _Ol._ vii. 77-80.

Footnote 38:

Frazer, _Paus._ i. 29, 30.

Footnote 39:

Plut. _Quaest. Symp._ v. 2.

Footnote 40:

Unless we accept Mr. Myers’ translation of Pindar, _Ol._ i. 94, “And

from afar off he beholdeth the glory of the Olympian games in the

courses called of Pelops.” Most modern editors translate κλέος τηλόθεν

δέδορκε, “his glory shineth from afar,” which, in view of the words

which follow, ἐν δρόμοις Πέλοπος, seems decidedly preferable to making

Pelops the subject.

Footnote 41:

It is perhaps no accident that in our imperfect records of the Olympic

games the earliest victor outside the Peloponnese is Onomastus of

Smyrna, who in _Ol._ 23 won the boxing, an event said to have been

then introduced for the first time. He is said to have drawn up rules

for boxing which were adopted at Olympia. Again, no family was more

distinguished in the history of Greek athletics than the Diagoridae of

Rhodes, whose victories in boxing and the pankration were immortalized

by Pindar. The prominence of boxing in the East reminds us of Minoan

times, and perhaps the tradition may have survived from these days.

Footnote 42:

Paus. iv. 4, 1; iv. 33, 2.

Footnote 43:

Pindar, _Ol._ i. (E. Myers’ translation).

Footnote 44:

_Vide_ Bötticher, _Olympia_, ch. i.

Footnote 45:

For the history of Olympia _vide_ Curtius, “Entwurf einer Geschichte

von Olympia,” in _Ol._ Text. i. pp. 16-68.

Footnote 46:

For the cult of Pelops _vide_ Paus. v. 13, 2; Schol. to Pindar, _Ol._

i. 146, 149.

Footnote 47:

The latest excavations show that this site had been inhabited in

prehistoric days. Traces of six buildings have been discovered below

the geometric stratum; they are characterized by a semicircular

apsidal ending. _Ath. Mitth._ xxxiii. 185; _Year’s Work in Classical

Studies_, 1908, p. 12.

Footnote 48:

Pindar, _Ol._ xi. 64.

Footnote 49:

Cp. Louis Dyer, “The Olympian Council House,” in _Harvard Classical

Studies_, 1908, where a full account of these Peloponnesian leagues

will be found.

Footnote 50:

Paus. v. 20, 1; Plut. _Lycurgus_ 1, 1. The part taken by Cleosthenes

is vouched for by Phlegon, _Frag. Hist. Gr._ p. 602, and in a scholion

on Plato’s _Republic_, 465 D. _Vide_ Dyer, _l.c._ pp. 40 ff.

Footnote 51:

Thuc. v. 49; Demosth. _De fals. leg._, ὑπόθ. p. 335.

Footnote 52:

_Hell._ iii. 2, 31; vii. 4, 28.

Footnote 53:

Hdt. iv. 148.

Footnote 54:

_C.I.G._ 11; Roberts’s _Greek Epigraphy_, 291.

Footnote 55:

Paus. v. 6, 7.

Footnote 56:

Paus. v. 16.

Footnote 57:

Paus. i. 44; _Anth. Pal._ App. 272; Thuc. i. 6.

Footnote 58:

For a full discussion of the register, its history and its sources,

_vide_ Jüthner, _Philostratus_, pp. 60-70.

Footnote 59:

_De Olympionicarum Statuis_, p. 36.

Footnote 60:

Thuc. iii. 8, v. 49; Ditt. _Syll._, 2nd Ed., 256.

Footnote 61:

_Gym._ 4.

Footnote 62:

Paus. v. 8, 6; viii. 26, 3; Athen. ix. 382 B. Details with regard to

the various victors mentioned in this and the following chapters may

be found under their names in Krause, _Olympia_, H. Förster,

_Olympische Sieger_, and W. Hyde, _De Olympionicarum Statuis_, in all

of which full references are given.

Footnote 63:

Paus. v. 2 and 3.

Footnote 64:

Bury, _History of Greece_, p. 110.

Footnote 65:

Pindar, _Ol._ ix. The date of Archilochus is fixed by Hauvette in the

first half of the seventh century. _Cl. Rev._ xxi. p. 143.

Footnote 66:

Mimnermus, _Fr._ 9 (Bergk).

Footnote 67:

Aristot. _Politics_, v. 4.

Footnote 68:

The recent excavations at Sparta prove that the decline of athletics

coincided with the decline of art. Mr. R. M. Dawkins, writing in last

report of the _B.S.A._, vol. xiv. p. 2, says: “In every case we have

the remarkable result that the finest works belong to the seventh

century, and that the sixth already shows the beginning of the decline

which is so marked in the very poor character of the finds of the

fifth century.”

Footnote 69:

Hyde, _op. cit._ p. 56.

Footnote 70:

Paus. iii. 13, 9.

Footnote 71:

For the treasuries at Olympia _vide_ Louis Dyer, in _J.H.S._ vols.

xxv. and xxvi.

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF ATHLETIC FESTIVALS, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

The sixth century is the age of organized athletics. The rise of Sparta

and her success in sport and war gave to the Greek world an object

lesson on the value of systematic training, and henceforth the training

of the body was an essential part of Greek education. Palaestrae and

gymnasia were established everywhere, and Solon found it necessary to

lay down laws for their conduct. These institutions were originally

intended for the training of the young, but the growth of athletic

competition soon called into being a new and specialized form of

training, the training of competitors for the great games. An art of

training sprung up, and in the time of Pindar the professors of the new

art, besides reaping a rich harvest from their pupils, received honour

scarcely inferior to that of the victors themselves. The rapid

development of the Olympic festival had shown the value of athletics as

a bond of union between Greeks throughout the world, and the general

yearning after a unity which was destined never to be realized found

expression in the establishment of other festivals for which Olympia

served as a model.

At Delphi, the Isthmus, and Nemea, local festivals and competitions had

long existed.[72] The oracle of Delphi had already acquired a

Panhellenic, almost a cosmopolitan importance, rivalling that of

Olympia. The Pythian festival was said to have been founded to

commemorate Apollo’s victory over the Python. To expiate the death of

the dragon, Apollo had been condemned to nine years of exile, and the

festival was therefore held every ninth year, or, according to our

reckoning, once in eight years. Later legend asserted that there had

been athletic games at Delphi, and various heroes were named as victors

in these sports. But it seems probable that the original competitions at

Delphi were purely musical, and in the hymn for Apollo Delphusa

expressly commends Delphi as the home for the god on the ground that

there his altar will be undisturbed by the “whirling of fair chariots or

the sound of swift-footed steeds.” The innate ambition of the Greek and

his desire to outshine his fellows found vent in competitions of every

sort. Musical competitions were specially connected with the worship of

Apollo at Delos and at Sparta; at Delphi a prize was given for a hymn to

Apollo chanted to the accompaniment of the cithara.

Such the festival remained till the outbreak of the first Sacred war.

The war was due to the impious conduct of the Crisaeans, who, having

command of the plain and the harbour of Cirrha, had enriched themselves

at the expense of the Delphians and Apollo, by levying exorbitant tolls

on the pilgrims who landed at Cirrha on their way to the oracle. The

Delphians appealed to their natural protectors, the Amphictyonic League

at Thermopylae, who straightway proclaimed a sacred war. The command of

the expedition was given to the Thessalian Eurylochus; the Athenians, on

the advice of Solon, sent a contingent under Alcmaeon, while

Cleisthenes, the ambitious tyrant of Sicyon, eagerly embraced the

opportunity of posing as a champion of Greek religion. The festival was

restored and reorganized in 590 B.C. New musical events were added, a

solo on the flute and a song accompanied by the flute; athletic and

equestrian competitions also were introduced on the model of those at

Olympia; but since Delphi as yet had no stadium, the games were held in

the plain of Crisa below. The chariot-race for some reason or other was

omitted, but two additional athletic events found a place, a long race

and a diaulos race for boys.

The war, however, broke out afresh and lasted for six years, at the end

of which, in 582, the festival was finally reorganized out of the spoil

of Crisa as a pentaëteris, and placed under the control of the

Amphictyons. The year 582 dates as the first Pythiad, and from this time

the festival was held every fourth year, in the August of the third year

of each Olympiad. The valuable prizes which had been offered of old were

abolished, and in their place was substituted a crown of bay leaves

plucked from the Vale of Tempe. The somewhat scanty details which we

possess as to the festival and its history will be discussed in a later

chapter. For the present it is sufficient to note one significant fact:

the chariot-race which had been omitted in 590 was introduced in 582,

and the first victor was Cleisthenes of Sicyon himself. The plains of

Sicyon were admirably adapted for breeding horses, a pursuit which

afforded its tyrants a ready means of increasing and displaying their

wealth. Myron had already gained a victory in the chariot-race at

Olympia, and his grandson Cleisthenes, shortly after his Pythian

success, secured the same honour on the occasion when he issued his

invitation to the suitors for the hand of Agariste. At Sicyon itself he

commemorated the part which he had played in the Sacred war by a

splendid colonnade built out of the spoils of Cirrha, and at the same

time he reorganized as a local Pythia an ancient festival connected with

the Argive hero Adrastus, whose memory he delighted to insult.[73] We

may therefore safely regard the introduction of the chariot-race at

Delphi as due to the tyrant’s influence, and the remodelling of the

festival as part of his pushing Panhellenic policy.

Almost at the same time, perhaps in the same year, 582 B.C., the

Isthmian festival was reorganized. This festival, which claimed an

antiquity greater even than that of Olympia, was celebrated at the

sanctuary of Poseidon, which stood in a grove of pine-trees at the

south-east of the Isthmus, a little to the south of the eastern end of

the present Corinth canal. The various legends of its origin are all

connected directly or indirectly with the worship of Poseidon. The

wreath of dry celery leaves, which in the time of Pindar was the prize,

recalled the story that the games were first founded in honour of the

luckless Melicertes at the spot to which his dead body was carried by a

dolphin. According to another legend they were instituted by the Attic

hero Theseus, when he had freed the land from the terror of the robber

Sinis. This story points to the close connexion of the Isthmia with

Athens. The Athenian envoys enjoyed the privilege of precedence

(προεδρία) at this festival, and a space was reserved for them, as much

as could be covered by the sail of the ship which brought them to the

Isthmus. No other festival was so conveniently situated for the

Athenians. Athens and Corinth had much in common, and were on most

friendly terms before the relations between them were embittered by

commercial rivalry, and their friendship was especially close in the

period following the fall of the Cypselidae. Another version of the

Theseus legend represents him as founding the Isthmia in rivalry of

Heracles, who had founded the Olympic games; and here we may trace a

certain jealousy existing between the two festivals.[74] We know on good

authority that the Eleans were not allowed to compete at the Isthmia.

This ban, which Elean tradition represented as a self-denying ordinance

imposed by the curse of Molione, may well have originated in this

rivalry. We can imagine that the Elean authorities regarded with no

favour the rise of a rival festival on a site so central, the

meeting-place of the trade of East and West. Yet, after all, Olympia had

no reason to fear its rival. The central position of Corinth involving

her in all the feuds and wars of Greek history, prevented the Isthmia

from ever acquiring that unique independence which characterized the

more remote Olympia. There can be little doubt, too, that from the first

the festival reflected the luxurious commercial character of Corinth.

There the joyous life of the Ionian race found vent in a sort of

cosmopolitan carnival which contrasted strangely with the more strenuous

Dorian festival of remote Olympia.

The remodelled festival was a trieteris, held in the spring of the

second and fourth years of each Olympiad. The programme was a varied

one, including, besides athletics and horse-races, musical competitions,

and possibly a regatta. The presidency of the festival belonged to the

Corinthians. Whether its establishment as a Panhellenic festival was due

to the tyrant Periander or expressed the joy of the people at their

liberation from his rule, the evidence does not allow us to determine.

The latter seems to me more probable. The great tyrant, laid by his

victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, and by costly offerings to

Olympia and Delphi, tried to win the support of the authorities at these

places, and it may well be that the founding of a rival festival marked

the popular reaction against his policy. Be this as it may, the

establishment of the Isthmia is another sign of the great national

movement towards unity. Tyrants recognized and tried to utilize the

movement for their own advantage. But Panhellenism was independent of

tyrants; it was a spontaneous movement of the people, and it need cause

no surprise that one Panhellenic festival should owe its origin to a

tyrant, another to the people.

A similar doubt attaches to the last of the Greek festivals, the Nemea.

The cypress grove of Nemea, where stood the temple of the Nemean Zeus,

lay in a secluded valley among the hills, half-way between Phlius and

Cleonae. Here under the presidency of the latter state local games had

long been celebrated. They were said to have been founded by Adrastus as

funeral games in honour of the child Opheltes, who, having been left by

his nurse in the grove, had been devoured by a serpent. According to

another story, they were founded by Heracles after his slaying of the

Nemean lion, and by him dedicated to Zeus. They were reorganized in the

year 573 B.C. as a trieteris, and took place like the Isthmia in the

second and fourth year of each Olympiad, probably at the very beginning

of the Olympic year in July. The prize was a wreath of fresh celery, but

was said to have been originally a wreath of olive. As at Olympia, the

managers of the games bore the title of Hellanodicae. As at Olympia, the

contests were until later times purely athletic and equestrian. The

striking resemblances to Olympia are clearly due to Dorian influence,

and may perhaps help us to understand how it was that, within a few

years of the founding of the Isthmia, a second Panhellenic festival was

established in its immediate neighbourhood.

The little town of Cleonae, which held the presidency of the Nemea down

to the time of Pindar, could certainly never have raised its festival

unaided to Panhellenic dignity. Cleonae seems to have been for a time

under the dominion of Cleisthenes of Sicyon; yet it seems hardly likely

that the tyrant, who had already helped in establishing the Pythia at

Delphi, besides a local Pythia at Sicyon, and whose policy was so

markedly anti-Dorian, should have founded a second Panhellenic festival

of so purely Dorian a type. Moreover, it seems that Cleonae had already

thrown off the yoke of Cleisthenes, whose power was on the decline.

Argos, too, was on the decline, and though Argos in the year 460 B.C.

usurped the presidency of the games, we find similar claims put forward

by Corinth and by Mycenae. The fact that so many states claimed the

presidency of the festival suggests that its re-establishment was not

the work of any one state but of the Dorians of the north-eastern

Peloponnese generally. If we are right about the jealousy felt by the

authorities of Olympia towards the newly-founded Isthmia, and the

character of the latter festival, we may perhaps see in the founding of

the Nemea the protest of Dorian puritanism against innovations which

seemed to degrade the serious business of athletics. Scandalized by the

laxness of the new festival, with its traffic and its pleasures and its

multitude of entertainments, the Dorians of Argolis conceived the idea

of founding at Cleonae an eastern counterpart of Olympia. The

strenuousness of athletics in Argolis is surely indicated in the

strength and severity characterizing the athletic school of sculpture

which had its origin in Sicyon and Argos, half-way between which places

appropriately lay Cleonae. The view suggested above is of course

hypothetical, but it accords with what we know of the Isthmia and the

Nemea, and satisfactorily explains the Panhellenic character of the

latter.

Thus by the year 570 the four Panhellenic festivals were established.

They were distinctively the sacred meetings (ἱεροὶ ἀγῶνες) and the games

of the crown (στεφανῖται), so called to distinguish them from the

numerous games where prizes of value were given (θεματικοί). It is no

little proof of the true athletic feeling of the Greeks that in their

four greatest festivals no prize was given but the simple crown of

leaves. The cycle of these festivals will be best understood by a glance

at the following table, which shows the order of the festivals during a

single Olympiad.[75] It must be remembered that the Greek year began

with the summer solstice, and consequently belongs half to one, half to

the next year, according to our reckoning.

Olympiad. B.C.

55. 1 560/559 560 Late Summer Olympia.

2 559/8 { 559 Summer Nemea.

{ 558 Spring Isthmia.

3 558/7 558 August Pythia.

4 557/6 { 557 Summer Nemea.

{ 556 Spring Isthmia.

56. 1 556/5 556 Late Summer Olympia.

Thus we see that in the even years there were two Panhellenic festivals,

in the odd years one.

The competition of other Panhellenic festivals threatened the supremacy

of Olympia, and forced the easy-going conservative authorities of that

place into activity. Hitherto they had allowed the festival to develop

from without; they had allowed Gela and Megara to build treasuries

overlooking the Altis, and so to establish some sort of claim to a share

in the management; content with their traditional customs they had made

no attempt to provide adequate organization for an athletic meeting of

such importance. Now they saw that if they were to maintain their

position they must set their house in order. A significant story is told

by Herodotus.[76] In the reign of Psammetichus II. (594-589 B.C.) some

Elean ambassadors visited Egypt to see if the Egyptians could suggest

any improvement in the rules for the Olympic games, which they boasted

were the fairest and best that could be devised. The Egyptians, after

considering a while, asked if they allowed their own citizens to

compete. The Eleans replied that the games were open to all Greeks,

whether they belonged to Elis or any other state. To this the Egyptians,

with true commercial instinct, answered that the rules were far from

just, for that it was impossible but that they would favour their own

countrymen and deal unfairly with foreigners; if, therefore, they wished

to manage the games with fairness they must confine the games to

strangers and allow no native of Elis to compete. It is to the credit of

the Greeks that no such self-denying ordinance was introduced or found

to be necessary, and that the Greeks themselves never raised any such

objection till a much later date. It is only when sport becomes too

competitive and too lucrative and the professional and commercial spirit

enters in that elaborate safeguards are required against unfairness.

This story is valuable evidence that the Eleans were at this time

seeking to improve their arrangements. What the improvements were we do

not know, but that some sort of reorganization took place is rendered

probable by the tradition recorded above, that in Ol. 50 a second

Hellanodicas was first appointed. Possibly the Olympic Council was

remodelled. We find this Council in the fourth century acting as a court

of appeal, and in Imperial times it is mentioned in inscriptions as

authorizing the setting up of honorific statues.[77] The Hellanodicae

were its executive officers, and from their history and numbers it seems

probable that the Council represented the various tribes which formed a

sort of amphictyony originally controlling the festival. Their existence

in the sixth century is proved by the remains of their Council-house.

This building lay below the south wall of the Altis. It consists of two

long buildings, terminated at the west end by an apse, parallel to each

other, and united by a square chamber between them. The northern wing of

the building dates from the middle of the sixth century at the latest.

The apsidal chamber at the end was divided by a partition, and served

probably for the storage of archives and treasure, while the rest of the

building formed the business quarters of the Council and the

Hellanodicae. There the competitors had to appear and take an oath

before the altar of Zeus Horkios that they had observed, and would

observe the conditions of the festival. Another building connected with

the permanent management of the festival was the Prytaneum, also built

about the same time. In it was the altar of Hestia, on which the sacred

fire was kept always burning. The ashes from this altar, collected and

mixed with the water of the Alpheus, were used to build up the great

altar of Zeus. Here, when the games were ended, distinguished guests and

victors were feasted, and songs of victory were chanted in their honour.

The Council must have exercised a control over all new buildings erected

at Olympia. In the second half of the sixth century fresh treasuries

were built by the states of Selinus, Sybaris, Byzantium, and Cyrene, a

list which sufficiently illustrates the widespread influence of the

festival. The planning and alignment of these buildings clearly implies

the supervision of some local authority.

Significant of the new energy of these authorities and of their desire

to render Olympia itself worthy of the festival, was a practice, which

began in this century, of allowing victors to commemorate their

victories by votive statues. The earliest of these statues, according to

Pausanias, were those of Praxidamas of Aegina, who won the boxing in Ol.

59, and of Rhexibius of Opus who won the pankration two Olympiads later.

These statues were of wood, and we may, therefore, suspect that those

seen by Pausanias were not really the first but only the oldest which

had survived. Certainly there were statues of earlier victors. Some of

these, like that of the Lacedaemonian Chionis, or that of the famous

pankratiast Arrhichion, at his native home Phigalia, were set up by

their countrymen many years after their death. Others, like that of the

Spartan boy Eutelidas, who won the boys’ wrestling and the boys’

pentathlon, may have been contemporary. The first sculptors of athletic

statues, whose names we know, are Chrysothemis and Eutelidas of Argos,

who made the statues for the Heraean Damaretus, who won the race in

armour in Ols. 65, 66, and for his son Theopompus, who won two victories

in the pentathlon. On the inscriptions beneath these statues the artists

claimed to have learnt their art from former artists. Argos and Sicyon,

the homes of the earliest athletic sculpture, were, as we have seen,

closely connected with the newly organized Panhellenic festivals, in

addition to which there were a number of minor local festivals

throughout that district. We may, therefore, safely connect the rise of

the athletic school of art with the athletic movement that produced

these festivals. These early statues were, of course, not portrait

statues. We learn from Pliny that the right of setting up a portrait

statue was confined to winners of a triple victory. The accuracy of this

statement is open to doubt; certainly it cannot have been true before

the fourth century, previous to which portrait statues were practically

unknown. The early artists must have contented themselves with type

statues, representing the various events in which victory had been

gained.

Towards the close of the century certain additions were made to the

programme. In Ol. 65 (520 B.C.) the race in heavy armour was introduced

at Olympia, and in 498 B.C. at Delphi. This innovation was clearly due

to the growing importance of the heavy-armed infantry in Greek warfare.

Greek sports were, as we have seen, in their origin practical and

military, but with changed conditions of warfare they had lost their

military character and become purely athletic. The chieftain no longer

went to war in his chariot; his men no longer threw stones or light

javelins. Individual warfare was giving place to the manœuvring of

masses of heavy-armed troops. The introduction of the race in armour was

an attempt to restore to athletics their practical character. The race

was a diaulos, _i.e._ up the stadium and back to the starting-point, a

distance of about four hundred yards. The men wore helmets, greaves, and

round shields. At a later time the greaves were discarded, perhaps as a

concession to athletes who regarded such a race as a spurious sort of

athletics. Certainly the race never attained to the same prestige as the

other events.

In Ol. 70 (500 B.C.) a mule chariot-race (ἀπήνη) was introduced, and in

the next Olympiad a riding race for mares (κάλπη), in which the riders

dismounted in the last lap and ran with their steeds. In both these

events, which were discontinued after a short trial in Ol. 84, we may

see the influence of the Elean nobility, whose wealth and power were

derived largely from their horses and cattle. The introduction of mule

chariot-races may have been partly due to the influence of the Lords of

Sicily; the victory of Anaxilas is commemorated on the coins of Rhegium

and Messana (Fig. 168). The κάλπη is of especial interest. Helbig has

shown that the Hippeis of Athens and other Greek states in the sixth

century were not cavalry soldiers in the strict sense of the word, but

mounted infantry, the true successors of the Homeric chieftains.[78]

Just as the latter went to war in their chariots, but dismounted in

order to fight, leaving the chariot in charge of the charioteer, and

remounting for flight or for pursuit, so the Hippeis of the sixth

century merely used their horses for advance or for retreat, dismounting

when they came into close contact with the foe, and leaving their horses

with their squires, who accompanied them, either mounted behind them _en

croupe_, or on horses of their own. The Homeric custom survived only in

sports, in the ἀποβατής, whom we see represented on the frieze of the

Parthenon in the act of dismounting; the later custom was represented

for a brief time only by the κάλπη. As we have seen in discussing the

race in armour, the system of individual warfare was passing away.

Sparta had shown the superiority of masses of armed infantry. Previous

to the Persian wars, Thessalian cavalry had already been employed by

Peisistratus, and these served in the fifth century as the model on

which corps of cavalry proper were organized in Athens and other states.

But in 500 B.C. there were no cavalry in the Peloponnese, and the

conservative nobles may well have regarded with jealousy a change which

threatened to put them on a level with the ordinary foot-soldier. The

introduction of the κάλπη then was an attempt to stimulate and encourage

the older style of fighting. But the attempt was doomed to failure; the

progress of military tactics was not to be checked by the Eleans, and

while the hoplite race survived as long as the festival itself, the

κάλπη was ignominiously abandoned in 444 B.C.

Besides the four great festivals of the Crown there were countless local

festivals where competitions of various sorts were held.[79] The prizes

offered were often tripods, and bowls of silver or of bronze; sometimes

articles of local manufacture, such as a cloak at Pellene, a shield at

Argos, vases of olive-oil at Athens; sometimes a portion of the victim

sacrificed, or the victim to be sacrificed. The British Museum possesses

a bronze caldron[80] of about the sixth century, which was found at Cyme

in Italy, and was given as a prize at some local games founded by, or

held in honour of, a certain Onomastus. It bears the inscription, “I was

a prize at the games of Onomastus.” Many of these festivals were

connected with the cults of local heroes, and had existed for

generations. Sometimes the competitions themselves bore a distinctly

ritual character; thus the torch-race, which we meet with in many parts

of Greece, was connected with the primitive custom of periodically

distributing new and holy fire from the sacred hearth where it had been

kindled. Sometimes the competitions were musical, as at the Spartan

Carnea; more frequently they were purely athletic. The athletic

competitions acquired fresh life from the stimulus given to athletics by

the growth of the Panhellenic festivals. At first purely local, even

these minor gatherings in Pindar’s time drew competitors from various

parts of Greece. Many fresh festivals were added, and old ones

reorganized during the sixth century, especially in the eastern parts of

Greece, but of most of these we know little besides the names. The

greatest of all was the Panathenaic Festival.

Athenian nobles had won distinction at Olympia in the seventh century.

Four Athenian victories are chronicled in the stade-race. Cylon, as

already mentioned, won a victory in the diaulos in Ol. 35 (640 B.C.), a

victory which perhaps cost him dear. Having consulted the Delphic oracle

as to the success of his plot to make himself master of Athens, he was

advised to carry out his plan at the greatest festival of Zeus. The

former Olympic victor naturally concluded that the oracle meant the

Olympia, and not the Athenian Diasia, and this mistake is said to have

led to his failure and his death. Another prominent Athenian victor was

Phrynon, who in the Olympiad after Cylon’s victory won the pankration,

an event in which the Athenians seem to have excelled. He was general in

the Athenian expedition to Sigeum, where he fell in single combat

against Pittacus of Mitylene, who, according to later tradition,

arraying himself as a fisherman, entangled Phrynon in his net and then

ran him through with his trident in true gladiatorial style. Early in

the sixth century we find Hippocrates, the father of Peisistratus,

present as one of the Athenian envoys to Olympia. It was on this

occasion, says Herodotus,[81] that he had a dream respecting the birth

of Peisistratus, which dream was explained to him by the Spartan Ephor

Chilon. Chilon, who was reckoned among the seven wise men of Greece, is

said to have died some years later at Olympia from joy at the victory of

his son Damagetus in boxing.[82] During the sixth century we have no

record of Athenian successes in athletic contests, but many of the rival

nobles won victories in the chariot-race. Peisistratus himself was

proclaimed victor under strange circumstances. Cimon, the half-brother

of Miltiades, the tyrant of the Chersonnese, himself a victor, had been

banished from Athens by Peisistratus. This Cimon had a remarkable

record. He won the chariot-race with the same team of mares at three

successive Olympiads. At the second he agreed with Peisistratus that if

he proclaimed the tyrant winner, he should be recalled from exile.[83]

In spite of this he was put to death by the thankless sons of

Peisistratus shortly after his last victory. Curtius ascribes to

Peisistratus an inscription on the altar of the twelve gods at Athens

recording the distance from Athens to Olympia.[84]

The value of athletics and their political importance had been realised

by Solon. Besides making rules for the conduct of gymnasia he offered a

public reward of 500 drachmae to each Olympian victor, 100 to each

Isthmian victor, and so on to the victors in other games. This measure

is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt on the part of Solon to check

the extravagant rewards lavished on athletes. Such a view is utterly

false. There is no evidence that athletes did receive extravagant

rewards in Solon’s time: and 500 drachmae, though perhaps a trivial sum

to the professional athletes of a later and degenerate age, was then a

considerable amount.[85] Rather we may see in this measure an attempt to

encourage athletics among the people, and perhaps to counteract the

growing love of chariot-racing among the aristocracy.

It is tempting to ascribe to Solon’s influence and policy the founding

of the Panathenaea, or rather the remodelling of the old Athenaea, under

this name. This event is assigned to the year 566 B.C., about the time

when Athens, by the efforts of Solon and Peisistratus, finally made

herself mistress of Salamis, and thus, by securing the control of the

bay of Eleusis, was at last enabled to develop, unchecked, her maritime

and commercial policy. The founding of the Panathenaea is attributed to

Peisistratus, who certainly encouraged athletics and developed the

festival; but, if the date 566 B.C. is correct, the festival was founded

six years before he became tyrant, and while he was still the trusted

friend of Solon, and, owing to his success in war, the hero of the

people. The name Panathenaea seems significant, both of that unity of

the Athenian people, which Solon tried with somewhat chequered success

to promote, and also of that dream of expansion which Athens, freed from

the rivalry of Megara, was now beginning to cherish. At the same time we

can see in the name why the Panathenaea could never become truly

Panhellenic. Olympia, Delphi, Nemea were fitted to become Panhellenic by

virtue of the political insignificance of the states that controlled

them; even the Isthmia, though held under the presidency of Corinth, was

by its name dissociated from that power, and Corinth herself was in her

own way a Panhellenic centre where politics were as yet subordinate to

commerce. In such places the national desire for unity found a natural

expression. But the Panathenaic festival was in the first place the

festival of the union of Attica in the worship of Athene, and the only

unity which it could offer to the rest of Greece was unity beneath the

Aegis of Athene. Thus, while at the Panhellenic festivals all events

were open to the whole of Greece, at Athens, besides such open events,

we find others confined to her own citizens.

The Panathenaea were said to have been founded, or perhaps refounded, by

Theseus, who, according to legend, united into one state the village

communities of Attica. Certainly there existed an ancient yearly

festival in honour of Athene, though we cannot say if it bore the name

Panathenaea. This festival continued to be celebrated every year after

the founding of the greater festival, and was called the Little

Panathenaea.[86] The Great Panathenaea were a pentaëteris, and were held

in the third year of each Olympiad in the month of Hekatombaion or about

the end of July. The programme of the festival was even more varied than

that of the Isthmia. The great event of the festival, the procession

that bore the peplos to the temple of Athene on the Acropolis, afforded

an opportunity for the display of all the forces of Athens. The

competitions included, besides athletics and horse-races, musical

contests, recitations, torch-races, Pyrrhic dances, a regatta, and even

a competition for good looks. For most of the events the prizes

consisted in jars of Attic oil. Olive-oil was the most valuable product

of Attica: the olive trees were under the control of the state, and the

export of olive-oil was a state monopoly. As many as 1300 amphorae of

oil were distributed as prizes, the winner in the chariot-race receiving

as many as 140 amphorae. As even at a later period an amphora of oil was

worth 12 drachmae, it is clear that the prizes had a considerable

commercial value. Some of the jars containing the oil were ornamented

with scenes representing the various competitions. It is probable that

only one such painted vase was given for each victory. The manufacture

and painting of vases was already an important industry at Athens, and

the prize vase full of oil represented, therefore, the chief natural

product and the chief industry of early Attica. These prize vases must

have been greatly cherished. Numbers of them have been found in Italian

tombs and elsewhere, and the variety of the subjects depicted throws no

little light on the events of the festival. But details must be reserved

for another chapter.

The multiplication of athletic festivals and the valuable prizes offered

at them must have been a source of no small profit to the successful

athlete. The victor at the Panhellenic games, it is true, received no

other reward from the authorities than the wreath of leaves;[87] but at

the lesser festivals, where he would be a welcome and an honoured guest,

he was sure of a rich harvest of prizes. Moreover, he received

substantial rewards at the hands of his grateful fellow-citizens. For in

these games the individual was regarded as the representative of his

state: the herald who proclaimed his victory proclaimed, too, the name

of his state, and in his success the whole state shared and rejoiced.

Hence we can understand the righteous indignation of the people of

Croton in Ol. 75, when their famous fellow-countryman, Astylus, who had

already won the stade-race and the diaulos in two successive Olympiads,

on the third occasion entered himself as a Syracusan in order to

ingratiate himself with the tyrant Hieron. Such an act was felt to be

almost a sacrilege, and the Crotoniats in their wrath destroyed the

statue of Astylus, which they had erected in the precinct of Lacinian

Hera, and converted his house, perhaps the house which they had given

him, into a common prison.[88]

The representative character of the Panhellenic athlete and the

connexion of the games with the national religion explain the honours

paid to him by his fellow-citizens.[89] His homecoming was an occasion

of public rejoicing. The whole city turned out to welcome him and escort

him in triumph to his home and to the chief temples of the city, where

he offered thanksgiving and paid his vows to the gods and heroes to whom

he owed his victory. Songs were composed expressly for the occasion by

the greatest poets of the age, and sung by choirs of youths and maidens

before the temples or before his house. His exploits were recorded on

pillars of stone, and his statue was set up in some public place, or

even in the sanctuary of the gods, to serve as an incentive to

posterity. He received, too, more substantial rewards. We have seen how

Solon granted considerable sums of money to the victors in the great

games, and we may be sure that the example of Athens was followed by

other states. At Athens and elsewhere the victor had the privilege of a

front seat at all public festivals, and sometimes, too, the right of

free meals in the Prytaneum. At a later time he was exempted from

taxation. At Sparta, which seems to have stood somewhat aloof from the

athletic movement, he was rewarded characteristically with the right of

fighting in battle next to the king and defending his person. In the

rich cities of the West the adulation of the victor, at a somewhat later

date, took the most extravagant forms. Exaenetus of Agrigentum, who won

the foot-race at Olympia in Ol. 92, was drawn into the city in a

four-horse chariot, attended by three hundred of the chief citizens,

each riding in a chariot drawn by a pair of white horses. Sometimes, it

seems, a breach in the city walls was made for the victor’s entry. It is

in Italy that we first hear of the worship of the athlete as a hero.

Philippus of Croton, an Olympic victor, renowned as the handsomest man

in Greece, was worshipped as a hero after his death.[90] Euthymus of

Locri Epizephyrii, who won three Olympic victories in boxing in Ols. 74,

76, 77, was even said to have been so worshipped during his lifetime. It

was perhaps a righteous retribution for such impiety that his statues at

Locri and Olympia were, according to the story, struck by lightning on

the same day.[91] Theagenes of Thasos and Polydamas of Scotussa were

also worshipped as heroes, and the statue of Theagenes was credited with

the power of healing fevers.[92] But these extravagances, if true,

belong to a later period, and must have been repugnant to the religious

feeling and sound sense of the Peloponnese before the Persian wars.

Of all these honours the most significant are the hymn of victory and

the statue. It was not merely that the greatest artists and poets were

employed to immortalise the victor, and that they demanded a high price

for their services. The statue and the hymn were honours confined

originally to gods and heroes, and, bestowed on mortal athletes, did

literally lift these “lords of earth to the gods.” “Not even the mighty

Polydeuces nor the iron son of Alcmene could hold up their hands against

him.” So wrote Simonides of Ceos, the earliest writer of epinikia, of

the famous boxer Glaucus of Carystus, language which, as the late Sir

Richard Jebb remarks, would have sounded very like an impiety to Alcman.

The words are significant of the changed attitude towards athletics, and

the hero-worship founded by the artist and the poet was perhaps largely

responsible for the extravagances of a later age. But the influence of

athletics on art and literature, and that of art and literature on

athletics, are subjects that belong chiefly to the fifth century, and

will be dealt with in the next chapter.

The growing popularity of athletics and the excessive honours showered

upon physical excellence could hardly escape criticism. In that age of

intense intellectual activity there must have been many far-sighted

observers who resented the predominance of athletics, though perhaps

they feared to express their feelings. One at least there was who knew

no such fear, and fortunately his protest has survived. The bold and

original thinker, Xenophanes of Colophon, was exactly contemporary with

the movement which we have been describing. Born at Colophon about the

year 576 B.C. he was forced to leave his native place at the age of

twenty-five, and for sixty-five years travelled about the cities of

Greece and Sicily, finally settling at Elea in Italy, where he became

the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, and died in the year

480 B.C. A fearless critic of the current ideas about the gods, denying

that the godhead could be like unto man, he may well have been

scandalized at the representation of gods and heroes as athletes, and at

the offering of divine honours to victors in the games; and his wide

experience of men and cities showed him clearly the danger of the

growing worship of athletics. After enumerating the honours shown to the

athlete he continues: “Yet is he not so worthy as I, and my wisdom is

better than the strength of men and horses. Nay, this is a foolish

custom, nor is it right to honour strength more than excellent wisdom.

Not though there were among the people a man good at boxing, or in the

pentathlon, or in wrestling, nay, nor one with swiftness of foot which

is most honoured in all contests of human strength—not for his presence

would the city be better governed. And small joy would there be for a

city should one in contests win a victory by the banks of Pisa. These

things do not make fat the dark corners of the city.”

Less than a century later the words of Xenophanes are echoed by

Euripides, but the object of the protest is no longer the same. The

class of professional athletes whom Euripides denounces did not exist in

the days of the older poet. It is against the excessive importance

attached to athletics, the false and one-sided ideal, that Xenophanes

protests. In his wanderings through the cities of Greece he has learnt

by bitter experience the evils that exist, evils of tyranny and party

strife, extremes of luxury and poverty, and he feels that the energies

of his countrymen are being misdirected. It is not a little curious that

foreign writers, deceived by the glamour of Olympia, are wont to treat

the protest of Xenophanes as the captious utterance of a soured and

peevish cynic. Yet the fragments of his writings which exist show him to

have been a man of wide experience and sympathies; and in England, where

we have witnessed a similar wave of athleticism, his wisdom is generally

recognized. Let us pause to consider what was the state of athletics in

the time of Xenophanes.

The popularity of athletics, the growth of competition, and the rewards

lavished on successful athletes completely changed the character of

athletics in the sixth century. The actual events remained the same, but

a change came over the attitude of performers and spectators. It was a

change which will be readily understood by any one familiar with the

history of our own sports and games during the last century, the change

from spontaneous to organized sport. The change brought with it both

good and evil; the standard of performance was greatly improved, but

athletics ceased to be pure recreation, and something of the old Homeric

joy was lost; and though the spirit of sport survived for a century

more, even in the sixth century we can trace signs of the evils which

over-competition inevitably brings in its train.

In every Greek state all boys, whatever their station, received a

thorough physical training. Sometimes, as in Sparta, this training was

extended to girls. This training consisted partly in the traditional

exercises of the public games, partly in dances which corresponded to

our musical drill in which the performers went through the various

movements of the palaestra or of actual war to the accompaniment of

music. Thus every boy was trained to take his part in athletic

competitions. Local festivals provided the promising athlete with an

opportunity of testing his strength and skill from early boyhood. At

Olympia there had been only two classes of competition, for boys and for

men. In the festivals of the sixth century we find a third class added

for those betwixt the age of boy and man, the beardless (ἀγένειοι). In

local festivals of a later date we find three or even four classes for

boys only, sometimes confined to local competitors; and perhaps, if we

had details of the local festivals of the sixth century, we should find

the same. These boys’ events were clearly intended to foster local

talent. The youth who won success in his home festival would try his

luck in the neighbouring competitions, and if still successful would go

farther afield and perhaps enter for the Panhellenic games. Hence the

competitors, especially at the Olympia, represented the picked athletes

of all the states. The prizes offered at the various festivals enabled

many to compete, who in a previous age could not have afforded the

necessary time or money; and we may be sure that the emulation of the

various states would not have allowed any citizen to lose his chance of

the crown for lack of funds. The popular character of athletics is

illustrated by a fragment of an epigram ascribed to Simonides on an

Olympic victor “who once carried fish from Argos to Tegea.”[93] At the

same time the noble families which had for generations been famed in

athletics exerted themselves to their utmost to maintain their

hereditary prestige. All classes caught the athletic mania. It was at

the close of the century that Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of

Macedon, competed in the foot-race at Olympia.

Competition naturally raised the standard of athletics. Natural ability

and ordinary exercise were no longer sufficient to secure success

without long and careful training. Hence there arose a class of

professional trainers. These men, who were often old athletes, acquired

considerable repute, and doubtless were handsomely rewarded by the rich

individuals or states that employed them. In their hands athletics

became scientific; instead of being regarded as a recreation and a

training for war they became an end in themselves. One state alone,

Sparta, held aloof from the new athletics and competitions. At Sparta

the one object was to produce a race of hardy soldiers, and the new

science, which aimed at producing athletes, could find no place there.

No Spartan was allowed to employ a trainer in wrestling. Boxing was said

to have been introduced by the Spartans, but though they recognized the

value of boxing as a sport, they realized the dangers of it as a

competition, and forbade their citizens to take part in competitions for

boxing or the pankration, on the ground that it was disgraceful for a

Spartan to acknowledge defeat. Hence the disappearance of Sparta from

the list of the Olympic victors which has already been noticed. Sparta

in athletics fell behind the rest of Greece, and Philostratus, comparing

them with the more scientific athletics, describes them as somewhat

boorish.[94] Yet perhaps the Spartans and Xenophanes were right.

The new training required no little expenditure of time and money. The

would-be victor at Olympia must have lived in a constant state of

training and competition, which left time for little else. Theagenes of

Thasos, who lived at the time of the Persian wars, is said to have won

no less than fourteen hundred crowns.[95] To such men athletics were no

longer a recreation, but an absorbing occupation. The professional

amateur is but a short step removed from the true professional. For a

time wealth and leisure gave a great advantage to the wealthy

individual, and the wealthy city. In the sixth century the most

successful states are the rich cities of Sicily and Italy. The sons of

noble families still figure prominently in the epinikia of Pindar and

Bacchylides. But the increase of rich prizes was soon to put the poor

man on a level with the rich. Before the close of the fifth century we

shall find athletics left to the professional, while princes and nobles

compete only in the chariot-races and horse-races. For this result

states like Sybaris and Croton were hugely responsible. They thought to

encourage athletics by offering large money prizes; in reality they

killed the spirit of sport. Sybaris indeed—or, according to another

account, Croton—endeavoured to outshine Olympia by holding a festival of

her own at the same time as the Olympia, and attracting away the pick of

the athletes by the magnificence of the prizes.[96] When such an attempt

was possible, professionalism was near at hand.

These evils, however, did not yet exist in the sixth century, though

implied already in that excessive love of athletics which aroused the

indignation of Xenophanes. The nation had become a nation of athletes,

and not the least important characteristic which distinguished the Greek

from the barbarian was henceforth his athletic training. The result was

a standard of athletic excellence never again perhaps equalled. Most of

the athletes whose names were household words for centuries, belong to

the sixth and the first half of the fifth centuries. Such were Milo of

Croton, Glaucus of Carystus, Theagenes of Thasos. Though we occasionally

find distinguished runners, such as Phanas of Pellene, who, by winning

three races at Olympia in one day, won the title of triple victor

(τριαστής), or a little later Astylus of Croton, of whom we have heard

already, the typical athlete of the sixth century was the strong man—the

boxer, the wrestler, or the pankratiast. The object of the old gymnastic

was to produce strength only, says Philostratus,[97] contrasting the

ancient athletes with their degenerate successors, and the success of

the old training was shown in the fact that these old athletes

maintained their strength for eight or even nine Olympiads. There was

nothing artificial or unnatural about their training: the careful

dieting, the elaborate massage, the rules for exercise and sleep

introduced by later trainers were unknown. The trainers of those days

confined themselves to actual athletics, to the art of boxing or

wrestling especially, and the athletes owed their strength to a healthy,

vigorous, out-of-door life.

This fact is illustrated by the legends that sprang up about the famous

athletes of this age, which, amid much invention and exaggeration,

probably contain some substratum of truth. The father of Glaucus

discovered his son’s strength from seeing him one day hammer a

ploughshare into the plough with his naked fist. Theagenes first

displayed his strength at the age of nine in a youthful escapade. Taking

a fancy to a certain bronze statue in the market-place, he one day

shouldered it and carried it off. The exploits of Samson with wild

beasts find many parallels in the stories of Greek athletes; but the

most characteristic exercise of the sixth century was weight-lifting.

Milo practised weight-lifting on most scientific principles with a young

bull calf, which he lifted and carried every day till it was fully

grown. A still more famous weight-lifter was Titormus, a gigantic

shepherd who lived in Aetolia, and did not, as far as we know, compete

in any competitions. Challenged by Milo to show his strength, he took

him down to the river Euenus, threw off his mantle, and seized a huge

boulder which Milo could hardly move. He first raised it to his knees,

then on to his shoulders, and after carrying it sixteen yards, threw

it.[98] He next showed his strength and courage by seizing and holding

fast by the heels two wild bulls.

These stories of weight-lifting have been strangely confirmed by

discoveries in Greece. At Olympia a block of red sandstone was found,

bearing a sixth-century inscription to the effect that one Bybon with

one hand threw it over his head.[99] The stone weighs 143-1/2 kilos (315

lbs.), and measures 68 × 33 × 38 cms. A one-handed lift of such an

object is clearly impossible, and I can only suggest that Bybon lifted

the weight with both hands in the manner described above, then balanced

it on one hand and threw it. At Santorin another such block has been

found, a mass of black volcanic rock, weighing 480 kilos. The

inscription on it, which belongs to the close of the sixth century, runs

as follows: “Eumastas the son of Critobulus lifted me from the ground.”

To lift such a weight from the ground, though possible, is quite a good

performance.

Swimming, too, was a favourite exercise, and Philostratus tells us that

Tisander, a boxer of Naxos, who lived, on a promontory of the island,

kept himself in training by swimming out to sea. These old athletes,

says the same author, hardened themselves by bathing in the rivers, and

sleeping in the open air on skins or heaps of fodder. Living such a life

they had healthy appetites, and were not particular about their food,

living on porridge and unleavened bread, and such meat as they could

get. The strong man is naturally a large eater, and all sorts of tales

were current as to the voracity of these athletes. Milo, according to an

epigram, after carrying a four-year-old heifer around the Altis, ate it

all on the same day; and a similar feat is ascribed to Titormus and

Theagenes.[100] These tales are clearly the invention of a later age,

when the strong man trained on vast quantities of meat; and as Milo

excelled all men in strength, it followed that he must also have

excelled them in voracity. But whatever the truth of these stories, it

is certain that the athletes of those times were healthy and free from

disease, preserved their strength, and lived long. If athletic training

did occupy an undue share of their time, it did not unfit them for the

duties of ordinary life and military service. Many of them won

distinction as soldiers and generals, while the effects of athletic

training on the nation were shown in the Persian wars.

When we turn to the records of art we still find strength the

predominant characteristic of the period. We see this in those early

nude statues, so widely distributed throughout Greece and the islands,

which are generally classed under the name of Apollo. In all we see the

same attempt to render the muscles of the body, whether we regard the

tall spare type of the Apollo of Tenea, or the shorter heavier type of

the Argive statues. It is in the muscles of the trunk rather than of the

limbs that real strength lies, and it is the careful marking of these

muscles that distinguishes early Greek sculpture from all other early

art, and the sculpture of the Peloponnese in particular from the softer

school of Ionia. Perhaps the most characteristic figure of the sixth

century is that of the bearded Heracles, not the clumsy giant of later

days, but the personification of endurance and trained strength, a man,

as Pindar says, short of stature, but of unbending soul. So we see him

on many a black-figured vase of the sixth century, and the type survives

in the pediments of Aegina or the Metopes of Olympia in the next

century. Matched against giants and monsters he represents the triumph

of training and endurance over mere brute force. If we compare the

figures of athletes on these vases with those on the red-figured vases

of the next century, we find the same result; the ideal of the fifth

century is the grace of athletic youth, that of the sixth is the

strength of fully developed manhood; the hero of the former is Theseus,

of the latter Heracles. Finally, if we would realise the true greatness

of sixth-century athletics, let us remember that it was this century

which rendered possible and inspired the athletic ideal of Pindar in the

next.

“For if a man rejoice to suffer cost and toil, and achieve god-builded

excellence, and therewithal fate plant for him fair renown, already at

the farthest bonds of bliss hath such an one cast anchor.”

Footnote 72:

The legends connected with these festivals are collected in Krause,

_Pythien_, and the various articles on them in Dar.-Sagl.

Footnote 73:

The victory of Chromius of Aetna, celebrated by Pindar, _Nem._ ix.,

was won not at Nemea but at the Sicyonian Pythia.

Footnote 74:

The existence of such rivalry is suggested by the quarrel recorded by

Pausanias v. 2, 3, with regard to the colossal statue set up by

Cypselus at Olympia, and in the account given by Herodotus ix. 81 of

the distribution of the Persian spoils. A statue of Zeus 10 cubits

high is set up at Olympia, while that of Poseidon at the Isthmus is

only 7 cubits high. So Pindar, _Ol._ xiii. 25, prays that Zeus may not

be jealous if he sings the praise of Corinth.

Footnote 75:

Adapted from Jebb’s _Bacchylides_.

Footnote 76:

Hdt. ii. 160.

Footnote 77:

Louis Dyer, “The Olympic Council” in _Harvard Studies_, 1907, p. 36;

Paus. vi. 3, 7; _Ol. Ins._ 372-486 _passim_.

Footnote 78:

W. Helbig, _Les Hippeis athéniens_.

Footnote 79:

Pindar, _Ol._ ix, xiii. etc.

Footnote 80:

_B.M. Bronzes_, 135.

Footnote 81:

Hdt. i. 59.

Footnote 82:

Hermipp. _Fr._ 14. The story is suspicious, because the Spartans are

said not to have been allowed to compete in boxing.

Footnote 83:

Hdt. vi. 103.

Footnote 84:

Hdt. ii. 7.

Footnote 85:

At a later time a drachma was a day’s pay for a sailor, hoplite, or

artisan, and in Pericles’ time a juryman received only two obols. In

Solon’s time, owing to the scarcity of money, the value of a drachma

must have been considerably higher.

Footnote 86:

On the Panathenaea _vide_ A. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen._

Footnote 87:

The palm branch as a symbol of victory does not occur till the close

of the fifth century. Mr. F. B. Tarbell traces its origin to Delos,

and derives its popularity from the restoration of the Delian festival

by Athens in 426 B.C. “The Palm of Victory” in _Classical Philology_,

vol. iii. pp. 264 ff.

Footnote 88:

Paus. vi. 13, 1. Hieron is apparently a mistake for Gelon.

Footnote 89:

Krause, _Olympia_, pp. 195-201.

Footnote 90:

Hdt. v. 47.

Footnote 91:

Pliny, _H. N._ vii. 47. Strabo, vi. 255.

Footnote 92:

Paus. vi. 11, 9; Lucian, _Deor. Concilium_, 12.

Footnote 93:

Simonides, 163 (Bergk). Quoted by Aristotle, _Rhet._ i. 7 and 9.

Footnote 94:

The attitude of the Spartans towards athletics is expressed in a poem

of Tyrtaeus (Bergk, No. 12), in which he declares that he would set no

store by speed of foot or skill in wrestling, apart from warlike

might. Later their contempt of training and skill degenerated into

sheer brutality. Phil. _Gym._ 9 and 58; Plutarch, _Apophthegm. Lac.

Var._ 25 (233 E); _Anth. Plan._ i. 1.

Footnote 95:

Paus. vi. 11, 5.

Footnote 96:

Athenaeus, 522, 523.

Footnote 97:

_Gym._ 43.

Footnote 98:

Aelian, _V.H._ xii. 22.

Footnote 99:

_Ol. Ins._ 717. This and the Santorin stone (_I.G._ xiii. 449) are

discussed in _J.H.S._ xxvii. p. 2.

Footnote 100:

Athenaeus, 412 D, E.

CHAPTER V

THE AGE OF THE ATHLETIC IDEAL, 500-440 B.C.

Though the Greeks of the sixth and fifth centuries attained a remarkable

standard of athletic excellence, it is probable that in individual

performance the modern athlete could at least have held his own with

them. Yet despite our modern athleticism it is certain that no other

nation has ever produced so high an average of physical development as

the Greeks did in this period. This result was due largely to the

athletic ideal which found its highest expression in the athletic poetry

and art of the fifth century. The ideal is unique in the history of the

world, nor are the circumstances which produced it ever likely to occur

again. Due, in the first place, to the early connexion of athletics with

religion, it owed its development in the fifth century to two causes,

firstly, to the growth of athletic art and poetry, secondly, to the

intense feeling of Panhellenic unity produced by the struggle with

Persia. It was this ideal that checked the growth of those evils which

inevitably result from the excessive popularity of athletics, and

maintained their purity till the short-lived unity of Greece was

shattered by the Peloponnesian war. To understand this ideal we must

briefly trace the history of athletic art and literature, and then note

how the national feeling found expression in the Panhellenic and

especially in the Olympic games.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. Apollo, found at Tenea. Munich. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 20.)]

Without athletics, says the late Professor Furtwängler,[101] Greek art

cannot be conceived. The skill of the Greek artist in representing the

forms of the naked body is due in the first instance to the habit of

complete nudity in athletic exercises, a habit which, even if it were,

as Thucydides says, not introduced into all athletic competitions at

Olympia till shortly before his own time, must certainly, if we may

judge from the evidence of the black-figured vases, have been almost

universal in the palaestra of the sixth century. Besides the unrivalled

opportunities that this habit afforded the sculptor of studying the

naked body in every position of activity, it must have served as a

valuable incentive to the youths of Greece to keep themselves in good

condition. The Greek, with his keen eye for physical beauty, regarded

flabbiness, want of condition, imperfect development as a disgrace, a

sign of neglected education, and the ill-trained youth was the

laughing-stock of his companions. Hence every Greek learnt to take a

pride in his physical fitness and beauty. This love of physical beauty

is strikingly illustrated in one of the war-songs of Tyrtaeus:[102] “It

is a shame,” he says, “for an old man to lie slain in the front of the

battle, his body stripped and exposed.” Why? Because an old man’s body

cannot be beautiful. “But to the young,” he continues, “all things are

seemly as long as the goodly bloom of lovely youth is on him. A sight

for men to marvel at, for women to love while he lives, beautiful, too,

when fallen in the front of the battle.”

[Illustration: Fig. 8. Statue by an Argive Sculptor. Delphi. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 134.)]

We have seen how there arose in the sixth century a demand for athletic

statues, and how the early artists endeavoured to express trained

strength by the careful treatment of the muscles of the body, especially

those of the chest and abdomen. The early athletic statues must have

been of the type of those archaic figures which are rightly or wrongly

classed under the name of Apollo, and which, whether they represent a

god or a man, are certainly inspired by athletics. Though we see in all

the same evident desire to express strength yet we find considerable

variety of physical type, far more so, in fact, than we find in the

fifth century, which was dominated by a more or less definite ideal of

physical beauty and proportion. In the sixth century the artists were

experimenting, and therefore we may suppose were influenced more by

local or individual characteristics. Thus the slim, long-limbed Apollo

of Tenea (Fig. 7), with his well-formed chest, spare flanks, and

powerful legs is the very type of the long-distance runner. These long,

lean, wiry runners are often depicted on Panathenaic vases, and suggest

inevitably these day-runners (ἡμεροδρόμοι), who acted as scouts or

couriers in the Persian wars. Quite different is the type of the early

Argive statues found at Delphi (Fig. 8). Square and thickset, with

powerful limbs and massive heads, they seem naturally to lead up to the

type of the Ligourio bronze and of Polycleitus, and suggest that such a

build was characteristic of Argolis. Between the two extremes comes an

extensive series of statues from Boeotia, one of which shows strong

signs of Aeginetan influence.[103] In the fifth century we look in vain

for such divergences of type, and the reason is that Greek art was

tending more and more towards an ideal, and neither the typical runner

nor the typical strong man quite fulfils the artist’s ideal. Vase

paintings afford an interesting illustration of this change. The

wrestling groups on the black-figured vases show far greater variety and

originality, a more realistic imitation of the manifold positions of

wrestling than we find on the red-figured vases of the fifth century,

where only such types are preserved as commended themselves to the more

highly-trained artistic sense of the later craftsmen.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo. British Museum.]

[Illustration: Fig. 10. Figure from E. pediment at Aegina. Munich.

(_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 41.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 11. Bronze Statuette from Ligourio. Berlin. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 39.)]

In the early part of the fifth century we still find a variety of

physical type. On the one hand we have the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo

(Fig. 9) with his broad square shoulders, powerful chest and

back—essentially a big man, and therefore identified by Dr. Waldstein

with the boxer Euthymus, though recent evidence tends to show that the

statue really represents the god and no mortal athlete. At the other

extreme we have the neat, small, sinewy forms of the warriors on the

Aeginetan pediments (Fig. 10). Between the two come a number of types.

Unfortunately we have no extant examples of the great Argive school. The

bronze in which the Argive sculptor worked was too valuable to escape

the ravages of the plunderer, and a certain monotony, which must have

characterized purely athletic sculpture, prevented the later copyist

from reproducing these works. But if we may argue from the Ligourio

bronze (Fig. 11), the Argive type was short like the Aeginetan but

heavier and more fleshy. On the other hand, the statues which are

recognized as copies of the famous group of Critias and Nesiotes[104]

representing Harmodius and Aristogeiton show a taller, larger-boned

type, more approaching that of the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo, which may

perhaps be recognized as Athenian.[105] But in all this diversity of

physical type we ask ourselves in vain what class of athlete is

represented in any particular statue, whether a boxer, a wrestler, a

pentathlete, or a runner. The reason seems to be that in all these

statues the ideal element is strong; there is a difference of build, but

each build is shown with the fullest all-round development of which it

is capable. Certainly there is not in this period a single figure that

represents a typical runner so clearly as does the Apollo of Tenea.

Perhaps the nearest type to that of the runner is the Aeginetan; but

unfortunately we know that the events in which Aegina won most

distinction were wrestling and the pankration, winners in which we

should expect to find characterized by a heavier build. The fact is that

the real specialization of the athlete was only just beginning, and the

universal athletic training had produced in the first half of the fifth

century so uniform a standard of development that, runners perhaps

excepted, it must have been difficult to distinguish between the

representatives of other events, in all of which strength was more

important than pace. Hence the earlier sculptors, in order to indicate

an athlete’s victory, were forced to attach to his statue some special

attribute, a diskos, or a pair of jumping weights for a pentathlete, a

boxing thong for a boxer.[106] As their technical skill increased they

began to represent the athlete in some characteristic position. Glaucias

of Aegina showed the famous boxer Glaucus of Carystos sparring with an

imaginary opponent.[107] At Athens Pausanias saw a statue of Epicharinus

by Critius in the attitude of one practising for the hoplite race,

perhaps in the attitude of the well-known Tübingen bronze, which

represents a hoplitodromos practising starts[108] (Fig. 12).

[Illustration: Fig. 12. Bronze Statuette of Hoplitodromos. Tübingen.]

[Illustration: Fig. 13. Myron’s Diskobolos (from a bronzed cast made in

Munich, combining the Vatican body and the Massimi head).]

The last-named statues at once suggest the Diskobolos of Myron (Fig.

13). This statue marks a new departure in athletic art. It is not, as

far as we know, a statue in honour of any particular victor, but a study

in athletic genre. To the same class belong the Doryphoros and

Diadumenos of Polycleitus.[109] The earlier statues had been ideal in as

far as they were not portrait statues, but statues of athletic types

connected with the name of some victor, and many such statues are

assigned to Myron and Polycleitus. But the statues of which we are

speaking were avowedly and professedly ideal studies in athletic art.

Myron undertook to represent the athlete in motion. He chose that most

difficult, yet most characteristic moment in the swing of the

diskobolos, which alone combines the idea of rest and that of motion,

when the diskos has been swung back to its full extent, and the

momentary pause suggests stability, while the insecurity of the delicate

balance implies the strong movement which has preceded it, and the more

violent movement which is to follow. No other moment could give the same

idea of force and swiftness. If we look at the countless representations

of the diskobolos on vases and in bronzes, we see that the fixing of any

other moment in the swing destroys at once all idea of motion. The

movement is checked at an unnatural point, and the result is lifeless.

Only at the close of the swing backward does the brief pause give the

artist an excuse for fixing it in bronze. It is a magnificent

conception, and in spite of minor defects magnificently executed.

Unfortunately we know the statue only through more or less late and

inaccurate marble copies. Perhaps the truest idea of the grace of the

original bronze can be obtained from the bronzed cast in the Ashmolean

Museum at Oxford, from which our illustration is taken. The diskobolos

is, as has been said, a study of athletic action, and it is therefore

difficult to form a true idea of his proportions, nor was the artist

concerned so much with proportions as with movement. Yet if we can

imagine the diskobolos standing at rest, he might well take his place

besides the glorious youths of the Parthenon frieze, tall like the

Tyrannicides, yet of somewhat lighter build, taller and lighter likewise

than the type of Polycleitus.

[Illustration: Fig. 14. Doryphoros, after Polycleitus. Naples. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 74.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 15. Diadumenos from Vaison, after Polycleitus.

British Museum. (_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 75.)]

In the Doryphoros (Fig. 14), and Diadumenos (Fig. 15), we have another

type of athletic genre. These statues are studies of the athlete at

rest, studies in proportion. The Doryphoros indeed was called the canon,

because in it the artist was said to have embodied his ideal of the

proportions of the human body. If we consider what such a canon implies,

we shall understand why the old diversity of type tended to disappear.

The artist of this period was seeking an ideal of human proportion. Such

an ideal is not to be found in any extremes of type, in strength or

beauty by itself, but only in a combination of the two, in the golden

mean, that avoidance of all excess which dominated Greek life and

thought. The influence of athletic training had impressed upon him the

value of physical strength systematically trained and developed; his

artistic sense taught him that no subject was fitting for his art which

did not present beauty of outline and proportion. Hence that union of

strength and beauty which characterizes the athletic art of this period.

Other circumstances contributed to produce uniformity of type. The three

great sculptors of the age, Myron, Pheidias and Polycleitus, whom we now

know to have been almost contemporaries, and in the full activity of

their art in the middle of the century, were all, according to

traditions, pupils of the Argive sculptor Ageladas. In the stern, manly

discipline of the Argive school they acquired their consummate knowledge

of the human body. The influence of these artists was increased by the

concentration at this period of all art at Athens. Polycleitus indeed

remained at Argos; but Myron and Pheidias worked at Athens, and through

Pheidias the art of Athens spread over the Greek world. The school in

which these artists had been trained had devoted itself to the study of

athletic proportion, and it was therefore only natural that a similar

athletic ideal should prevail generally,—a similar but not quite the

same ideal. Polycleitus remained true to the Argive tradition of a

somewhat thick-set, massive type, with square-jawed, powerful head. At

Athens the influence of the softer Ionian art, perhaps, too, the

prevalence of other characteristics in the population, produced a

slighter, taller, more graceful type. Both schools combined strength and

beauty. In both it is impossible to decide in what event any particular

athlete had excelled; but while strength continued to be the prevalent

idea of Polycleitus, Athenian art was rather dominated by the idea of

beauty.

This union of strength and beauty belongs especially to the time of

full-grown youth and opening manhood. It is the age when the Greek youth

began to undertake some of the duties of citizenship, and when the state

took upon itself his training. In most Greek cities somewhere between

the ages of sixteen and eighteen the youths were enrolled in corps, and

for two years were subject to a strict military discipline under

officers appointed by the state. They learnt to use their weapons and to

ride; they hardened their bodies by athletic exercises and hunting; they

gained practical experience in war by acting as police patrols on the

frontiers. This time of life was especially devoted to athletics and

physical training. At many of the games there were special competitions

for youths of this age—the beardless or ἀγένειοι. To the same age belong

these romantic boy friendships which figure so largely in Greek life,

from the time of Harmodius and Aristogeiton or earlier. That these

friendships did at times lead to serious abuse cannot, unfortunately, be

denied. But the charge of immorality brought against them seems to me

greatly exaggerated,[110] at least as far as regards the fifth century

and the most enlightened states. These friendships arose on the one side

from the natural hero-worship of youth, on the other from an intense

appreciation of bodily beauty.

This strong artistic feeling is illustrated by the practice which arose

among the vase painters of inscribing on their cups the name of some

popular youth with the word καλός, or sometimes the more general

inscription καλὸς ὁ παῖς, “the boy is fair.” The term “love names”

applied to these inscriptions is somewhat unfortunate. The word καλός

implies none of that modern maudlin sentimentality so often mistaken for

love, but rather the artist’s sense of the beautiful, sometimes his

admiration for some popular youth, sometimes, perhaps, merely his

satisfaction in the form he has himself created. The point, however,

which interests us here is that the beauty which appealed to the Greek

of the latter half of the fifth century was not the beauty of woman, nor

even of the mature man, but the beauty of manly youth, and the art of

the Periclean age has been well described as the glorification of the

ephebos.

The growing preference for the younger type can be traced in the lists

of athletic statues at Olympia recorded by Pausanias. There is a steady

increase during the fifth century of the proportion of boy victors as

compared with men, and the increase is more than maintained during the

fourth century. The change is perhaps connected with a change in the

character of athletics. There can be no doubt that athletics were

already becoming more specialized, and the specialized athlete did not

appeal to the artist of the fifth century. In the following age we find

an increasing diversity of type, but in the Periclean age the ideal of

athletic youth dominates all treatment of the human figure. We can see

it in the figures of children and young boys which, despite their small

stature, have the proportions and muscular development of men, or in the

figures of women which, whether undraped or, as was more usual, draped,

differ little in framework and proportion from the figures of graceful

youths. In the Periclean age, we cannot distinguish between the athlete

and the ephebos. Every educated youth is an athlete, and every athlete

is an educated youth and a citizen of a free state. Of the strictly

athletic statues unfortunately we possess only marble copies, which in

the transference from bronze have lost much of the grace of the

originals. But the ephebos is known to us from many a grave relief, and

above all from the sculptures of the Parthenon. The grave reliefs are at

least originals, though we do not know the artists’ names, while the

Parthenon sculptures were executed under the direction of Pheidias. A

truer idea of the athletic youth of this age can be formed from the

Theseus of the pediment, or the epheboi of the frieze, than from late

copies of Polycleitus.

In all these figures the prevailing impression is one of a perfect

harmony, an absence of all exaggeration. Beauty of line is not

exaggerated into softness, nor strength into coarseness. There is, too,

a graceful ease of movement and of action which tells of an education in

which music goes hand in hand with gymnastic. Musical drill and dances

formed an important part of Greek education; even at the great festivals

the competitors in the pentathlon performed to the accompaniment of the

flute. The influence of music is especially suggested by the rhythmic

movement and poise of the Diadumenos. Hence these harmonious shapes

produce an effect deeper than that of mere physical beauty, they seem to

be the outward expression of the spirit within. καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός—beauty

and goodness—are inseparable to the Greek. The heads, too, are in

perfect harmony with the body; somewhat passionless perhaps, they seem

to denote a mind well ordered as the body. They are not the heads of

students or philosophers, much less of mere athletes, but the heads of

healthy, vigorous youths, to whom all activity whether of mind or body

is a joy. In the clear-cut, strong features we read courage and

resolution, endurance and self-control. The expression is calm and

dignified, yet without a trace of arrogance or pride. The face is often

turned slightly downwards, and the downcast eyes produce an impression

of modesty which is most marked in those statues which, like the

Diadumenos binding the victor’s fillet round his head, expressly

represent victory. Such is the beautiful bronze head of the ephebos

shown in Fig. 16. This combination of dignity and modesty is part of

what the Greeks called αἰδώς,[111] a word which we shall see is the

keynote of Pindar’s athletic ideal, and which expresses more than any

other the spirit of these statues.

[Illustration: Fig. 16. Bronze head of ephebos. Munich, Glyptothek, 457.

(From a photograph by Bruckmann.)]

The influence of athletics is equally plain in the lesser arts. On coins

and gems it is seen chiefly in the nude figures of gods and heroes.

Sometimes, however, we find a purely athletic type. On the coins of

Aspendus in Pamphylia we have a long series of wrestling groups (Fig.

109), and on the other side a naked slinger, a punning allusion it seems

to the name Aspendus. On the coins of Cos occurs a most interesting

figure of the diskobolos, a crude attempt to represent the very moment

selected by Myron (Fig. 86). Both series date from the early fifth

century. On gems of a later date we have frequent copies of the actual

work of Myron. In Sicily we find no representations of the athlete

proper, but the close connexion of Sicily with Olympia, and the

successes of its cities and tyrants in the chariot and horse races are

commemorated by numerous coins bearing a horseman or a chariot.[112]

These, however, are but isolated examples; the art which above all other

was influenced by athletics was that of the vase painter. Athletic

scenes are among the earliest on the vases. This may be partly due to

the connexion of games with funeral rites, for which many of the painted

vases were made. But there is another and more general reason for the

vase painter’s preference. Athletic scenes were especially adapted for

the spaces which he wished to fill, whether it were a long band running

round the whole vase, or an oblong panel. In the former case, the

foot-race or the horse-race, or a series of athletes engaged in various

sports, offered an effective variation of the procession of men or

animals so common on early vases, while nothing could be better adapted

for a panel than a boxing or a wrestling match with umpires or friends

looking on. So effective was the latter scheme found that it was applied

to mythological subjects. The contests of Heracles with giants or with

monsters become a wrestling match or pankration in which gods and

goddesses take the place of umpires. So in the fifth century, on the

red-figured cups the exploits of Theseus in ridding the world of

monsters and bullies are depicted as events in the palaestra. To Theseus

was ascribed the invention of scientific wrestling: he appears on the

vases as a graceful youth triumphing by trained skill over the brute

force of his opponents.

The story of athletic types follows the same course on the vases as in

sculpture, though, as the development of the simpler art was more rapid,

the changes took place earlier. The bearded athletes of the black-figure

vases disappear at the beginning of the fifth century, and on the

red-figure vases, from the time of the Persian wars, the ephebos is

ubiquitous. Moreover, it is not so much the actual competitions that we

see as the daily life and training of the palaestra. Strigils,

oil-flasks, and jumping-weights hang upon the walls; picks and javelins

are planted in the ground. Trainers in their long mantles and naked

assistants stand about and watch the practice of the youths. Sometimes

with outstretched hands they instruct them; sometimes they correct them

with their long forked rods. The youths themselves run, leap, wrestle,

throw the diskos or the javelin; some look on and chat, others prepare

for exercise, anointing their bodies with oil, binding on the boxing

thongs, or fitting the cord to the javelin; others having finished their

work scrape themselves with strigils, or standing round a basin empty

vessels of water over each other. All the varied life of the palaestra

is before us.

The vases on which these scenes abound belong chiefly to the middle of

the century, the period of the “fine style,” as it is called. But, as I

have noted before, the actual athletic types have already become

somewhat conventional, and we feel that the artist’s interest in them

has become secondary. It is rather the variety of the life, with its

possibilities of grouping and composition, that appeals to him. At

Athens, at least, a change is beginning in the attitude of the people

towards athletics. The fine period of vase painting ends about the year

440 B.C., and in the vases of the decline this change is more marked. We

still see the palaestra; but it is indicated sketchily by an occasional

pair of halteres on the wall; and the youths stand about idly gossiping

and arguing, but take no part in manly exercise. This disappearance of

athletics from the vases is significant: the sculptor could still work

out his own ideals, but the vase painter was dependent for his trade on

the popular taste, and the vases are therefore a true index of the

feeling of the time. If we compare one of these later vases with such a

vase as the Panaetius kylix in Munich (Fig. 17), we cannot help being

reminded of the contrast drawn by Aristophanes in the _Clouds_ between

the old education of the men who fought at Marathon and the education of

his day. The vases enable us to date the change about the year 440, and

we shall find other indications that confirm this date.

[Illustration: Fig. 17. R.-f. kylix. Munich, 795.]

There is, however, in this athletic art something more than mere beauty

or mere strength. The outward harmony is but the expression of that

harmonious development of mind and body which it was the aim of Greek

education to produce by means of music and gymnastic. For the

interpretation of this spirit we can turn to the living word—a surer

guide than merely subjective impressions. Athletic poetry arose like

athletic sculpture in the sixth century, but while the athletic ideal

continued to influence Greek art during the whole of its history, the

hymn of victory, like the athletic painting on the vase, disappears

abruptly before the Peloponnesian wars. The earliest writer of the

epinikion, Simonides of Ceos, was born in the year 556 B.C.; his nephew

Bacchylides, born at Iulis in the same island, lived till the year 428

B.C.[113] His great Theban rival, Pindar, born a few years earlier, had

died in 443 B.C. With Pindar and Bacchylides the epinikion almost ceased

to exist. We have indeed a fragment of a hymn written some years later

by Euripides to celebrate the triumphs of Alcibiades in the chariot-race

at Olympia. But this is a mere accident, and it is, we may mark, in

honour not of an athletic event but of a chariot-race. Euripides, we

shall see, was little inclined to hymn the athletes of his day. The last

of Pindar’s Odes, the 8th PYTHIAN, was written in honour of a victory in

wrestling won by Aristomenes of Aegina in 446 B.C., and the latest odes

of Bacchylides which we can date are six years earlier. The agreement of

these dates with the evidence of the vase paintings can hardly be an

accidental coincidence.

Particularly noticeable are the number and importance of those odes

which belong to the years immediately following the Persian wars. The

writer of epinikia, like the sculptor of athletic statues, was by the

very nature of his art Panhellenic. His muse, as Pindar tells us, was a

hireling. He wrote for those who could pay him best, for the wealthy

nobles of Thessaly or Aegina, or the princes of Sicily. Neither in Ceos

nor in Thebes could a poet find sufficient scope for his genius. The

little island of Ceos, famed for its athletes and its music, lay

somewhat outside the main currents of Greek life. Thebes had fallen from

her legendary greatness, and played but an inglorious part in the

Persian wars. Hence, though the poets turned with special tenderness and

pride to sing of the victors of their native cities, they spent much of

their lives at the courts of powerful patrons, and found their highest

inspiration in that burst of Panhellenic feeling that the Persian wars

produced, and which for the moment united in the service of Hellas

tyrant and oligarch and people. If Theban Pindar could not, like

Simonides, sing of those who fell at Thermopylae or Salamis, his

patriotism found vent in no less than six odes in honour of the victors

in the great national celebration at Olympia in 476 B.C.

The defeat of Persia not only gave a fresh impulse to the Panhellenic

festivals: it raised athletic training into a national duty. The

consciousness of a great danger safely past arouses a nation to a sense

of its military and physical needs. We can remember only a few years ago

the growth of rifle clubs, the cry for military and physical training

that followed the Boer war. The danger, it is felt at such times, may

occur again, and it behoves every citizen to be ready to play his part.

Among the Greeks this feeling gathered force not from any consciousness

of their own shortcomings, but from a consciousness of their

superiority. At Marathon the Greeks of the mainland had for the first

time found themselves face to face with the Orientals, and for the first

time realized the gulf that separated them from themselves. Their

triumph was the triumph of freedom and law over slavery and despotism. A

handful of free citizens had defeated a horde of slaves, and this result

was due in no small degree to their athletic training. Witness the

famous charge of Marathon. Critics may throw doubt on its truth: it is

sufficient that Herodotus supposed it possible. An army charging a

distance of eight furlongs over ground that would try any cross-country

runner! No wonder the Persians regarded the Greeks as madmen. The mere

existence of such a story is proof enough of the athletic training of

the nation. Moreover, the sight of the long-haired, effeminate Persians,

whose bodies were not hardened by exercise and tanned by exposure to the

air, seems to have impressed itself indelibly on the national

imagination. Hence the extraordinary popularity during the years that

followed of all those military and athletic exercises which we see so

constantly depicted on the red-figured vases. We must remember that at

Athens this training was for the most part voluntary. It was only during

the two years’ training of the epheboi that the state undertook the

education of its members. Yet from this time the palaestra and gymnasium

became the resort of all classes and all ages. And what was true of

Athens, was true, we may feel sure, of the rest of Greece. For a time

Athenian influence prevailed everywhere. The old Spartan pre-eminence

had passed away, and even in athletics Athens had become the school of

Greece. If Athens produced few victors in the games, she at least set an

example in physical training. “Meet is it that from Athens a fashioner

of athletes come,” says Pindar of the Athenian Menander who trained

Pytheas of Aegina for a Nemean victory, won probably in 481 or 479

B.C.[114] The effect of this national athletic movement is seen in the

great games. The lists of the victors at Olympia, or the lists of those

for whom Bacchylides and Pindar sang, are representative of the length

and breadth of Greece from Rhodes to Agrigentum, from Cyrene to

Thasos.[115] Finally, the national rejoicing over the victory of Plataea

could find no fitter expression than the founding, at that city, of a

new athletic festival, the Eleutheria.

Before we consider the individual writers of epinikia two points may be

noticed which are common to all poems of this class. In the first place,

the epinikion was essentially Panhellenic in its theme and also in its

structure. The hymn itself consisted of three parts—an allusion to the

victory, a legend suggested by the victor’s home or lineage, or by the

locality of the festival, and some moral reflections or advice. The

heroes and gods of the legends had for the most part lost their local

character and become the common property of the race, and the poet, by

coupling the present with the past, thereby proclaimed the continuity

and unity of Hellas. Secondly, the epinikion was aristocratic. The

victors whom the poet praised were princes and nobles, who competed for

pure love of sport, and for whom athletics were in no sense a

profession, nor even the chief occupation of their lives. Life was not

all sport in Greece at this period, and these men did not shirk their

duties, but played their part with honour in the more serious contests

of war and politics.

Of the epinikia of Simonides only a few fragments survive. To these we

may add several epigrams of somewhat doubtful authenticity. Little more

was known of Bacchylides till a few years ago the discovery of an

Egyptian papyrus by Drs. Grenfell and Hunt restored to us, besides other

poems, large portions of thirteen of his epinikia. Bacchylides came from

an island of athletes: his own family seems to have been athletic, his

grandfather is said to have been distinguished as an athlete, and his

uncle was the poet Simonides. He dwells with intense delight on the

details of the games, the light foot and strong hands of the victor, the

whirlwind rush of the chariots, the cheers of the spectators, the

triumphal rejoicings at the victor’s home. But of the deeper meaning,

the spirit of the games, we learn little from him.

With Pindar it is different. He is a prophet with a theory of life which

he applies to everything of which he sings, to the stories of gods and

heroes, or to the deeds of men. He has, too, a high conception of the

poet’s office, which is to give to all excellence that immortal fame

which should be the chief incentive to all noble deeds. It has been said

that to be an athlete and the father of athletes is for Pindar the

highest reach of human ambition. The criticism is unfair for two

reasons. In the first place, it takes account only of a portion of

Pindar’s work. He is said to have written poems of ten different

classes, most of them connected with the worship of the gods. Of nine of

these classes we possess but a few fragments; only the epinikia have

survived. In the epinikia the poet’s theme is necessarily the praise of

winners at the games, in other words the praise of youth, and early

manhood. But Pindar himself recognizes clearly that every age has its

own excellence. The virtues of the old are good counsel and prudence,

those of youth are courage and endurance. “By trial is the issue

manifest,”[116] and the virtues of youth are proved in battle,[117] or

in the peaceful contests of the games, which are, as we have seen, the

training of the citizen for the sterner contests of war. Secondly, the

word “athlete” is ambiguous. It suggests too much the professional

athlete of a later age, the man who, from selfish and mercenary motives,

devoted his whole life to athletics and who, as Euripides tells us, was

after his prime “useless as a worn-out coat.” But the well-born youths

and princes for whom Pindar sang were actuated by no mercenary motives,

but by that pure love of physical effort and of competition which is

natural to all healthy youth. “The shepherd, and the ploughman, the

fowler, and he whom the sea feedeth, strive but to keep fierce famine

from their bellies; but whoso in the games or in war hath won delightful

fame, receiveth the highest of rewards in fair words of citizens and of

strangers.”[118]

What then are the qualities of Pindar’s athlete? They are summed up in

that most typical of all his athletic odes, the 11th _Olympian_, in

honour of Agesidamus of Epizephyrian Locri, the winner of the boys’

boxing match in the great Ol. 76. “If one be born with excellent gifts,

then may another who sharpeneth his natural edge, speed him, God

helping, to an exceeding weight of glory. Without toil there have

triumphed a very few.”

Firstly and above all the athlete must be born “with excellent gifts.”

Strength and beauty are the gifts of Zeus, of the graces, of fate. They

are bestowed especially on members of ancient and honourable families,

and Pindar as a true aristocrat delights to enumerate the great deeds of

the victor’s ancestors in war and sport. He has, too, to the full, the

artist’s appreciation of physical beauty, and he never tires of

describing it. But physical beauty must be matched by beautiful deeds;

the athlete must not shame his beauty. Natural gifts imply the duty of

developing them, and excellence can only be attained, God helping, by

“cost and toil.”[119] Here, as Professor Gildersleeve has well said,

Pindar gives a moral dignity to athletics; for the cost and toil are

undertaken not by compulsion or for selfish motives but for fame. Even

the desire for fame is not selfish. Victory is a delight and honour to

the victor’s city, to his family, even to his dead ancestors. Moreover,

the true sportsman “delights” in the toil and cost.

[Illustration: Fig. 18. Charioteer. Delphi. (_Greek Sculpture_, Fig.

138.)]

The expense of competing in the chariot and horse races was naturally

far heavier than that of competing in athletic events; yet even the

latter involved considerable sacrifice of time and money, and the

services of the famous trainers mentioned by the poets must have been

dearly bought. The toil, too, was not unaccompanied by risk. More than

two-thirds of Pindar’s victors won their crowns in wrestling, boxing, or

the pankration, events which involved no little danger to limb, if not

to life. The chariot-race had been equally dangerous in days when the

owners drove their own chariots. In Pindar’s time this was no longer the

rule. We could hardly expect a Hieron or a Gelon to compete in person,

any more than we could expect to find one of our own horse owners riding

his own horse in the Derby. Yet we still find the owner occasionally

acting as charioteer,[120] and more frequently still some son or younger

member of his family.[121] Such, it seems likely, was the aristocratic

youth whose bronze statue has been recently discovered by the French at

Delphi[122] (Fig. 18). The element of risk must always add a zest to

sport, and it certainly does in Pindar’s eyes. “Deeds of no risks,” he

says, “are honourless whether done among men or among hollow

ships.”[123] It follows then that the most necessary qualities for an

athlete are courage and endurance. On the latter virtue Pindar, like his

countrymen generally, insists even more than on courage, perhaps because

the Greeks felt the need of it more. Heracles for example, Pindar’s

ideal athletic hero, is a “man of unbending spirit.” Yet neither

physical strength nor endurance is sufficient without skill, and skill

can only be obtained by constant practice under skilful teachers.

In the old days athletic skill had been handed down in noble families

from father to son; such families still existed. Lampon of Aegina, the

father of two athletes, Phylacidas and Pytheas,[124] is described as a

“whetstone among athletes,” bestowing practice on all that he does, and

exhorting his sons to follow the precept of Hesiod, “Practice perfects

the deed.” His son Phylacidas, too, is commended for his training of his

younger brother Pytheas. More often, however, the services of a

professional trainer were called in. Thus Pytheas owed his victory

largely to the Athenian trainer Menander. But though training can help

to develop natural gifts, without natural gifts it can do little. “The

natural,” says Pindar, “is ever best.”[125]

But when athlete and trainer have done their best, the issue still rests

in the hands of the gods. Pindar, like Aeschylus, is deeply religious,

and regards the gods as the moral rulers of the world. Every good gift

of mind or body, every excellence comes from the gods, and victory is

bestowed on those who are pleasing to them. Man wins their favour partly

by piety, by observance of their festivals and offerings at their

altars, but still more by such conduct as averts their jealousy. Their

jealousy is excited by all excess, by pride and insolence; it is

appeased by that attitude of mind which is expressed by that

untranslatable and indefinable word αἰδώς. Aidos is the direct opposite

of ὕβρις or insolence; it is the feeling of respect for what is due to

the gods, to one’s fellowmen, to oneself, a feeling that begets a like

feeling towards oneself in others. It is the spirit of reverence, of

modesty, of courtesy. Above all it is the sense of honour, and as such

inspires the athlete and the soldier, distinguishing them from the bully

and the oppressor. Strength may tempt its owner to abuse it; success may

engender “braggart insolence.”[126] But aidos puts into men’s hearts

“valour and the joy of battle.”[127] Aidos, mark, not passion, aidos,

the child of forethought, and therefore the true man feels for his might

“aidos,” which prevents him from abusing it.[128] Hence while the bully

inspires terror and loathing, the warrior and the athlete win in the

sight of citizens and strangers grace and honour (αἰδοία χάρις).[129]

In sport aidos is that scrupulous sense of honour and fairness, which is

of the essence of that much abused word “a sportsman.” No sports demand

so high a sense of honour as boxing and wrestling, the events which,

with the pankration, were most popular in Greece, and no sports are

therefore so liable to abuse and corruption. It is aidos which makes a

man a “straight fighter,” εὐθυμάχας, the epithet with which Pindar

describes the boxer Diagoras of Rhodes, “who walks in the straight path

that abhors insolence.”[130] The commercial spirit is incompatible with

this feeling. “Aidos is stolen away by secret gains,”[131] says Pindar

in his praise of Chromius of Aetna. Was he thinking of the scandal

aroused a few years before by Astylus of Croton when for the sake of

gain he proclaimed himself a Syracusan? It is tempting to suppose so.

The resentment that this conduct caused was at least a healthy sign.

Further, aidos is akin to and includes the principle of self-control,

σωφροσύνη, which is implied in Pindar’s favourite doctrine of the

mean,[132] and which plays so important a part in the philosophy of the

next century. The self-control of the athlete was a commonplace, but

aidos is something more subtle, more indefinable, more effective than

any rule or principle; and the comprehension of it helps us to

understand how even sports which seem at first sight brutal are yet

under the special patronage of those fair-haired graces who, in

Professor Gildersleeve’s expressive phrase, “give and grace the

victory,” “from whom come unto men all pleasant things and sweet, and

the wisdom of man and his beauty and the splendour of his fame.”[133]

Such an ideal could not fail to exercise a lasting influence on

athletics. Literature and art increased the popularity of athletics by

appealing not merely with new force to the old motives of patriotism and

religion but also to the growing aesthetic feeling of the race. To this

may be ascribed the importance which the Greeks ascribed to style and

grace. It was not sufficient, for example, to throw an opponent in

wrestling, it had to be done in style and with skill. The cult of style

grew sometimes, it would seem, almost into affectation. Aelian tells a

story of a trainer, Hippomachus, who hearing the crowd applaud a pupil

of his for throwing his opponent, at once chastised him, saying that he

must have done something wrong, for the people would never have cheered

a scientific throw.[134] We do not know the date of Hippomachus, but the

story undoubtedly illustrates a tendency which actually existed.

The same love of beauty must have helped to check the growth of

specialization with its exaggerated and one-sided development, and also

to preserve the purity of sport against the influence of

professionalism. Thanks largely to this ideal Olympia maintained her

prestige, and to a great extent her high standard of athletic honour,

long after the liberty of Greece had become a memory, and her gods a

laughing-stock of the satirist. An inscription of the reign of Hadrian,

discovered at Olympia, is a striking illustration of this vitality. It

records a decree in honour of T. Claudius Rufus, a pankratiast of

Smyrna, who, though matched in the final heat of the pankration with an

opponent who had drawn a bye in the preceding heat, fought on till

nightfall, and left the contest drawn.[135] The decree relates how he

had resided at Olympia for the necessary course of training so that his

σωφροσύνη was recognized by all men, how he had trained according to the

traditional customs of the games, and had in the stadium given an

exhibition worthy of Olympian Zeus, and of his own training and

reputation, in recognition of which the Eleans had voted him the right

of erecting his statue in the Altis. The decree is perhaps somewhat

fulsome, and suggests that such examples of σωφροσύνη must have been

exceptional at the time. Yet it shows that the memory at least of the

old ideal survived even under the empire and was still cherished at

Olympia.

We have already seen what an impulse was given to athletics and to the

Panhellenic festivals by the Persian wars. No festival was more

Panhellenic than that of Olympia, and no place felt more keenly than

Elis the invigorating effects of the new spirit of unity and of freedom.

Elis had played an inglorious part in the national struggle. The narrow

and unprogressive oligarchy showed the same lack of energy and

initiative which they had shown in the management of the Olympic

festival during the sixth century. The Elean contingent arrived at

Plataea too late to take part in the battle. Returning home full of

bitter self-reproach they at once determined to put an end to the old

régime, and banished the leaders who had been responsible for the

fiasco. This was the beginning of the Synoecism of Elis which was not

finally completed till 471 B.C., when the government of the scattered,

unwalled villages was for the first time centred in the newly founded

city state of Elis. The change was facilitated by the eclipse of Spartan

prestige in the Peloponnese, while the growing influence of Athens was

clearly shown both in these political changes and in the outburst of

artistic activity at Olympia which followed the founding of Elis. But

the new order could not fail to excite violent opposition, especially

among the conservative folk of Pisatis and Triphylia, and their

opposition culminated in a civil war which only ended about the year 470

or 469 with the devastation of the whole district by the Eleans.

The opposition of Pisatis was due partly to the transference of the

political centre to Elis, perhaps in a greater degree to the new régime

inaugurated at Olympia. The old dual control of the festival by Elis and

Pisatis was, as we have seen already, passing away; possibly its

death-blow was given by the banishment of the aristocrats, some of whom

may have had hereditary connexion with the festival. At all events, from

the time of Plataea the two Hellanodicae who represented the dual

control were replaced by a board of nine,[136] and permanent quarters

were provided for the new administration by the enlargement of the

Bouleuterion, the south wing of which was added about this time. The

increase in the number of officials may have been rendered desirable by

the increasing strenuousness of the competitions. The nine were divided

into three groups of three each, in charge respectively of the

horse-races, the pentathlon, and the other athletic events, an excellent

arrangement which at once commends itself to the modern athletic mind.

Yet it seems more likely that the number nine was dictated by political

considerations, and the fact that there were nine tribes of the Eleans.

It was a change to a sort of popular representation, and its popular

character is further marked by the fact that these officials were

elected by lot, a democratic institution which can hardly have belonged

to the earlier régime.

This change first took effect in Ol. 76, and possibly was introduced in

view of that great national Olympiad. It was on this occasion, according

to a popular story, that Themistocles himself appeared and received such

an ovation from the crowd that the athletes themselves were neglected.

The national character of this Olympiad assured the success of the new

order. In the following festival the competition was so great that the

pankration could not be decided before nightfall, and it was decided

from this date to extend and rearrange the festival. In the 77th

Olympiad, too, a tenth Hellanodicas was added apparently to represent

the newly conquered district of Triphylia. This number remained

unchanged till Ol. 103, when, the number of tribes having been raised to

twelve in consequence of a still further extension of territory

southwards, a corresponding change was made in the number of the

Hellanodicae. The war with Arcadia which ensued reduced the number for a

time to eight, but in Ol. 108 the number was restored to ten and no

further change was made. These Hellanodicae must be regarded as the

executive officers of the Elean Council, to whom in case of doubt or

dissatisfaction there was a right of appeal.

The intimate connexion between the political changes in Elis and the

Olympic festival can be best realized from Pausanias’ account of the new

city.[137] Everything in Elis seems to have been planned purely and

simply with a view to the festival. The agora was nothing more or less

than a training-ground for horses, it was a large open square or oblong

surrounded by colonnades with no other ornaments than a few altars to

Zeus and other gods, and even these so constructed as to be easily

removable. Close to this agora, appropriately called the hippodrome,

were no less than three gymnasia with running tracks, and rings for

boxing or wrestling, and conveniently connected with agora and gymnasium

was the Hellanodiceon, or headquarters of the Hellanodicae. Here the

latter had to reside for ten months before the festival, receiving

instruction in all the ancient usages of the games from the Guardians of

the Lavs (Nomophylakes). During the last month before the games they

themselves were engaged in superintending the practice of the athletes,

who spent the last thirty days of their training at Elis, and in

classifying men and horses according to age, a matter of no little

difficulty when no registers of births were kept. The principal

buildings of Elis city were all connected with the games, and though we

cannot tell the date of those which Pausanias saw, there can be little

doubt that they truly indicate the character of the city from the start.

The agora was typical of the rest, and Pausanias pointedly contrasts it

with the cheerful market-places of Ionian towns. Certainly it cannot

have been an attractive place to live in, and the Eleans never took

kindly to it; indeed many an old-fashioned country gentleman lived and

died without even setting foot in his chief city.[138]

Meanwhile great changes were taking place at Olympia. Its national

character was recognized by the dedication in the Altis, from the spoil

of Plataea, of a colossal bronze statue of Zeus, on the base of which

were inscribed the names of all states which had taken part in the

battles. But the new feeling of national unity found a yet worthier

monument in the whole series of buildings which the new administration

undertook, to render the sacred precinct worthy of its Panhellenic

dignity. Hitherto, as we have seen, various states had been allowed to

secure for themselves points of vantage at the festival by building,

along the foot of the hill of Cronus, treasuries, or communal houses.

Three more of these buildings—the last of them—were added shortly after

Plataea. All these were at the western end of the terrace. One of them

was dedicated by the Syracusans in commemoration of their victory over

the Carthaginians at Himera; another was built by the Sicyonians,

possibly on the site of an older foundation, containing the great bronze

treasure-chests dedicated by Myron; the builders of the third are

unknown, but it has been plausibly suggested that they were the Samians.

Sicyon had played an important part in the war with Persia both by land

and sea, Samos was closely connected with the victory at Mycale, and it

is tempting to imagine that both these treasuries were memorials of the

national victory. This, however, is mere conjecture; what is certain is,

that these treasuries were built shortly after Plataea and that from

this date the building of such treasuries ceases abruptly. Henceforth

the Eleans took into their own hands the embellishment of the Altis, and

their first work was in connexion with the treasuries.[139]

The loose nature of the soil had rendered the building of the

westernmost treasuries a matter of considerable difficulty. Accordingly,

the Eleans constructed nine rows of stone steps extending continuously

from the western end of the Heraeum along the whole length of the

treasury terrace. These steps not only served as a retaining wall to the

treasuries but furnished a capacious stand from which thousands of

spectators could view the games and sacrifices, which still centred

round the altar of Zeus. Shortly afterwards was built the additional

wing of the Bouleuterion mentioned above.

The next move of the Eleans was to provide a temple worthy of Olympian

Zeus, and the money for this work was provided from the plunder gained

in Triphylia and Pisatis. The new temple was begun about the year 468

B.C., and perhaps its buildings suggested to Pindar the opening lines of

his 6th Olympian Ode in which he compares the prelude of his song to the

façade of a stately fane. The temple must have been completed about the

time of the defeat of the Athenians and Argives by Sparta at Tanagra in

457; for the Spartans commemorated their victory by a golden shield

which was placed on the summit of the temple. It would be out of place

here to attempt any description of the temple: we may notice, however,

that while the architect Libon was an Elean, the great chryselephantine

statue of Zeus afterwards erected in it was the masterpiece of Pheidias,

and Pausanias ascribes some of the sculptural decorations to the

Athenian sculptors Paeonius and Alcamenes, though modern authorities

generally discredit the statement. And just as Pheidias in his Zeus

tried to represent the highest ideal of Greek manhood, so in the lesser

works, the mythological scenes of the pediments and metopes, the

chariot-race of Pelops and Oenomaus, the battle of the Lapiths and

Centaurs, the labours of Heracles, we have in reality various renderings

of the theme which inspires all the art of this period, the triumph of

the Greek over the barbarian, of trained skill over undisciplined force.

Thus the temple of Zeus was truly a national memorial of the Persian

wars.

The new temple was built on the site of the ancient grove, and its

building had no doubt interfered with anything in the nature of fence or

hedge which may have bounded the sacred grove. Perhaps we may assign to

this period the idea of marking out the Altis in the rough quadrilateral

shape which has been revealed by later ruins. This plan seems to be

implied in the building of the first colonnade at the eastern end of and

at right angles, to the treasury terrace. This colonnade was built about

the middle of the fifth century, and was obviously intended for the

convenience of spectators at the festival, commanding, as it did, a full

view of the ancient altar and of the east end of the newly built temple

of Zeus. Its building necessitated a change in the athletic

arrangements.

The foot-races could no longer take place near the altar, and a new

permanent “dromos,” or race-course, was provided to the east of the

colonnade. This may have been partly a concession to the growing demands

of professional athletes, but the new race-course was still of the

simplest. The ground was approximately levelled, the course was measured

and perhaps marked by a permanent line of stone slabs at either end, and

water-channels were provided to carry the water from the west of the

Altis to the race-course, for the convenience of spectators and athletes

alike. Perhaps permanent seats were provided for the Hellanodicae, and

for the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, who had a place of honour opposite

them. The rest of the spectators had no seats, but reclined or stood on

the slopes of the hill of Cronus, or else on the flat plain that

stretched between the stadium and the Alpheus.

Whether all the athletic events or only the races were transferred to

the new course is uncertain. The only evidence on the point is contained

in a passage of Xenophon, describing the battle which took place at

Olympia in 364 B.C. In this year the wrestling of the pentathlon

undoubtedly took place near the altar as it had done in Pindar’s time;

but it is not quite clear whether this was the usual thing or

exceptional. In the dearth of evidence it is a matter for individual

judgment, and my own opinion is that only the foot-races and throwing

the diskos and javelin were transferred to the new dromos, and that

boxing, wrestling, and the pankration continued to take place in the

triangular space commanded by the treasury terrace and the colonnade.

The treasury terrace and colonnade formed the theatre of which Xenophon

speaks, and certainly offered far better accommodation for spectators of

such events than was possible in the stadium proper, at least until it

was improved and banked up after the battle of Chaeronea.[140]

About the same time improvements were made in the hippodrome. Hitherto

the arrangements for the equestrian events must have been as simple as

for the athletics. But now a permanent hippodrome was provided south of

the stadium, and an elaborate starting-gate for the chariots was

constructed by the artist Cleoetas.[141] The chariots were arranged in

pairs opposite each other along the sides of a triangle, the apex of

which pointed down the course. In the centre of this triangle was an

altar of Poseidon, on which stood a bronze eagle. At the apex was a

brazen dolphin. At the moment of starting this dolphin fell to the

ground and the eagle rose, thus announcing the start to the spectators.

At the same time the ropes in front of the pair of chariots nearest to

the base were withdrawn. As they drew level with the next pair, the next

ropes were withdrawn, and so on till the whole field were fairly

started.

We may notice here a work which, though perhaps of somewhat later date,

illustrates the Panhellenic character of Olympia. The old tripod on

which the branches of sacred olive tree for the prizes were placed, was

replaced by an ivory and gold table, the work of Colotes of

Heraclea,[142] a disciple of Pheidias, who assisted the latter in

constructing the chryselephantine statue of Zeus. The table was kept in

the Heraeum and at the time of the festival was placed beside the seat

of the Hellanodicae in the stadium. On one side were representations of

Hera and Zeus, of the Mother of the Gods, Hermes, Apollo, and Artemis.

On the other side were figures of Pluto and Persephone, recalling those

ancient Chthonic cults which had existed at Olympia from time

immemorial, and of which many traces survive, especially to the east of

the Altis.

The activity of the Eleans had, as we have seen, put an end to

architectural dedications by other states; but the piety of the Greek

world found expression in the dedication of statues and votive

offerings. During the nine Olympiads which followed the Persian wars

476-444 B.C., no less than thirty-five statues of victors were set up on

the Altis, while in the next nine Olympiads the number drops to

twenty.[143] These statistics bear out the date of the change in Greek

athletics which will be discussed in the next chapter.

Footnote 101:

A. Furtwängler, _Die Bedeutung der Gymnastik in der griechischen

Kunst_.

Footnote 102:

x. ll. 21 ff. (Bergk).

Footnote 103:

_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 25; cp. _B.C.H._, 1907, p. 187.

Footnote 104:

_Greek Sculpture_, Figs. 34, 35, 36.

Footnote 105:

Cp. a fine archaic bronze diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum of New

York, published in the _Museum Bulletin_, iii. p. 33; _vide infra_

Fig. 83.

Footnote 106:

Such attributes are common in bronzes, cp. Pausanias v. 26, 3; 27, 12;

vi. 3, 9; 10, 4; 13, 7.

Footnote 107:

Paus. vi. 10, 1-3.

Footnote 108:

Paus. i. 23, 9.

Footnote 109:

Cp. Walter Pater, _Greek Studies_, pp. 281 ff.

Footnote 110:

Vide Krause, _Gym._ pp. 943 ff., a criticism of the exaggerated view

put forward in Becker’s _Charicles_.

Footnote 111:

Cp. Aristoph. _Nub._ 995—

ἄλλο τε μηδὲν

αἰσχρὸν ποιεῖν, ὅ τι τῆς Αἰδοῦς μέλλει τἄγαλμ’ ἀναπλήσειν.

The Spartans considered Αἰδῶς a goddess, Xen. _Symp._ 8, 36.

Footnote 112:

_Vide infra_, Figs. 167 ff.

Footnote 113:

For the following sections _vide_ Jebb’s _Bacchylides_, Introduction.

Footnote 114:

Pindar, _N._ v. 49.

Footnote 115:

_Vide_ the list of Olympic victors for Ol. 75-83 found on an

Oxyrhyncus papyrus. Grenfell and Hunt, _Ox. Pap._ ii. 222; C. Robert,

_Hermes_, xxxv. pp. 141 ff.

Footnote 116:

_N._ iii. 70.

Footnote 117:

_P._ ii. 63.

Footnote 118:

_I._ i. 47 ff.

Footnote 119:

_I._ i. 42, iv. 57, v. 10.

Footnote 120:

Herodotus of Thebes, _I._ i.

Footnote 121:

Thrasybulus, _P._ vi.; _I._ ii.

Footnote 122:

_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 138. The identification of this statue is

uncertain. It has been suggested that the word “Polyzalos” on the

basis is an adjective, and that the victory recorded is that of

Arcesilas of Cyrene. This view has been assailed in _Ath. Mitth._

xxxiv. by A. D. Keramopoullos, who believes that the statue was vowed

by Gelon and actually set up by Polyzalos.

Footnote 123:

_O._ vi. 9.

Footnote 124:

_I._ iv., v.; _N._ v.

Footnote 125:

_O._ ix. 100.

Footnote 126:

_O._ i. 56, xiii. 10; _N._ i. 65; _I._ iii. 2.

Footnote 127:

_O._ vii. 44.

Footnote 128:

_P._ iv. 173.

Footnote 129:

_O._ vii. 89; cp. vi. 76, where χάρις is αἰδοία as the giver of αἴδως.

Footnote 130:

_O._ vii. 15, 90.

Footnote 131:

_N._ ix. 33.

Footnote 132:

σωφροσύνη does not occur in Pindar; σώφρων only twice: _P._ iii. 63,

of Cheiron; _I._ vii. 27, of the sons of Aeacus. For the meaning of

αἰδώς cp. Gilbert Murray, _The Rise of the Greek Epic_, p. 88.

Footnote 133:

_O._ xiv. 5.

Footnote 134:

Aelian, _V.H._ ii. 6.

Footnote 135:

_Ol. Ins._ 54.

Footnote 136:

Paus. v. 9, 5.

Footnote 137:

vi. 23.

Footnote 138:

Polybius iv. 73.

Footnote 139:

L. Dyer, “The Olympian Theatron” in _J.H.S._ xxviii. p. 265.

Footnote 140:

L. Dyer, _l.c._

Footnote 141:

Paus. vi. 20, 14. _Vide infra_, Fig. 164.

Footnote 142:

Paus. v. 20, 2; Pliny, _N.H._ xxxv. 54.

Footnote 143:

These figures are taken from the lists given in Hyde’s _De

Olympionicarum Statuis_.

CHAPTER VI

PROFESSIONALISM AND SPECIALIZATION, 440-338 B.C.

Literature and art purified and refined athletics for a while, but at

the same time by encouraging competition intensified these very evils

which result from excessive competition, and when the Panhellenic

movement had spent its force, and strife and faction once more resumed

their sway in the Greek world, the decline of athletics was rapid.

Nowhere is excess more dangerous than in athletics, and the charm of

poetry and art must not blind us to that element of exaggeration which

existed in the hero-worship of the athlete. The nemesis of excess in

athletics is specialization, specialization begets professionalism, and

professionalism is the death of all true sport.

We have seen how even before the time of Pindar the growth of

competition had developed athletics beyond their legitimate sphere of

exercise and recreation till they became an end in themselves, and how

success in the great games demanded an undue expenditure of time and of

money. During the fifth century specialization made rapid progress in

the hands of professional trainers, whose business it was to train

competitors for the great games.[144]

The earliest trainers were boxers and wrestlers, who probably confined

themselves to giving instruction in these exercises. Such training was

of course necessary and useful, but shortly after the Persian wars it

was discovered that excellence in any particular event could be secured

by special training and special diet, and the trainer began to take upon

himself the whole direction of his pupil’s life. This specialized

artificial training was good neither for the athlete nor for the nation.

[Illustration: Fig. 19. Apoxyomenos. Rome, Vatican. (_Greek Sculpture_,

Fig. 98.)]

The aim of the earlier training had been to produce a harmonious

development of the whole body. The new training, by prescribing

concentration on some particular exercise, produced a one-sided

development. “The runner,” says Socrates, “has over-developed his legs,

and the boxer the upper part of his body,”[145] and he humorously

suggests that he finds dancing a better form of exercise than athletics.

In another passage of the _Memorabilia_, Socrates compliments a

sculptor, whom under the name of Cleiton we may perhaps recognize as

Polycleitus,[146] on his power of representing the different physical

types produced by different forms of sport. Unfortunately we have not

sufficient material to enable us to verify this statement for the

sculpture of the end of the fifth century. But some idea of the

diversity of type produced may be obtained by comparing two somewhat

later works, the Apoxyomenos, formerly ascribed to Lysippus (Fig. 19),

and the Agias, a genuine work of Lysippus, recently discovered at

Delphi[147] (Fig. 20). In the former we see the thoroughbred type of the

runner with his length of limb and fine ankles, in the latter the

sturdier, heavier type of the pankratiast. Neither of these two statues,

however, is open to the charge of one-sided development which Socrates

brings against the athletes of his time, and which would probably be

more noticeable in inferior works of art. For this we must turn to the

vases. A Panathenaic vase in the British Museum, dated 336 B.C., shows

us the typical boxer of the period, with his clumsy, bulky body and

small coarse head[148] (Fig. 135). A comparison of these boxers with the

athletes on the red-figured vases affords convincing proof of the change

which had come over athletics.

[Illustration: Fig. 20. Statue of Agias by Lysippus. Delphi. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 141.)]

The old athlete had lived a simple, natural, open-air life. Training in

the strict sense of the word he had none. His diet had been mainly

vegetarian. Like the diet of the country-folk in Greece at all times, it

consisted mainly of figs and cheese from the baskets, of porridge and

meal-cakes with only such meat as occasion offered.[149] It has been

often stated that a diet of figs and cheese was prescribed by the law of

the Olympic festival, and various fanciful interpretations of this

custom have been suggested. It is possible that certain forms of food

were forbidden to competitors at particular festivals; thus at Delphi we

know that the introduction of wine into the stadium was forbidden, and

that any breach of this rule was punished by a fine, half of which was

paid to the god, the other half to the informer.[150] But such

prohibitions were of the nature of a religious taboo, and there is no

reason for supposing that the diet of athletes was otherwise regulated

by any law. Indeed we have direct evidence to the contrary, for the

introduction of a meat diet in the fifth century is ascribed to two

private individuals—to Dromeus of Stymphalus, a runner who twice won the

long race at Olympia in Ols. 80 and 81, and to Pythagoras of Samos, who

trained Eurymenes, the winner of the boxing in Ol. 77.[151]

The introduction of a meat diet was a momentous change: it created an

artificial distinction between the life of an athlete and the life of

the ordinary man, who ate meat but sparingly and only as a relish. Its

object, of course, was to produce the bulk of body and weight which are

important considerations in boxing and wrestling, and which were

especially so in Greece inasmuch as classification by weight was unknown

in those competitions. Boxing, wrestling, and the pankration were, as I

have stated, the most popular and most honoured of all the events in

Greek sport, and it is in these events that specialization and

professionalism first made their appearance, and that their results were

most fatal. To produce the necessary bulk of body the trainer prescribed

for his pupils vast quantities of meat, which had to be counteracted by

violent exercise. Eating, sleeping, and exercise occupied the athlete’s

whole time, and left little time or leisure for any other pursuits.[152]

“Socrates,” says Xenophon, “disapproved of such a life as incompatible

with the cultivation of the soul.” Even from a physical point of view

this system of training was vicious and unscientific. It might produce

weight and strength, but it did so at the sacrifice of activity and

health. In the case of the young it tended to stunt the growth and

destroy all beauty of form; and Aristotle, speaking no doubt of his own

time, remarks on the fact that the boy victors at Olympia rarely

repeated their successes as men.[153] Moreover, the athlete’s strength

was useless for practical purposes. Epaminondas, we are told, when he

came of age and began to frequent the palaestra, devoted himself to such

exercises as produced activity rather than great strength, considering

that the latter was of little use for war. So he exercised himself in

running, and in wrestling “only so far as he could stand on his feet,”

but he spent most of his time in the practice of arms.[154] Equally

unsuitable for war was the habit of life produced by athletic training.

“The athlete’s nature,” says Plato, “is sleepy, and the least variation

from his routine is liable to cause him serious illness.”[155] Such a

man is incapable of standing the various vicissitudes of a campaign, and

therefore we find athletics condemned not only by philosophers like

Plato and Aristotle but by generals such as Epaminondas, Alexander, and

Philopoemen.[156] “The athlete,” says Euripides, “is the slave of his

jaw and of his belly.”

Medical science confirmed the verdict of the philosopher and the

soldier. Hippocrates of Cos, “the father of medicine,” and a

contemporary of Herodicus and Gorgias, condemned the high state of

training produced by athletics as a dangerous and unstable condition of

body.[157] To live in a constant state of training is bad for any man,

and especially under a system so unscientific as that of the Greeks.

There was another reason for the condemnation of athletics by military

authorities. The old Homeric sports had been practical and military: the

system of physical education which had grown out of them had produced

that all-round development which made a man fit for all the duties of

life in peace or war; but the new specialized education produced only a

one-sided development, and at the same time was so exacting as to leave

no time for the practice of military exercises. Plato was an ardent

advocate of physical training. Trained by his father Ariston, who was a

distinguished athlete, he had won victories in wrestling at Delphi,

Nemea, and the Isthmus, and is even stated, though with less

probability, to have won the Olympic crown. But the philosopher could

find no place for the athletics of his day in his ideal state, and he

therefore, in the _Laws_,[158] proposes a new and more practical

gymnastic based on the requirements of war. From the age of six, boys,

and girls too, are to learn to ride, to learn the use of the bow, the

javelin, and the sling, and to learn to use the left hand as well as the

right. In wrestling and boxing all tricks invented “out of a vain spirit

of competition” are to be eschewed and only such forms practised as are

likely to be of service for war. The dances, too, must be military in

character, marches and processions in armour and on horseback, or mimic

contests like the dances of Crete and Sparta. In another passage[159] he

describes the competitions suitable for his ideal state. All foot-races

are to be run in armour, there is to be a long-distance race of sixty

stades in heavy armour, and a still longer race of 100 stades over

mountains and across every sort of country for the light-armed archer.

Instead of wrestling and the pankration there are to be conflicts in

armour, and for the light-armed troops combats with bows, and javelins,

and slings under a code of laws drawn up by military experts. The

military character of Plato’s scheme indicates the philosopher’s opinion

on the unpractical character of the existing athletics.

An interesting development of athletic training which has its parallel

in our own day was the rise of “medical gymnastics.” The valetudinarian

school of gymnastic originated with Herodicus of Selymbria, a

contemporary of Socrates whom Plato ridicules for corrupting the arts of

gymnastic and medicine.[160] “By a combination of training and doctoring

he found out a way of torturing, first and chiefly, himself, and,

secondly, the rest of the world, by the invention of a lingering death.

Having a mortal disease, which he perpetually tended, he passed his

whole life as a valetudinarian.” By the introduction of elaborate rules

for eating and drinking he corrupted athletics, and is justly described

by Plato as a gymnastic sophist, a name that might well be applied to

many of the advertizing quacks of our own day. In this respect he is

coupled by Plato with the somewhat earlier trainer, Iccus of Tarentum,

who won the pentathlon at Olympia in Ol. 76, and who was famed for his

temperance and self-restraint.[161] These trainers are credited with the

invention of medical massage (ἰατραλειπτική), a development of the

massage applied to athletes before and after training by the ἀλειπτής.

Alexander had in his suite an Athenian Athenophanes, whose duty it was

to attend his master in the bath and anoint him with oil.[162]

Of the rich rewards lavished upon successful athletes we have spoken in

a previous chapter. In the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes Hermes, having

deserted the gods, takes service with Plutus as the “presider over

contests.” “For,” says he, “there is no service more profitable to

Plutus than holding contests in music and athletics.”[163] Plato knows

no life more blessed from a material point of view than that of an

Olympic victor, and in the myth of Er he describes the soul of Atalanta

choosing the body of an athlete on seeing “the great rewards bestowed on

the athlete.” Still more significant is the story of the Rhodian

Dorieus, one of the famous Diagoridae. Banished from Rhodes by the

Athenians he went to Thurii, and, as a commander of a Thurian ship, took

part in the war against Athens. Taken prisoner by the Athenians in 407

B.C. he was set free without ransom in consideration of the fame which

he and his family had won at Olympia.[164]

The result of specialization is professionalism. There is a point in any

sport or game where it becomes over-developed, and competition too

severe, for it to serve its true purpose of providing exercise or

recreation for the many. It becomes the monopoly of the few who can

afford the time or money to acquire excellence, while the rest,

despairing of any measure of success, prefer the role of spectators.

When the rewards of success are sufficient there arises a professional

class, and when professionalism is once established the amateur can no

longer compete with the professional.

Before the close of the fifth century the word ἀθλητής had already come

to denote the professional athlete as opposed to the amateur or ἰδιωτής.

Xenophon relates a conversation between Socrates and an ill-developed

youth, in which the philosopher taunts the latter with his very

“unprofessional” condition of body.[165] Athletics were out of fashion

at that time among the smart young men of Athens, who, like Alcibiades,

disdained to compete with their inferiors. “Of course,” replies the

youth indignantly, “for I am not a professional, I am an amateur.”

Whereupon the philosopher reads him a lecture on the duty of developing

the body to its utmost. “No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the

matter of physical training: it is part of his profession as a citizen

to keep himself in good condition, ready to serve his state at a

moment’s notice. The instinct of self-preservation demands it likewise:

for how helpless is the state of the ill-trained youth in war or danger!

Finally what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing

the beauty and strength of which his body is capable!” The ideal of

Socrates is the earlier ideal which was already passing away, while the

reply of Epigenes illustrates the change which had taken place in the

character of the athlete and in the popular attitude towards athletics.

At the time of the Persian wars the Greeks had been a nation of

athletes. At the time of the Peloponnesian wars the mass of the people

were no longer athletic. Aristophanes bitterly deplores the change.[166]

At Athens the young men had deserted the palaestra and gymnasium for the

luxurious baths and the market-place; pale-faced and narrow-chested,

they had not even sufficient training to run the torch-race. The labour

of training was distasteful to the Athenians, who, as Thucydides tells

us, preferred to be spectators of the deeds of others rather than doers.

Sparta had long taken little part in athletic competitions, with the

exception of the foot-race, but her rigorous system of education,

brutalizing as it was, saved her at least from the evils of specialized

athletics. Of other parts of Greece we know little; in the richer and

more progressive cities it is probable that life was much the same as at

Athens, while the records of Olympia show that the victors were drawn

more and more from the poorer and less progressive country districts,

from Thessaly, and particularly from the mountains of Arcadia.[167] It

was only when athletics became a profitable profession that the poor but

healthy countryman could afford to compete at the great festivals. The

large number of competitions for boys and youths offered the promising

boxer or wrestler a source of profit from an early age, and at Olympia

these competitions were almost monopolized by the youth of Elis and

Arcadia.

The severest indictment of professionalism occurs in the well-known

fragment of Euripides’ lost play, the _Autolycus_. Euripides was no

enemy of sport. His parents had wished to train him as an athlete, and

he had won prizes as a boy at the Eleusinian and the Thesean games. He

is said to have offered himself as a candidate at Olympia, but to have

been disqualified owing to some doubt about his age. Countless allusions

in his writings show his appreciation of all manly sports. But athletic

success could not satisfy his restless and ambitious spirit, and, like

Xenophanes two generations before, he could not be blind to the

unreality of the worship of athletics, and to the evils which it was

producing. “Of all the countless evils throughout Hellas,” he cries,

“there is none worse than the race of athletes.” The evil is not

confined to Athens; it is widespread throughout Hellas. “In youth they

strut about in splendour, the pride of their city, but when bitter old

age comes upon them they are cast aside like threadbare garments.” It is

not the athletes themselves but the nation that is to blame for such

results. “I blame the custom of the Hellenes who gather together to

watch these men, honouring a useless pleasure.” And then, echoing the

words of Xenophanes, he proceeds: “Who ever helped his fatherland by

winning a crown for wrestling or for speed of foot, or hurling the

diskos, or striking a good blow on the jaw? Will they fight the foe with

diskoi in their hands or, driving their fists through the foemen’s

shields, cast them out of their land? Crowns should be given to the good

and wise, to him who guides his city best, a temperate man and just, or

who by his words drives away evil deeds, putting away war and faction.”

How did the Athenians in the theatre receive this daring denunciation of

their idols? Many, at least, with sympathy, and among the number, I

believe, would have been the poet’s inveterate foe, Aristophanes.

While athletics were passing into the hands of professionals and losing

their hold upon the people, the richer classes devoted themselves more

and more to chariot and horse races. These had long been the sport of

tyrants and nobles; especially brilliant were the victories of the

tyrants of Sicily and Italy at Olympia. But the Persian wars gave a

fresh impulse to horse-breeding and riding in Greece. Cavalry and

light-armed troops played a more and more important part in war.

Themistocles, we are told, himself taught his sons to ride, to throw

javelins standing on horseback, and perform other equestrian feats.[168]

At the Panathenaea, besides a variety of races for chariots and horses,

there were parades, processions, and military manœuvres on horseback.

The frieze of the Parthenon bears witness to the grace and skill of the

Athenian horsemen. The horsiness of the fashionable young Athenian is

ridiculed by Aristophanes.[169] He spent large sums on horses, affected

horsy names, and talked of horses all the day long. Alcibiades entered

no less than seven chariots at Olympia in 416 B.C., and obtained first,

second, and fourth places in the race.[170] He celebrated his success by

entertaining the whole assembly at a sumptuous banquet.

At Sparta chariot-racing had long been popular; one Euagoras in the

sixth century had won the chariot-race in three successive Olympiads

with the same team, and King Damaratus himself had won a victory there.

After the Persian wars the Spartans gave increased attention to

horse-breeding; their victories were frequent, and their enthusiasm for

the sport is shown by the story of Lichas. Their victories at the

Panathenaea are proved by the recent discovery at Sparta of a number of

Panathenaic vases representing the chariot-race,[171] and an inscription

detailing the victories of one Damonon in chariot and horse racing

records the fact that his horses were got by his own stallion out of his

own mares.[172] The addiction of the Spartans to chariot-racing did not

meet with the approval of Agesilaus, if we may believe Plutarch’s story

about his sister Cynisca, who won the chariot-race in Ol. 96, 97.

Chariot-racing was, of course, merely a fashionable amusement, and

except so far as it encouraged horse-breeding, of no service for war.

Poorer states could not compete in it at all unless, like Argos, they

entered public chariots or horses.[173] But the chariot-race was a great

attraction to the spectators, and its growing popularity is evidenced by

the introduction of two new races at Olympia and at Delphi. A two-horse

chariot-race was introduced at Olympia in 408 B.C., at Delphi in 398

B.C., a four-horse chariot-race for colts at Olympia in 384 B.C., and at

Delphi in 378 B.C. The introduction of colt-races was of course dictated

by the wish to encourage horse-breeding, in which the country gentlemen

of Elis were greatly interested.

The evil results of professionalism were not long in showing themselves.

When money enters into sport, corruption is sure to follow. It will be

remembered how Astylus of Croton had sold his victory for the favour of

a Sicilian tyrant. In Ol. 97 or 98 the boys’ boxing match was won by

Antipater of Miletus, the first Ionian to have his statue erected at

Olympia as he recorded in the inscription.[174] Some emissaries of

Dionysius of Syracuse had bribed his father to let his son be proclaimed

a Syracusan; but Antipater despised the tyrant’s bribe and proclaimed

himself of Miletus. Not so Sotades of Crete,[175] who, having won the

long race in Ol. 99, in the next Olympiad accepted a bribe from the

Ephesians to proclaim himself an Ephesian, for which offence he was

deservedly banished by his countrymen. Worse, however, than this

transfer of victories was their actual sale. The first instance of such

bribing occurred in Ol. 98 (388 B.C.) when Eupolus of Thessaly[176]

bribed his opponents in boxing to let him win the prize. These were

Agenor of Arcadia, Prytanis of Cyzicus, and Phormio of Halicarnassus,

who had won the boxing in the previous Olympiad. The offence was

discovered, and Eupolus and those who had been bribed by him were

heavily fined by the Eleans. From the fines were made six bronze statues

of Zeus, called Zanes, which were set up at the entrance to the Stadium,

with inscriptions commending the justice of the Eleans, and warning

competitors that “not with money but with speed of foot and strength of

body must prizes be won at Olympia.” The warning apparently had its

effect for a time. It was not till 332 B.C. that another case of bribing

occurred. On this occasion the Athenian Callippus bribed his opponents

in the pentathlon.[177] The guilty parties were fined, but the Athenians

despatched the orator Hyperides to beg the Eleans to remit the fine. His

mission failed, and the Athenians thereupon, with a high hand, refused

to pay, and absented themselves from Olympia till they were compelled to

give in by the Delphic god, who declined to give them any answers until

the fines were paid. Six more Zanes were made out of the money, with

inscriptions similar to the first. It is a high testimonial to the

sanctity of Olympia and the prestige of its authority that cases of

corruption were so rare. Yet the Eleans themselves did not escape

without reproach. In Ol. 96 (396 B.C.) there was a scandal in connection

with the foot-race.[178] Two of the Hellanodicae decided in favour of

Eupolemus of Elis, and the third in favour of Leon of Ambracia. The

latter appealed to the council, who upheld his appeal and punished the

two officials. It seems, however, that an award once given could not be

reversed, and Eupolemus therefore retained his victory, and even

commemorated it by a statue. A few years later, in Ol. 102, there was a

similar scandal with regard to the horse-race which was won by another

Elean Troilus, who owed his victory, says Pausanias, partly to the fact

that he was a Hellanodicas.[179] In consequence of this incident a

regulation was introduced forbidding the Hellanodicae to compete in the

chariot or horse races.

The apparent breakdown in the machinery of Olympia during the early

years of the fourth century is partly due to political circumstances

with which we shall deal shortly. The struggle between Athens and

Sparta, involving the whole Greek world in strife, contributed in no

small degree to the decay of athletics. But when corruption was possible

at Olympia we may be sure that it was rife elsewhere. A class of useless

athletes, an unathletic nation of spectators, a corrupt and degraded

sport, such were the results which we find in Greece within a century of

the glorious 76th Olympiad that celebrated the freedom of Greece. Yet

such was the strength and persistency of the old ideal that it was

destined to survive for centuries after all freedom had been lost.

The character of the competitions themselves underwent little change

during this period. Such changes as took place were due to changes in

the conditions of war and to the increased importance of light-armed

troops and cavalry.[180] Not only were equestrian events multiplied, but

separate competitions were introduced in javelin-throwing and in

archery. The javelin had hitherto been confined to the pentathlon. Now

we find separate prizes offered for javelin-throwing, both on foot and

on horseback, at a target as well as for distance. But such innovations

seem to have been confined to local festivals like the Panathenaea, and

found no place in the programme of the great festivals. The brutalising

effects of professionalism may be traced in the change of the caestus.

The soft leather thongs which alone appear on the fifth-century vases

were, by the addition of bands of hard leather round the knuckles,

developed into the formidable weapon called the σφαῖρα, which we see

depicted on the Panathenaic vase in Fig. 135. It is curious to find

Plato commending the use of the σφαῖρα on account of its brutality as

more closely reproducing the conditions of warfare, and so more suitable

for training soldiers than the “soft thongs.” We are less surprised at

the approval with which he and Aristotle regard the pentathlon, the one

competition which required the all-round development of the older

athletics. But it is to be feared that this event was not really

popular. Of the victors in the pentathlon at Olympia during this period

we know only three, and of these, two, Stomius and Hysmon, were Eleans,

the third the Athenian Callippus, who owed his victory to corruption. Of

the statues erected at Olympia the vast majority were in honour of

boxing, wrestling, and the pankration.[181]

Despite the decline of athletics there was no diminution of the

influence and popularity of the athletic festivals. Wealth had

increased, means of communication had improved, and with the growing

attractions of the festivals and the growing love of sight-seeing among

the people the crowds that flocked to the games showed no falling off.

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of these gatherings.

In an age distracted by civil war and faction they served to remind the

Greeks of their common brotherhood and to promote a spirit of

good-will.[182] Especially was this true of Olympia, which, under the

rigorous administration of the Eleans, had become the chief centre of

Panhellenism. The sacred month, jealously guarded by the Eleans,

afforded a brief respite from arms and security for all who wished to

attend the festival, whether in a public or private capacity. All

through the Peloponnesian war the representatives of Athens could travel

unmolested to the festival.[183] There all states, unless under the ban

of the Eleans, sent embassies, composed of wealthy and prominent

citizens, who vied with one another in displaying the wealth and power

and culture of their cities.[184] At Olympia the representatives of

states at war with one another laid aside their animosities for a time,

and opportunity was afforded for the discussion and settlement of many a

grievance and dispute.

To these meetings we may partly attribute the growing tendency to the

formation of leagues. There, too, the terms of treaties could be

proclaimed and made known to the whole Greek world. The terms of the

thirty years’ truce between Athens and Sparta were recorded on a stele

at Olympia;[185] so too was the 100 years’ treaty made in 420 B.C.

between Athens, Argos, Mantinea, and Elis, and it was ordered that the

treaty should be periodically renewed at the Olympia and the

Panathenaea.[186] It was to Olympia that the envoys of Mytilene came at

the commencement of the Peloponnesian war[187] to protest against the

tyranny of Athens and plead for their autonomy before the assembled

Greeks. Finally, when Athens and Sparta, false to the cause of

Hellenism, were treacherously intriguing with Persia, it was at Olympia

that on three occasions a noble appeal for unity was made. In 408 B.C.

Gorgias of Leontini, addressing the assembled crowds from the steps of

the temple of Zeus, appealed to them to forget their rivalries and unite

together in the crusade of Hellenism against Persia.[188] His voice was

unheeded at the time, but a later generation appropriately commemorated

his appeal by erecting his statue in the Altis.[189] Twenty-four years

later Sparta, in alliance with Artaxerxes and the Sicilian tyrant

Dionysius, was once more trampling on the liberties of Greece. Dionysius

had sent to Olympia a magnificent embassy headed by his brother

Thearion; his tents of gold and purple were pitched within the sacred

precincts, splendid chariots were entered in his name for the four-horse

chariots, while hired rhapsodists recited continually the praises of

their master. By a curious chance the winner of the foot-race was Dicon,

proclaimed of Syracuse, but in reality a citizen of Caulonia, a city

that Dionysius had recently destroyed, transferring its citizens to

Syracuse.[190] Such were the circumstances in which the Athenian Lysias,

in graceful but vigorous language, warned the Greeks that Artaxerxes and

Dionysius were the real enemies of Hellas, and, bidding them lay aside

their differences, called on them to unite and show their patriotism by

an attack on the tyrant’s tents.[191] The appeal was only partially

successful, and one cannot but rejoice that the peace of the festival

was not broken by such an outrage upon hospitality. Lastly, at the next

Olympiad of 380 B.C. Isocrates distributed at the festival copies of his

famous Panegyric, a work to which he is said to have devoted ten years’

work, in which he once more advocated a Panhellenic crusade against

Persia, under the united command of Athens and Sparta.[192]

It was one of the fictions of a later time that no memorial might be set

up in the Altis to commemorate the triumph of one Greek state over

another. But though Olympia did undoubtedly work for unity, the

monuments prove that the ideal was often disregarded, and the Altis bore

witness to the divisions as well as to the unity of Greece. Apart from

votive offerings of helmets, spears, and shields[193] Pausanias saw at

Olympia a statue of Zeus twelve feet high, set up by the Spartans to

commemorate the repression of the Messenian revolt.[194] It is doubtful

whether this refers to the revolt of 464 B.C. or to an earlier war in

the sixth century, but certainly this statue, and probably other

statues, mentioned by Pausanias were offerings for wars in which Greeks

fought against Greeks.[195] In 424 the Messenians had their revenge, and

they commemorated the part which they had played at Pylos by erecting a

statue of victory with an inscription stating that it was dedicated by

the Messenians and Naupactians from the spoil of their enemy. The statue

was the work of the sculptor Paeonius, who is said to have made the

sculptures of the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus.[196] Raised on

a lofty triangular pedestal, it must have been the most conspicuous

monument in the Altis. The Messenians, says Pausanias, omitted to insert

the name of their enemies from fear of the Spartans, but no such fear

deterred the Eleans, who celebrated a victory won at Olympia itself in

the war at the beginning of the fourth century by setting up a trophy in

the Altis with an inscription on the shield that it was dedicated out of

the spoils of the Lacedaemonians, and their final triumph over the

Arcadians after the 104th Olympiad was commemorated by a colossal

monument that rivalled the Victory of the Messenians.[197]

Interest at Olympia was no longer confined to religious ceremonies and

sports. It is true that there were no musical or dramatic competitions

such as were held at other festivals. The contests for heralds and

trumpeters introduced in 396 B.C. had certainly no such character.[198]

But the gathering together of crowds from all parts of the Greek world

afforded a unique opportunity for profit and advertisement which

appealed to many classes, not only to the huckster and pedlar, who

provided for the material wants of the people,[199] to the acrobat and

mountebank, who catered for their amusement, but to the man of science,

of literature, and of art. The artist, the writer, or the inventor had

little means of making himself known outside his own city except by

travelling from place to place. All such flocked to Olympia, where all

would find an appreciative and critical audience. Lucian[200] tells us

that Herodotus was the first to realise the unique possibilities of

Olympia for purposes of advertisement, and read his history to the

people in the Opisthodome of the temple of Zeus; and another account

adds that the youthful Thucydides, who happened to be present, was moved

to tears by his recitation. He is also said to have recited his work at

Athens, Thebes, and Corinth. Whatever the truth of these stories, it is

certain that the practice of public recitation was widely spread in the

fifth century, and nowhere could such an audience be found as at

Olympia. Moreover, the demand for hymns of victory and athletic statues

must have brought thither poets and artists before the day of Herodotus.

The practice commended itself especially to the sophists and

rhetoricians who travelled about amassing large sums of money by their

learning, real or pretended. Some of these have been already mentioned.

Olympia was a meeting-place for all. There one might have seen Socrates

listening with polite amusement to the encyclopaedic Hippias of Elis as

he proclaimed to an admiring audience his varied knowledge and

accomplishments, and told them that everything he had about his person

was the work of his own hands, from the shoes on his feet to the girdle

of his tunic, fine as the most costly fabric of Persia. There, too, one

might have seen many another whose person is familiar to us in Plato’s

dialogues, the great Gorgias himself, with his pupil, Polus, “impetuous

as a runaway colt”; or Prodicus of Ceos declaiming in that fine bass

voice of his on subtleties of language or of grammar. Or one might have

listened to the mathematician, Oenopides, explaining to a select few the

mysteries of the great year, a diagram of which, engraved on a bronze

tablet, he had set up in the Altis. There one might have gazed on Zeuxis

as he strutted about in his peacock clothes, displaying to the world his

vanity and wealth. Every one who had anything to sell, to exhibit, or

make known came to Olympia, which thus became a centre from which

Hellenic culture was diffused throughout the world.

This expansion of interests is evident in the list of honorary statues

which cease in this period to be confined to victors in the games. Thus

the Samians commemorated the freedom which they thought they had gained

by the victory of Aegospotami by setting up in the Altis a statue of

Lysander.[201] The statue of Gorgias has been already mentioned. In

Macedonian times the custom spread, while the number of athletic statues

steadily declined. Besides kings and princes, the historian Anaximenes

of Lampsacus and the philosopher Aristotle received this honour.[202]

Neutrality was the natural and obvious policy of the Eleans. Removed by

their geographical situation from the main stress and turmoil of Greek

politics, they appreciated to the full the advantages of the position

which they had usurped as sole guardians of the Olympian precinct, and

lost no opportunity of enforcing and extending the privilege attaching

to that position. Thus they claimed for the whole of Elis the sanctity

belonging to the sacred plain; their lives were consecrated and their

territory immune from war.[203] Elis city was the official headquarters

of Olympia, with which it was connected by a sacred road, and there all

competitors were forced to assemble to undergo a month’s training before

the games. Yet the scanty records of history show that the immunity

enjoyed by the Eleans was due more to the accident of their position

than to a general recognition of their sanctity. Religious scruples,

though often convenient as an excuse, were seldom allowed to stand in

the way of more practical considerations. Hence the Eleans, however

anxious to preserve their neutrality, could not avoid being involved in

the complications caused by the Peloponnesian war. Sparta must have

regarded with jealousy and suspicion the influence possessed by Athens

and the growth of democracy in the new state. In Triphylia and Arcadia

the cause of the Pisatans was still popular, and the control of Elis was

regarded as an act of usurpation. It was in connection with Lepreum, one

of the cities of the old Pisatan league, that difficulties arose.

Sparta had interfered in a quarrel between Elis and Lepreum, which from

the commencement of the Peloponnesian war had refused to pay its tribute

of a talent to Olympian Zeus, and a Spartan force of 1000 men was

despatched in the summer of 424 B.C. to the help of the Lepreates. The

Eleans complained that this act was a violation of the Olympic truce

which had just been proclaimed, and imposed a fine of 2000 minae—2 minae

per head—payable half to Olympian Zeus, half to themselves. The Spartans

refused to pay, and after fruitless negotiations the Eleans, unable to

obtain satisfaction, excommunicated Sparta, and forbade her to take any

part in the forthcoming festival. So, says Thucydides,[204] while all

other states were represented the Spartans and Lepreates had no

representatives, and offered their sacrifices at home. Alarmed at their

own bold action, the Eleans had so little confidence in the protection

of sanctity that they put their whole force under arms and summoned

assistance from Argos, Mantinea, and Athens. The alarm of the assembly

was increased by another insult inflicted on Sparta in the course of the

games. Lichas, the son of Arcesilaus, a member of the Spartan royal

family, unable to compete in his own name, had entered his team for the

chariot-race under the name of the Boeotian commonwealth. When his

chariot won, he advanced boldly into the course to bind the fillet of

victory on the charioteer’s head, but was publicly driven off by the

officials and beaten with their rods. Yet in spite of this fresh insult

Sparta, deeming the occasion inexpedient to excite the religious

susceptibilities of Greece, did nothing, but bided her time, and Elis,

three years afterwards, joined the Argive alliance.

Sparta never forgot and never forgave. In 399 Agis led an army against

Elis, nominally to force Elis to acknowledge the independence of the

Arcadian and Triphylian towns, in reality to wreak vengeance for her

conduct during the Peloponnesian war. Agis had also a recent and more

personal grievance. Having gone to Olympia to consult the oracle, he had

been refused an answer by the Eleans, who invoked an ancient canon

forbidding oracles to be given to Greeks engaged in war against Greeks.

This time their sanctity could not save them. Frightened away the first

year by a providential earthquake,[205] Agis returned in the following

summer, and, reinforced by the Triphylian towns, advanced to Olympia,

where he offered the sacrifice which had been forbidden before. He then

marched through the rich plains of Elis, the plunder of which attracted

to his standard numerous Arcadian and Achaean volunteers. In spite of

assistance from Xenias and the oligarchical party he failed to take the

city, but finally, by occupying a fortified post on the border and

ravaging the country, he reduced the Eleans to complete submission. They

were forced to raze their fortifications, surrender their harbour, and

acknowledge the independence of all the towns of Arcadia and Triphylia.

Only the presidency of the Olympic festival was left to them, for,

though the Pisatans claimed it as having belonged to them originally,

the Spartans refused to acknowledge their claim, considering, says

Xenophon, that they were country bumpkins, and incapable of exercising

the presidency, a remarkable testimony to the efficiency of the Elean

administration.[206]

The effects of this humiliation were seen in the scandals which

disgraced the following Olympiads. The prestige of the festival itself

must have suffered. In the next Olympiad, 396 B.C., the competition was

so reduced that no less than six events were won by Eleans.[207]

The Spartans had refused to deprive the Eleans of the presidency from no

respect for their sanctity, but from disinclination to increase the

importance of the country districts of Arcadia and Triphylia. How little

real respect they had for religious tradition may be judged from the

conduct of Agesilaus at the Isthmia in 390 B.C., when, at the head of an

army, he interrupted the games, and, in conjunction with the Corinthian

exiles, himself presided at them.[208] The rise of Thebes once more

raised the hopes of the disappointed Triphylians.[209] In 371 B.C.

Arcadia was consolidated into the Pan-Arcadian league, with its

headquarters at the newly founded Megalopolis. The Messenians, who had

been so prominent at Olympia in its early days, recovered their liberty.

The Messenian exiles from every part flocked to the rising city of

Messene, founded by Epaminondas, at the foot of Mount Ithome, and they

celebrated their return by winning a victory at Olympia in the boys’

foot-race—the first victory, says Pausanias, that they had won since

their exile.[210] Everything seemed favourable to the Triphylians.

Unfortunately a breach occurred between Thebes and Arcadia, and when

Thebes, following the example of Sparta and Athens, sent Pelopidas to

Persia to secure the sanction of the great king for her authority, the

terms of the imperial rescript reaffirmed the rights of Elis in

Triphylia. The Arcadian ambassador, the pankratiast Antiochus, returned

home in dudgeon, without even deigning to receive the royal gifts.

The Arcadians refused to accept the king’s rescript. When in 365 the

Eleans attempted to assert their authority over Lasion, on the Arcadian

border, they were driven off by the Arcadians, who followed up their

success by overrunning Elis, and occupied Olympia itself, fortifying and

garrisoning the hill of Cronus. The next year, under the protection of

the whole armed force of Arcadia, the Pisatans at last found themselves

presiding over the games. But the festival was not to pass off

undisturbed. The Eleans, with some Achaean allies, arrived on the west

bank of the Cladeus while the pentathlon was in progress. There was

general alarm among the spectators, who had just left the Stadium and

were congregated on the steps of the Treasuries and in the Colonnades

watching the progress of the wrestling match which took place in the

open space between the buildings and the great altar. The Arcadian

troops advanced to the Cladeus and fell in opposite to the Eleans. But

the latter, having crossed the river, charged them with unexpected

courage, and drove them back into the Altis, where a desperate fight

took place in the space “between the Council House, the shrine of

Hestia, and the Theatre adjoining these buildings.”[211] There, however,

they were exposed to a shower of missiles from the roofs of the Council

House, the Colonnades, and the Temple of Zeus. And though they

maintained the combat and bore their opponents back towards the altar,

their losses were heavy, and Stratolas, their captain, being slain, they

drew off to their encampment. During the night the Arcadians, fearful of

a renewed attack, occupied themselves in pulling to pieces their

elaborately constructed quarters between the Altis and the Cladeus and

making a stockade of the material; and in the morning the Eleans, seeing

the strength of the fortifications, returned home, leaving the Pisatans

to celebrate the festival. Their triumph was only short-lived. The

religious feeling of Greece, outraged by the sacrilege at Olympia, was

still further scandalized by the appropriation of the sacred treasures

of Zeus for the use of the Arcadian league. There was disunion in the

league itself, and when, two years later, the Peloponnese was once more

threatened by a Theban invasion, the Arcadians made peace with Elis and

acknowledged her rights over Olympia.

This was the last attempt of the Pisatans. The Eleans rapidly recovered

their power. The 104th Olympiad was expunged from the records and

declared an Anolympiad. And the triumph of the Eleans was commemorated

by a colossal statue of Zeus, with an inscription truly appropriate to

the part which Olympia had played in Greek history—“The Eleans for

concord” (Ϝαλείων περὶ ὁμονοίαρ).[212]

Footnote 144:

The first trainer of whom we hear is Tisias, who trained Glaucus of

Carystus (Philostratus, _Gym._ 20). Pindar mentions Menander (_N._ v.;

cp. Bacchylides xii.), Orseas (_I._ iii.), Ilas (_O._ xi.), Melesias

(_O._ viii.; _N._ iv., vi.).

Footnote 145:

_Symposium_, 2, 17.

Footnote 146:

_Mem._ iii. 10, 6; iii. 8, 4; cp. P. Gardner, _Grammar of Greek Art_,

p. 17.

Footnote 147:

_Greek Sculpture_, p. 550; and _J.H.S._ 1905, p. 235.

Footnote 148:

_B.M. Vases_, 607. Quite different is the type of the long-distance

runner of B. 611 (328 B.C.) and B. 609 (333 B.C.), and of the

Hoplitodromos of B. 608 (336 B.C.). _Vide_ Figs. 51, 58.

Footnote 149:

Paus. vi. 7, 10 τυρὸν ἐκ τῶν ταλάρων. Diogen. Laert. ἰσχάσι ξηραῖς καὶ

πυροῖς. Philostrat. _Gym._ 43 αἵ τε μᾶζαι καὶ τῶν ἄρτων οἱ ἅπτιστοι

καὶ μὴ ζυμῖται καὶ τῶν κρεῶν τὰ βόειά τε καὶ ταύρεια καὶ τράγεια καὶ

δόρκοι. _Vide_ Jüthner, _Philostratus_, pp. 268 ff., and Krause,

_Gym._ pp. 654 ff.

Footnote 150:

_B.C.H._, 1899, p. 611. I have accepted the rendering of the

inscription given by A. D. Keramopoullos in Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1906, p. 167.

Instead of the name Εὐδρόμου, an utterly unknown hero, of whose shrine

not a vestige has been found, he reads δρόμου. He repeats a

misstatement made in Dar.-Sagl., Paully-Wissowa, and other

dictionaries to the effect that athletes were not allowed to drink any

wine. The _only_ authority for the statement is a single passage from

Galen, _de Salub. vict. rat._, in which he says that “after exercise

athletes do not drink wine but water first, having learnt this from

experience!” An egregious example of the absurdities which crowd the

pages of our dictionaries!

Footnote 151:

Paus. vi. 7, 3; Diogen. Laert. viii. 13; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xxiii. 7.

Footnote 152:

Xen. _Mem._ i. 2, 4; Aristoph. _Pax_, 33, 34; Aristot. _Eth. Nic._ ii.

6, 7. Eating like a wrestler was proverbial.

Footnote 153:

_Pol._ v. 1339 a. Krause (_Gym._ p. 645, n. 3), and other writers

following him, discredit this statement, not realizing that Aristotle

is speaking of professional athletics. Of the eight examples quoted by

Krause of athletes who had won victories both as boys and as men, five

belong to the sixth or early fifth century, one is later than

Aristotle, one is contemporary with him, the date of the eighth is

doubtful.

Footnote 154:

Corn. Nepos, _Epam._ 2.

Footnote 155:

_Rep._ iii. 404 A; cp. Arist. _Pol._ 1335 b.

Footnote 156:

Plutarch, _Vit. Alexander_ and _Philopoemon_.

Footnote 157:

Galen, Προτρεπτ. λόγ. ii. ἡ δὲ τῶν ἀθλητῶν ἐπ’ ἄκρον εὐεξία σφαλερά τε

καὶ εὐμετάπτωτος. Krause, _Gym._ p. 47, n. 1.

Footnote 158:

_Leg._ 794 ff.

Footnote 159:

_Leg._ 833 ff.

Footnote 160:

Rep. 406 B; _Protag._ 316 D; Aristot. _Rhet._ i. 5.

An entirely different view of Herodicus is ably stated by Dr. Jüthner

in the introduction to his Philostratus. He regards Herodicus as the

father of scientific and medical gymnastic, as applied to the

preservation of health and the cure of disease, and he claims that

Plato himself shows warm recognition of his merits in the passage in

the _Protagoras_, where he classes him with Homer, Hesiod, and others,

among the great sophists who beguiled mankind. The passage certainly

proves the ability and popularity of Herodicus, but I can see in it no

evidence that Plato did not genuinely dislike his system. The

strongest proof of the unscientific and useless character of his

system is supplied by the deterioration of the athlete and of the

national physique, which dates from this period.

Footnote 161:

Plato, _Leg._ 839 C.

Footnote 162:

Plutarch, _Vita. Alexand._ 35.

Footnote 163:

_Plutus_, 1161.

Footnote 164:

Xen. _Hell._ i. 5, 19; Paus. vi. 7, 4.

Footnote 165:

_Mem._ iii. 12. For the contrast between ἀθλητής and ἰδιωτής cp.

_Hieron_, 4, 6; _Mem._ iii. 7, 7.

Footnote 166:

_Nub._ 961-1023; _Ran._ 1086.

Footnote 167:

Thus in the present day professional football-players are largely

drawn from the country districts of Scotland.

Footnote 168:

Plato, _Meno_, 93 D.

Footnote 169:

_Nubes_, passim.

Footnote 170:

Thuc. vi. 16, 2. The epinikion written by Euripides states that he was

first, second, and third. So too does Isocrates, _de Bigis_, 34.

Footnote 171:

_vide infra_, Fig. 165.

Footnote 172:

Part of the inscription was found in 1877, and is now in the Museum at

Sparta. Tod, _Sparta Mus. Cat._ 440. The rest has been recently

discovered during the excavations of the British School, and is

discussed in the _B.S.A._ xiii. p. 174. It contains a list of

victories won by Damonon and his son, Enymacratidas, in the

chariot-race, horse-race, and foot-races at nine local festivals, most

of them in Laconia. The inscription belongs to the middle or end of

the fifth century. It throws an interesting light on the number of

local festivals at this period.

Footnote 173:

_Ox. Pap._ ii. 222.

Footnote 174:

Paus. vi. 2, 6.

Footnote 175:

Paus. vi. 18, 4.

Footnote 176:

Paus. v. 21, 5.

Footnote 177:

Paus. v. 21, 5.

Footnote 178:

Paus. vi. 3, 7.

Footnote 179:

Paus. vi. 1, 4.

Footnote 180:

These changes were particularly connected with the Athenian Iphicrates

and Jason of Therae.

Footnote 181:

Taking the lists given by Hyde, pp. 75-77, we find that between Ols.

84-106 out of 54 statues 20 were in honour of boxers, 6 of

pankratiasts, 11 of wrestling, 7 of runners, 2 of pentathletes, and 8

of chariots or horses.

Footnote 182:

Isocrates, _Panegyric_, 43 ff.; Lysias, _Olymp._

Footnote 183:

Thuc. v. 49; cp. viii. 10 of the Isthmia.

Footnote 184:

Isocrates, _de Bigis_, 32, ὁρῶν τὴν ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ πανήγυριν ὑπὸ πάντων

ἀνθρώπων ἀγαπωμένην καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐπίδειξιν ἐν αὐτῇ ποιουμένους

πλούτου καὶ ῥώμης καὶ παιδεύσεως, κτλ.

Footnote 185:

Paus. v. 23, 4.

Footnote 186:

Paus. v. 12, 8; Thuc. v. 47.

Footnote 187:

Thuc. iii. 8 ff.

Footnote 188:

Phil. _Vita. Soph._ i. p. 209.

Footnote 189:

Paus. vi. 17, 7; _Ol. Ins._ 293.

Footnote 190:

Paus. vi. 3, 11; _Anth. Pal._ xiii. 5; Hyde, _Olymp. Stat._ p. 33.

Footnote 191:

Lysias, _Olympiakos_; Dionys. Hal. _Jud. de Lysia_, p. 519; Diodor.

xiv. 109. A similar tale is narrated by Aelian of Themistocles, who is

said to have urged the Greeks in 476 not to allow Hieron of Syracuse

to compete, on the ground that he had not shared in the dangers of

Greece. Ael. _V.H._ 9. 5.

Footnote 192:

Isocrates, _Panegyrikos_.

Footnote 193:

Helmet of Argives (_Ol. Ins._ 250), spears of Sicyonians, Methonii,

Tarentines (_Ins._ 245, 247, 254), of Argives and Athenians for

Tanagra (Paus. v. 10, 4).

Footnote 194:

Paus. v. 24; _Ol. Ins._ 252.

Footnote 195:

Such must certainly have been the statue of Victory by Calamis set up

by the Mantineans. Paus. v. 26, 6.

Footnote 196:

Paus. v. 26, 1.

Footnote 197:

Paus. v. 27, 11; 24, 4.

Footnote 198:

They were merely competitions in strength of lung. Herodorus of

Megara, a famous trumpeter who won ten times at Olympia, was said to

be able to blow two trumpets at once with such force that no one could

stand in his neighbourhood. Athen. 10, 7, p. 415.

Footnote 199:

Hence the term “Mercatus Olympiacus,” Vell. Paterc. i. 8; Cicero,

_Tuscul._ v. 3; Krause, _Olympia_, p. 190, n. 2.

Footnote 200:

Lucian, _Herodotus_.

Footnote 201:

Paus. vi. 3, 14.

Footnote 202:

Paus. vi. 18, 2.

Footnote 203:

Polyb. iv. 73.

Footnote 204:

Thuc. v. 31 and 49.

Footnote 205:

From Pausanias, v. 4, 8, and 27, 11; vi. 2, 8, we gather that the

Eleans, in the course of this war, obtained a decided success in a

fight which took place at Olympia, and erected a trophy for the same

in the Altis. Was it really this success which prevented the Spartans

from depriving them of the presidency of the games, or have we here

the Elean version of the war?

Footnote 206:

Xenophon, _Hell._ iii. 2, 31.

Footnote 207:

Förster, _Ol. Sieger_.

Footnote 208:

Xenophon, _Hell._ iv. 5. 1, 2.

Footnote 209:

Inscriptions found at Olympia illustrate the political relations of

this time. In _Ol. Ins._ 31, Theban, Sicyonian, and Argive benefactors

of Olympia are named πρόξενοι of the Arcadians. In _Ol. Ins._ 36, two

Sicyonians are named πρόοξενοι and θεαροδόκοι of the Pisatans.

Curtius, _Ol._ Text, i. 50.

Footnote 210:

Compare the triumphant inscription on Sophius of Messene, who won the

same events _circa_ 300 B.C. Paus. vi. 2, 10, and 3, 2.

Footnote 211:

The view adopted above is that of the late Mr. Louis Dyer, and is

fully discussed by him in _J.H.S._ vol. xxviii. pp. 250 ff. The word

θέατρον is here used of the arrangements for spectators overlooking

the bare north-eastern corner of the Altis, and consisting in (1) the

tiers of steps at the foot of the treasuries, (2) the Colonnade and

its southward extension by the Hellanodiceon.

Footnote 212:

_Ol. Ins._ 260.

CHAPTER VII

THE DECLINE OF ATHLETICS, 338-146 B.C.

From this time onward there is little change to record in the history of

athletics. Competitions became more and more the monopoly of

professionals and all the evils attendant on professionalism became

rampant. The training of the athlete became more artificial and more

irrational, rendering him still more unfit for practical life. The

degeneration of the physical type and of the artistic ideal is evident

in the statue known as the Farnese Heracles, a copy of a Lysippean

original exaggerated by the copyist to suit the taste of a later and

more decadent age. Those huge bulging muscles,[213] which even repose

cannot relax, are a type of clumsy, useless strength, utterly foreign to

the ideal of the fifth century, or to that of Lysippus himself as we

know it from the Agias. Perhaps it was the type of those professional

strong men who called themselves successors of Heracles as having, like

Heracles, won the wrestling and pankration at Olympia on the same

day.[214] The first of these was Caprus of Elis, who in the year 212

defeated, in the pankration, the redoubtable Cleitomachus of Thebes, who

is sometimes supposed to be the original of the boxer of the Terme (Fig.

136).

[Illustration: Fig. 21. Farnese Heracles, by Glycon. Naples. (_Greek

Sculpture_, Fig. 125.)]

A tale told by Polybius about the latter throws a curious light on the

state of sport at the time.[215] He had, it appears, incurred the

displeasure of King Ptolemy—presumably Ptolemy IV.—who went to the

trouble and expense of training and sending to Olympia a rival boxer,

Aristonicus, to compete with him. The contest excited great public

interest, and the fickle crowd favoured the new man until Cleitomachus,

exasperated at their attitude, taunted them with backing one who was

fighting not for the glory of Greece but for King Ptolemy. This appeal

caused such a revulsion of feeling that Aristonicus was vanquished, not,

says our author, so much by Cleitomachus as by the crowd. With such

hired prize-fighters it was only natural that methods became more

brutal, and science deteriorated. The increasing weight of the caestus

rendered boxing a contest of brute strength and fit to take its place in

the Roman gladiatorial shows. The science of wrestling had also

suffered. As early as 364 B.C. we read of one Sostratus of Sicyon who

won the wrestling at Olympia not by skill in wrestling but by breaking

his opponent’s fingers.

Corruption naturally throve under such conditions.[216] Only Olympia,

thanks to its ancient prestige and sanctity, maintained the purity of

sport, and though even there all sport was professional, cases of

corruption were rare.

The decay of athletics was accompanied by an increased activity in the

construction and improvement of gymnasia and stadia, which continued all

through Hellenistic and Roman times. The stadia at Olympia and Delphi

were reconstructed during the fourth century; the Panathenaic stadium at

Athens was the work of the Athenian administrator Lycurgus, who also

rebuilt the Lyceum Gymnasium, planted it with trees, and built a new

palaestra or wrestling-school in it. But this building activity did not

denote any improvement of the national athletics. The people took little

interest in the games, save as a spectacle, and the improvements made in

the stadia were connected solely with the accommodation and comfort of

spectators. Some of these buildings were the work of a sort of athletic

revival, a temporary demand for physical and military training. Such a

movement occurred at Athens in the time of Alexander, under the wise

leadership of Lycurgus, who, among the numerous services which he

rendered to Athens, reorganized the Athenian epheboi. More often these

buildings were the monuments of the generosity or vanity of wealthy

princes or ambitious citizens.

But the palaestra and gymnasium, even in the fourth century were no

longer devoted principally to gymnastics. The colonnades of the

palaestra, the shady walks of the gymnasium were popular resorts and

lounging-places. There the Athenian gentleman would betake himself in

the afternoon to get an appetite for his evening meal; and a whole

series of rooms was provided for his accommodation—dressing-rooms,

oiling-rooms, dusting-rooms, bath-rooms, cloisters where he could take

his exercise in wet weather, rooms for ball-play, and, for the more

active, wrestling-rings and running tracks. Many of the rooms and the

walks were provided with benches and seats for the convenience of

visitors and spectators. Sophists especially resorted there in the hope

of attracting pupils; some of them attached themselves to particular

gymnasia. Plato delivered his discourses in the Academy; Aristotle took

his morning and evening walks in the Lyceum. Gradually the social and

educational side of the gymnasium became more important than the

athletic. The gymnasium of Cynosarges in the fourth century was the

meeting-place of a celebrated club known as the Sixty Wits. The earlier

gymnasia of Athens had been outside the walls. The first gymnasium

inside the walls was the gift of the versatile Ptolemaeus Philadelphia

(285-247 B.C.), the founder of the museum and library of Alexandria. The

gymnasium at Athens bore witness to the culture of its founder: it

contained a library formed and increased by contributions from the

students who attended it. Lectures continued to be given in it by

philosophers and men of science down to the time of Cicero, who listened

there to the lectures of Antiochus. These gymnasia were intimately

connected with the life of the epheboi in whose training philosophy and

literature were rapidly taking the place formerly occupied by athletics

and military science. From this ephebic training grew up what has been

aptly called the University of Athens, to which the young Romans of the

time of Cicero resorted to study philosophy.

Our knowledge of the training given to the epheboi is mostly derived

from inscriptions of this period or later. The Athenian inscriptions

date from the year 334 B.C. to the third century A.D.[217] These

inscriptions contain lists of the epheboi and decrees in honour of the

epheboi themselves and of their officers. The physical training of the

epheboi was largely military in character, and particular attention was

paid to those exercises which were likely to be of service in war. This

training was under the general supervision of the Kosmetes, one of whose

duties was to provide the necessary oil for use in the gymnasium. Under

him were subordinate officials, the hoplomachos, a sort of fencing

instructor; the akontistes, toxotes, and katapaltaphetes or aphetes, who

taught the use of the javelin, bow, and catapult respectively. At the

local festivals competitions were held to test the proficiency of men

and youths in these and other more purely athletic accomplishments. Many

of these competitions, especially those for the younger, were confined

to local competitors. Sometimes they took the form of squad competitions

between companies representing local tribes and divisions. Torch-races

between individuals or teams on foot or on horseback figure frequently

on the programme. At Athens cavalry parades formed an important feature

of these festivals. The most splendid of these local festivals, the

Panathenaea, must be reserved for fuller discussion, but a few examples

of the inscriptions dealing with the less-known festivals, will

illustrate the character of the festivals and of the physical training

of the young in the period.

The Thesea at Athens had been founded shortly after the Persian wars,

when, in accordance with the oracle’s command, the bones of Theseus were

brought from Scyros and reburied at Athens. The programme comprised

parades, gymnastic, naval, and equestrian competitions, and a great

public sacrifice. We have a list of the victors at this festival in an

inscription recording a decree of honour to Nicogenes who held the

office of Agonothetes, or official manager of the games, for the year

161 B.C.[218] Among the services rendered by Nicogenes, it is recorded

that he provided prizes and money for other expenses out of his own

pocket, and that he took special pains to prevent any competitor in the

torch-race from “losing through foul play.” For these services, and for

his goodwill towards the Council and people of Athens, Nicogenes is to

be crowned with a golden crown, and proclamation thereof is to be made

at the Dionysia, the Panathenaea, the Eleusinia, and—a strange fourth in

such a list—the Ptolemaea!

Similar training and similar competitions are found at many other

places, at Ceos, Teos, Chios, Samos, and Tralles.[219] A third-century

inscription of Ceos contains arrangements for the holding of a festival

at a cost of 65 drachmae. A gymnasiarch is to be chosen to organize the

torch-race, take general supervision of the training in the gymnasium,

three times a month to take the epheboi out to practise with the bow and

javelin and catapult, and to inflict a fine on any who did not attend.

The prizes for the men’s competitions are: for archery, first prize, a

bow and quiver; second prize, a bow;—for the javelin, first prize, three

spears and a helmet; second prize, three spears; while the boy victors

in these events are to receive a portion of meat. There are prizes also

for the use of the catapult and for a torch-race.

At Teos in the third century a patriotic citizen, Polythrous, presented

the State with the sum of 34,000 drachmae for the education of boys and

girls. The interest on this sum was used to provide salaries for various

instructors, including two paidotribai or athletic instructors, at a

salary of 500 drachmae each, a hoplomachos at a salary of 300 drachmae,

and an instructor in the use of the javelin and the bow at 250 drachmae.

The hoplomachos was required to give at least two month’s instruction.

The highest paid of all the staff was the teacher of music, who received

600 drachmae. The general supervision of this education was in the hands

of a paidonomos, who, it is specified, must not be less than forty years

of age. In the present day, in making appointments to head-masterships

it is commonly specified that candidates must not be over forty. Which

is right?

Such training seems to have been universal in Greek states. The

instances given suffice to show how entirely it differed from the

training of athletes who competed in the great games. Unfortunately

education in Greece was, except at Sparta, purely voluntary, and the

training afforded only affected, therefore, a small portion of the

population.

We have been anticipating; we must now return to the history of Olympia

under the Macedonians. It was the policy of the kings of Macedon to

encourage and support in every way the Panhellenic festival, and

especially Olympia. In the first place, the Macedonians were regarded by

the other Greeks almost as barbarians, and it was of supreme importance

that their claim to be considered Greeks had been recognized by the most

exclusively Hellenic of all festivals. It will be remembered that

Alexander, the son of Amyntas, had established this claim for the royal

family of Macedon at the close of the sixth century, when he had been

allowed to compete in the foot-race at Olympia. A century later

Archelaus won a victory in the chariot-race. This able and energetic

prince aimed at spreading Greek culture through his dominions. He

invited to his court Greek poets, philosophers, and artists; above all,

to show his respect for Olympia, he founded at Dium a new Olympic

festival of nine days in honour of Zeus and the nine Muses.[220] The

precedent was widely followed during Hellenistic and Roman times, when a

host of festivals sprung up bearing the title of the four great

Panhellenic meetings. The new Olympia were not confined to athletic

contests, which seem to have been less important than dramatic

competitions, and their pomp and splendour are indications of the

growing taste for spectacular effect.

Philip and Alexander had special reasons for associating themselves with

the Panhellenic festivals. Like the tyrants of an earlier age, they

realized that if they were to unite Greece under their rule it must be

by utilizing those forces which made for unity. Two places in particular

represented the spirit of national unity,—Delphi, in Northern Greece,

and Olympia in the Peloponnese,—and of both festivals the Macedonians

made full use.

Already in 370 B.C. the ambitious tyrant of Thessaly, Jason of Pherae,

who dreamt of invading Persia as commander of united Greece, had schemed

to consolidate his power by setting himself up as president of the

Pythian games. He had made preparation to celebrate the festival with

barbarian pomp, sending messengers to all the cities of Thessaly, to bid

them provide oxen, sheep, and goats for the sacrifices, and offering a

crown of gold as a prize for the finest ox.[221] But his scheme was

frustrated by his assassination, which was doubtless partly due to his

attempted usurpation of the sacred functions. Fortune was kinder to

Philip. The Sacred war gave him an opportunity of posing as the

protector and saviour of Delphi. His defeat of the Phocians and

restoration of Delphi to the Delphians were rewarded by his election to

the place on the Amphictionic Board, of which the Phocians were

deprived, and in 346 he received the further honour of being nominated

as the president of the approaching games. Thus he stood out the

acknowledged head of the most ancient and influential league in Greece.

Only Athens protested, but her protest was unavailing, and Philip’s

newly-acquired dignity was the death-blow to her opposition.

At Olympia Philip had already ingratiated himself with the authorities

by a victory in the horse-race in 356 B.C., and two victories in the

four-horse chariot-race in the two following Olympiads. The news of his

victory in the horse-race reached him, says Plutarch, shortly after his

capture of Potidaea, and on the same day he received the news of a

victory gained by Parmenio over the Illyrians, and of the birth of

Alexander. Following the example of the tyrants of Sicily, he

commemorated his victories in the chariot-race by representing a chariot

on his coins. After the battle of Chaeronea Philip marched into the

Peloponnese, and having ravaged Laconia and reduced Sparta to impotence,

summoned a congress of all the Greek states at Corinth. Then he came

forward as the champion of united Hellas, declaring his resolve of

leading a new crusade against Persia, and was appointed by the congress

sole commander of the forces of Greece. It will be remembered how time

after time this policy of union against Persia had been preached at

Olympia, and nowhere can Philip’s proclamation have been more welcome.

Did he visit Olympia in person? It is tempting to suppose so. At least

we may connect with this time the founding of the Philippeum, a small

circular building consisting of a cella surrounded by eighteen Ionic

columns, and containing statues in gold and ivory of Philip himself and

his ancestors, and even of female members of his family, Eurydice and

Olympias. The Philippeum seems to have been an offering similar in

character to the treasuries of an earlier age, the founders of which by

their erection sought to establish for themselves a right and _locus

standi_ in the management of the festival. There was no room for further

buildings on the treasury terrace itself, and a yet more honourable and

unique position was found for Philip’s monument to the south-west of the

Heraeum within the limits of the Altis itself, the boundary of which had

to be moved westward to enclose it. It was the first such building to be

placed within the Altis, the first to bear the name of its founder, who

was thereby placed on a level with the mythical presidents of Olympia,

Pelops and Oenomaus, and acknowledged as the freely-appointed leader of

united Greece at the very centre of Panhellenism.

Philip was assassinated in the very act of celebrating the marriage of

his daughter Cleopatra with Alexander of Epirus by a magnificent

festival at Aegae, where the lavish prodigality of the Macedonian

expended itself in banquets, gymnastic and musical contests, dramatic

competitions, and every variety of attraction which could appeal to and

impress the imagination of the Greek world. Even the name Olympia was

given to the games at Aegae, and the statues of the twelve gods of the

Olympic pantheon were carried in procession to the theatre followed by

the statue of Philip himself who thus anticipated the claim of Alexander

to divine honours.

Alexander’s ambition was too vast to find satisfaction in victories at

Olympia. He treated with contempt the athletics of his day. Though

himself vigorous and athletic of body, he had an aversion for the

exercises of the palaestra, regarding them as useless for war. When

asked whether he would compete in the foot-race at Olympia, he replied,

“Yes, if I had kings for my antagonists.” There is no doubt that his

refusal was fully justified; he could gain no honour by entering into

competition with professionals. But though he despised the athletic part

of the festivals, he appreciated to the full their social and political

importance. He recognized the importance of amusing the people. He

celebrated his victories by brilliant Olympic games at Aegae and at

Dium, at which he offered prizes for tragic poets, musicians, and

rhapsodists, and entertained the people not with athletic competitions

but with the hunting of wild beasts, and with fencing or fighting with

the staff. Similar entertainments were provided by the king at various

places in his triumphal progress through Asia. Olympia itself was to him

the true capital of Greece. In spite of his personal aversion to

athletic competitions, he is related to have restored to liberty

Dionysodorus of Thebes, whom he had taken prisoner at Issus, in

consideration of his claims as an Olympic victor.[222] Thither during

the course of his eastern campaigns he sent dispatches which were

publicly read at the festival. There in 324 Nicanor arrived as bearer of

two imperial mandates bidding the cities of Greece receive back their

exiles and acknowledge Alexander as a god. This decree was publicly read

by the herald in the presence of 20,000 exiles who had mustered for the

occasion.

The conquests of Alexander opened the door for the extension of

Hellenism over the eastern world, and of this extension, an interesting

illustration was discovered at Olympia. It is the monument of Philonides

of Crete, who describes himself as courier of King Alexander, and road

surveyor of (βηματωτής) of Asia. On one side of the pedestal is a bronze

tablet on which Curtius aptly suggests was engraved a map of Asia,

enabling visitors to Olympia to trace the course of his master’s

conquests.[223] Under his successors Asia and Egypt became Hellenized,

and this process is illustrated by the appearance in the lists of

Olympic victors of athletes from the newly-founded cities, and later on

from the kingdoms and provinces of Asia. The new cities sought to

reproduce the main features of the old Hellenic ideal, and from this

ideal athletics and the athletic festivals were inseparable. Everywhere

athletic festivals were founded bearing the names of the ancient

festivals, everywhere elaborate stadia and gymnasia were erected. The

athletic enthusiasm which had died out in the mother country revived in

many of her daughter cities: especially was this the case in Alexandria,

which under the rule of the Ptolemaei became a stronghold of

Hellenism.[224] This revival of athletic interest, if somewhat

artificial, must have helped to keep alive the ancient festivals of the

mainland.

At Olympia the building of the Philippeum after Chaeronea was the first

of a series of improvements, stimulated, no doubt, by Macedonian

encouragement, perhaps paid for by Macedonian gold. The choice of a site

for the Philippeum had, as we have seen, necessitated a reconstruction

of the western boundary of the Altis. A similar reconstruction took

place on the east, where the old Stoa was extended and rebuilt, and as

part of the same scheme, the west and southern sides of the Stadium were

banked up so as to provide better accommodation for the spectators. At

the same time a passage was made through the north side of the western

embankment on the site of the later Roman tunnelled passage and gateway

giving entrance into the Stadium. The use of this entrance was probably

confined to officials and athletes: for the latter the sight of the

Zanes lining the steps outside the entrance served as a warning only too

necessary.

The chronology of the various Olympic buildings is full of difficulty,

especially from the fourth century onward. But we are probably justified

in assigning to the early period of Macedonian influence the building of

the Theocoleon on the west side of the Altis close to the ancient

Heroum, to serve as quarters for the Olympic priesthood, and of the

Leonidaeum to the south of it. The latter building was the gift of

Leonidas of Naxos. The inscription on the pedestal of his statue, which

has been found, is apparently contemporary with the inscription on the

monument of Philonides, Alexander’s courier, which stood close by, and

the architectural evidence agrees with this date.[225] In later times

the building served as the headquarters of the Roman governors, and this

fact renders probable the view that it was originally intended for the

use of distinguished visitors. The arrangements for the entertainment of

visitors, and for the requirements of the priesthood as provided in the

Leonidaeum and the Theocoleon seem entirely in keeping with the pomp and

state which were so marked a feature of Macedonian festivities. A record

of hospitality shown at Olympia by another islander is preserved on a

bronze tablet containing the decree of the Hellanodicae in honour of one

Democrates of Tenedos, a wrestler whose strength was such that when he

stood behind a line no man could draw him across it. He and his father

had taken up their residence in Elis, and the decree, which dates about

the first half of the third century, records that in consideration of

his services in entertaining guests at the festival, he shall be named

Proxenos and Benefactor, and shall have a place of honour in the

Dionysian festival and a share in the sacrifices.[226]

On the death of Alexander, Elis joined in the general revolt of the

Greek states against Macedon, but on the failure of the revolt found

herself once more compelled to acquiesce in the Macedonian supremacy.

From this time she seems to have adopted a wise policy of neutrality,

and amid the struggles of rival kings and leagues the sanctity of

Olympia was respected and her support courted by all parties. The only

occasion on which this sanctity was violated was when Telesphorus, who

had revolted from Antigonus, plundered the treasury of Olympia, but the

plunder was restored not long afterwards by the unprincipled usurper and

murderer Ptolemaeus Ceraunus, who hoped to win the support of Olympia

for his ambitious schemes.

The neutrality of Elis is evident in the votive offerings of the period.

Side by side with the statues of Antigonus Monophthalmus and his son

Demetrius we find the statues of Spartan kings, of Areus who tried to

free Greece from the yoke of Macedon, and Cleomenes who attempted to

revive the military hegemony of Sparta, of Aratus of Sicyon, the founder

of the Achaean league and enemy of Sparta and Macedon alike, of

Ptolemaeus Philadelphus of Egypt at whose hospitable court the opponents

of Macedon found shelter in defeat; lastly of that brilliant but

semi-barbarian conqueror Pyrrhus of Epirus, who in his meteoric career

twice occupied the throne of Macedon. Some of these statues were the

gifts of the kings themselves, some of the Eleans or other states that

wished to show honour to the individual or win favour at Olympia. The

statue of Pyrrhus was the gift of the Elean seer Thrasybulus, who took

part in the campaigns of Aratus against Sparta, and was himself honoured

by a statue in the Altis. Perhaps the honour shown to Pyrrhus was due to

his friendship with the Aetolians, whose connexion with Elis dates back

to the earliest days of the festival. The Eleans early joined the

Aetolian league, and showed their loyalty to their friends by refusing

to desert them in spite of the most tempting offers of Philip V.

Numerous statues in the Altis bore witness to this friendship. Especial

interest attaches to that of the Aetolian Pleistaenus, whose father

Eurydamus, as leader of the Aetolian forces, helped in the memorable

fight near Delphi, which saved Greece from Brennus and his barbarous

horde of Gauls.[227] Lastly, we may notice the significant monument of

Antigonus Doson set up after the defeat of Cleomenes at Sellasia in 222

B.C. Greece was represented crowning with one hand Antigonus, with the

other Philip Arridaeus the nominal successor of Alexander, while

opposite stood a similar group, in which Elis crowned Demetrius

Poliorketes and Ptolemaeus the son of Lagus. Both groups it seems

probable, as Curtius suggests, were the gift of Antigonus Doson,

recalling as they did the earlier group of the personified Ekecheiria

crowning Iphitus, and setting forth in emblematic fashion the renewal of

Olympic peace and restoration of unity under the beneficent rule of the

princes of Macedon.

The period of Macedonian influence is marked by numerous victories

gained by Macedonians, or by citizens of Macedonian towns such as

Amphipolis or the newly-founded Philippi. But the Macedonian kings had

little leisure or peace for competing at festivals, being occupied with

more serious contests. And the same is true for the most part of the

princes of Asia. From Pergamum, left in peace for a period under the

strong rule of Philetaerus, we have an interesting inscription which

records the victory in the chariot-race at Olympia of Attalus, brother

of Philetaerus and father of Attalus I.[228] But in Egypt life was more

settled, and more prosperous, and the Ptolemaei showed themselves

devoted supporters of the Hellenic festivals. Ptolemaeus, the son of

Lagus, won the chariot-race with a pair of colts in 314 B.C. at Delphi,

where he was proclaimed a Macedonian. For, adds Pausanias, the Ptolemaei

delighted to call themselves Macedonians. At Olympia he dedicated

statues, one of himself and another of an unnamed athlete. His successor

Philadelphus erected the statue of Areus of Sparta as a monument, says

his inscription, of his goodwill to himself and to all Greece.[229]

Among those who took refuge at his court was Glaucon of Athens,

distinguished not only for a victory in the chariot-race 260 B.C., but

for his spirited resistance to Antigonus. His statue at Olympia was

erected by Ptolemy Euergetes. There, too, was the statue of Belistiche

of Macedon, the mistress of Philadelphus, who won the pair-horse

chariot-race for colts on the first occasion that this event was

introduced, in Ol. 129. The statues of Philadelphus and Arsinoë, his

wife and sister, were set up by the Samian Callicrates on lofty pillars

placed upon a raised basement of stone in front of the Echo

Colonnade.[230]

It has been already mentioned that Philadelphus founded a gymnasium at

Athens. Curtius suggests that the palaestra and gymnasium at Olympia

were the work of the same benefactor. Neither of these buildings is

likely to be earlier than his time, but there is no real proof to

connect them with Philadelphus. The fact recorded by Pausanias that

Euanoridas, who won the boys’ wrestling match in 252 B.C., afterwards as

Hellanodicas had the list of Olympic victors inscribed and set up in the

gymnasium at Olympia, proves at the most that the gymnasium must have

existed at the close of the third century.[231] There is still less

evidence for Curtius’ view that the founding of the gymnasium and

palaestra was an attempt to counteract the one-sided athleticism of

Olympia by founding a sort of public school at Olympia where the youth

of Greece could receive mental as well as physical instruction. Olympia

was not, and was not likely to become, a residential place. This is

proved by the story of the eccentric philosopher Alexinus the Litigious,

as he was nicknamed, who tried to set up there a school of philosophy

but failed, being deserted by all his followers owing to the want of

accommodation and difficulty of obtaining supplies. The palaestra of

Olympia, which will be described in a later chapter, was of the ordinary

Greek type, and the fact that some of the rooms were provided with

benches does not prove that the place was intended for a school. Seats

and stools are no uncommon accompaniment of athletic scenes on the

vases, where they serve, among other purposes, for the athletes to put

their clothes upon. That the gymnasium and palaestra were intended for

competitors at the festivals and were little used at other times is

proved by an inscription at Delphi which contains the contracts for

preparing for the festival not only the stadium and hippodrome, but also

the gymnasium and palaestra.[232] Before the festival and during it

these must have been thronged with athletes practising, and must have

been as favourite a resort of visitors interested in their performances

as is the paddock to-day at Epsom or Ascot.

I have dwelt at some length on the monuments of this period because they

illustrate the extension of Hellenism and therefore of the influence of

Olympia over the East. Further, while honorary statues of distinguished

men are multiplied the athletic statues gradually fall off in number,

ceasing almost entirely after the middle of the second century.[233] Of

the thirty-two statues erected during this period no less than fifteen

were erected by the Eleans, a striking testimony to the wealth of

Olympia. In the list of Olympic victors the noticeable feature is the

almost complete disappearance of names from Sicily and Italy,[234] and

also from the old states of the mainland, such as Athens and Sparta.

Their place is taken by competitors from the East, from Aetolia and

Achaia and the newer cities of the Peloponnese.

Though, as we have said above, athletics were largely neglected by the

upper classes, we still as at all times find a few notable exceptions.

Such were Aratus, who, though his only victory at Olympia was in the

chariot-race, is stated to have won various successes in the pentathlon,

the competition which appealed least to professionals; on the other

hand, the other great general of the Achaean league, Philopoemen, would

have nothing to do with athletics, and even forbade his soldiers to take

part in training which only unfitted them for the hardships of a

campaign. Another notable pentathlete was Gorgus of Messene, who won

considerable renown as a statesman and was sent as ambassador to Philip

III. of Macedon. Besides the pentathlon he won the diaulos and the race

in armour.

The falling off in competition and the growth of professionalism are

shown by the number of men who won victories in more than one event at

the same festival. Philinus of Cos, who won the stadium race in Ols.

129, 130, is credited with three other victories at Olympia, four in the

Pythia, four in the Nemea, and eleven in the Isthmia—twenty-four in all.

A still finer record is that of Leonidas of Rhodes, who won all four

foot-races in three successive Olympiads 164-156 B.C., thus three times

earning the title of τριαστής or triple victor given to those who won

the stade-race, diaulos, and dolichos. Besides the professional runner,

we have the professional fighter represented by the successors of

Heracles already alluded to, with regard to whom we may add that with

the exception of Caprus of Elis all holders of the title came from the

East. The successors of Heracles are further honoured with the title of

παράδοξος or παραδοξονίκης, and in the second century we find for the

first time in Olympic inscriptions the term περίοδος or περιοδονίκης

used of those who won victories in all the four great festivals which

formed the athletic cycle or period. Such terms suggest the age of

athletic “records” which was to come under the Romans.

Two more equestrian events were added during this period—the two-horse

chariot-race for colts, and the riding-race for colts, introduced in

Ols. 129 and 131 respectively. Both these events, introduced obviously

with the intention of encouraging horse breeding, had been introduced

half a century earlier at Delphi, doubtless owing to Macedonian

influence. Lastly in Ol. 145 the athletic programme was completed by the

introduction of the pankration for boys, which was won by Phaedimus,

described variously as from Alexandria Troas, or from Naukratis in

Egypt. The pankration was not a competition suited for boys, and it was

a true athletic feeling which had so long excluded it from the boys’

events at Olympia. Its introduction is significant of the growing love

of sensational and brutal displays which we associate rather with the

Romans than the Greeks. It was only a few years later that Antiochus

Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) introduced into Syria the Roman gladiatorial

games, and though the innovation at first met with criticism and

opposition, the Greeks only too soon became accustomed to such sights.

With the advent of the Romans the history of Greek athletics really

ends, though the athletic festivals were destined to survive four

centuries or more under their patronage. The Romans posed as the

champions and kinsmen of the Greeks, and like the Macedonians fully

realised the importance of these festivals. As early as 228 B.C. they

had been admitted to participation in the Eleusinian mysteries and the

Isthmian games, in recognition of their services in freeing the Adriatic

from Illyrian pirates, though it may be doubtful if Roman citizens

deigned to compete in the actual sports. Again in 196 B.C. it was at the

Isthmian games that Flamininus proclaimed the liberation of Greece from

the tyranny of Macedon. At Olympia Titus Manlius had appeared as

ambassador in 208 B.C. to secure the support of the Sicilian and Italian

Greeks against their common foe Carthage. Finally Mummius commemorated

the defeat of the Achaeans, the destruction of Corinth, and the

restoration of unity to Greece by dedicating at Olympia a bronze statue

of Zeus and twenty-one golden shields arrayed above the colonnade

surrounding the temple of Zeus. But the unity thus commemorated was

secured at the cost of liberty.

It was the spirit of independence which had given life to those great

athletic meetings where the free citizens of free states contended not

for personal glory so much as for the honour of their states. These

states were no longer free, and all the pomp and splendour lavished on

the festivals by their imperial patrons could not recall to life the

spirit that had fled.

Footnote 213:

Quintilian aptly contrasts the bulging muscles, “tori,” of such

athletes with the “lacertus” of soldiers.

Footnote 214:

Paus. v. 21, 10.

Footnote 215:

Polyb. 27, 7 A.

Footnote 216:

A third-century inscription from Epidaurus, Dittenb. _Syll._ 2nd Ed.,

689, records that three athletes, a stadiodromos, a pentathlete, and a

pankratiast, were fined 1000 staters each διὰ τὸ φθείρειν τοὺς ἀγῶνας.

The next inscription, 690, records a similar fine on certain actors.

Footnote 217:

Roberts and Gardner, _Greek Epigraphy_, ii. p. 145.

Footnote 218:

Roberts and Gardner, _Greek Epigraphy_, ii. 61, p. 162 ( = _I.G._ ii.

444); cp. _I.G._ ii. 445, 446. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athens_, pp.

278 ff.

Footnote 219:

Ditt. _Syll._ 2nd Ed., 522, 523, 524, 672, 673, 674.

Footnote 220:

Krause, _Olymp._ p. 215. Diodorus and Ulpian assign the founding of

these games to Archelaus, another account assigns it to Philip II.

Footnote 221:

Xen. _Hell._ vi. 4, 29.

Footnote 222:

Arr. _Anab._ ii. 15.

Footnote 223:

_Ol. Ins._ 276, 277. Another such courier was Deinosthenes of Sparta,

who won the foot-race in Ol. 116, and set up beside his statue a

pillar giving the distance from Olympia to Sparta as 630 stades, and

from Sparta to the next pillar (at Amyclae) as 30 stades. Paus. vi.

16, 8; _Ol. Ins._ 171.

Footnote 224:

Alexandrian victories in 272, 256, 240, 228, 212 B.C. _Vide_ Förster,

_op. cit._

Footnote 225:

_Ol. Ins._ 294.

Footnote 226:

_Ol. Ins._ 39.

Footnote 227:

This victory was commemorated by the founding of a new festival, the

Soteria, which is mentioned in various athletic inscriptions of the

period.

Footnote 228:

Fränckel, _Antiq. Pergam._ viii. 1, pp. 8, 10.

Footnote 229:

_Ol. Ins._ 308.

Footnote 230:

_Ol. Ins._ 306, 307.

Footnote 231:

Little weight can be attached to such a statement. The list may well

have been transferred to the gymnasium when it was built. A similar

list was set up by the father of Paraballon whose victory in the

diaulos is placed by Hyde between Ol. 91-101, when the gymnasium

certainly did not exist.

Footnote 232:

_B.C.H._, 1899, pp. 565 ff. The inscription is dated by the archonship

of Dion, 258 B.C.

Footnote 233:

Of the statues seen by Pausanias none can be much later than 150 B.C.

(_vide_ Hyde, _Olymp. Statues_). The Olympic inscriptions show that

the custom was revived at the close of the first century B.C. _Ins._

213, 219, 224, 225, etc.

Footnote 234:

The only statue from Sicily is that of Hieron II. of Syracuse.

CHAPTER VIII

ATHLETICS UNDER THE ROMANS

Greek athletics must have been familiar to the Romans from early times.

We have seen how prominent a part the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily

had taken in the festivals of Greece during the sixth and fifth

centuries. The popularity of athletics among the Etruscans is proved by

the numerous scenes painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs, where every

variety of sport is represented. The “ludi Maximi” of Rome herself show

strong traces of Greek influence. Moreover the Romans, like all vigorous

nations, were fond of physical exercises—running, wrestling, throwing

the diskos and the spear, and especially games of ball. But they were

not fond of competitions. Consequently athletics never acquired at Rome

the importance which they possessed in Greece, and their festivals, if

originally similar in character to those of Greece, soon became mere

spectacles in which the performers, whether actors, riders, or athletes,

were professionals belonging to subject races and the lower classes,

hired for the amusement of the Roman citizens. Rome recognized no peers

among the neighbouring states, and free competition between independent

states was therefore impossible at Rome. Moreover, the centuries of

struggle during which she step by step extended and consolidated her

power had left little time or inclination for less serious contests, and

had developed in her citizens a strongly practical type of character

that could feel no sympathy with the athletic ideal of Greece. To the

Roman as to the Spartan athletics were nothing but a means to an end,

and that end military efficiency. To devote to sport the time and energy

necessary to secure success at Olympia, to submit for months to the

tyranny of a trainer, often a man of no birth or position, and above all

to exhibit oneself naked before the eyes of one’s fellow-citizens—these

were things quite inconsistent with the Roman’s idea of his dignity as a

citizen. Even as spectacles the Greek sports did not appeal to his

taste. Brutalized by incessant war, he preferred more exciting contests,

and took more pleasure in the gladiatorial shows of his Etruscan and

Campanian neighbours than in musical or gymnastic competitions. It was

186 B.C. that Greek athletes and actors first appeared at the Roman

games; but a more pleasing innovation must have been the importation in

the same year of lions and panthers from Africa to provide more exciting

sport for the spectators in the circus. When in 167 B.C. some famous

Greek flute-players who were performing at a festival failed to please

the Roman audience, the managers ordered them to box, a performance

which caused boundless delight to the spectators.

When in the second century B.C. the Romans were first brought into

closer contact with Greece, they found ample justification for their

anti-athletic prejudice in the vicious and corrupt state into which

athletics had fallen at that period in Greece. The competitions were in

the hands of professional athletes, whose training rendered them useless

as soldiers; the gymnasia, instead of producing healthy, useful

citizens, had become schools of idleness and immorality; from a physical

and military point of view the whole nation had degenerated. The

athletic festivals were useful political factors, and as such the Romans

knew how to utilize them. Some, like Aemilius Paulus, standing before

the Zeus of Pheidias might feel something of the beauty and the grandeur

of the Greek ideal, or, like Cato, that odd mixture of conservatism and

Hellenism, might train their sons in the athletic exercises of Greece;

but the mass of the nation was unaffected; for a long time no gymnasia

or palaestrae rose in Rome, no Roman deigned to compete in the games of

Greece.

The old Roman prejudice died hard. More than a century after the

founding of the Empire, in spite of imperial Philhellenism, we find an

echo of it in the reign of Nero, in the protests of the old school

against the introduction in Rome of a festival on Greek lines. “The

youths were degenerating under the influence of foreign tastes, passing

their time in athletics, in idling, and low intrigues; what remained for

them but to strip themselves naked, put on the caestus, and practise

such battles instead of the arms of legitimate warfare?”[235]

Such being the feeling of Rome towards Greek athletics, it is no matter

for wonder that in spite of the growing influence of Hellenism, the

festivals languished during the century which followed the fall of

Corinth. In 80 B.C. Sulla transferred the whole Olympic festival,

athletes and all, to Rome, leaving only the boys’ foot-race to be

decided at Olympia. Perhaps his object was to transfer the festival

permanently to Rome; but ere another Olympiad came round Sulla himself

was dead, and his purpose was never accomplished. But the prestige of

the festival suffered. We possess the list of Olympic victors for the

year 72 B.C. In this Olympiad, as in the Olympiad which followed the

Spartan invasion of 399 B.C., the falling off in the competition is

marked by a series of local victories. Eight, possibly eleven events

fell to Elis, Hecatomnus, the winner of three of the foot-races, being

variously assigned to Elis and Miletus; two events fell to Sicyon, one

to Cyparissia in Messenia, the remaining four events being divided

between Alexandria, Mysia, Asia, and Cos. Elis carried off all the

equestrian events. In the Olympic inscriptions which belong to this

period it is remarkable that nearly all the victors are Eleans and

nearly all their victories are gained in the horse-races.[236] This

local predominance, coupled with the depression produced by Sulla’s

invasion, may account for the fact, recorded by Africanus, that the

chariot-race and perhaps other equestrian events were discontinued in

the year 68 B.C., not to be revived until the time of the Empire.[237]

Meanwhile a change had come over the character of the Roman people. No

longer occupied incessantly in war, the dwellers in the capital had

become more and more addicted to amusements. Festival after festival was

added to their calendar, and ambitious politicians vied with one another

in the variety and magnificence of the entertainments which they

provided in the hopes of winning the favour of the sovereign people.

These entertainments, though containing athletic and equestrian

competitions, were, however, purely spectacular, and it was regarded as

a disgrace for a Roman citizen to take part in them personally. The

character of these entertainments and their difference from the Greek

festivals may be illustrated by the account given by Suetonius of those

provided by Julius Caesar.[238] Besides a variety of dramatic and

musical performances, there were the games in the circus, athletic

displays, and a sea-fight. In these certain Roman citizens of position

actually took part. There was a gladiatorial contest between Furius

Leptinus, a member of a praetorian family, and Quintus Calpenus, an

ex-senator. The Pyrrhic dance was performed by noble youths from Asia

and Bithynia; and one Decimus Laberius, a Roman knight, actually

performed in a farce of his own composition, for which he was handsomely

rewarded by Caesar, and restored to the rank which he had forfeited by

his performance. At the games in the circus youths of noble birth took

part in the chariot and horse-races. Two companies of boys exhibited the

semi-military manœuvres called the Trojan game. Five days were occupied

in _venationes_, or combats with wild beasts, and there was a sham fight

between two forces consisting each of 500 foot-soldiers, 30 cavalry and

20 elephants. To provide more space for this performance the metae of

the circus were removed and a camp was formed at either end. A temporary

stand was erected in the field of Mars, where athletic competitions took

place lasting three days. Lastly, a huge artificial lake was constructed

in which biremes, triremes, and quadriremes from Tyre and Egypt joined

in mimic battle. All the neighbouring roads and streets were occupied by

the tents of visitors, and so great was the crowd that many were crushed

to death. But Caesar himself, the giver of all, cared for none of these

things; and his enemies accused him of amusing himself with reading and

writing when he ought to have been watching the progress of the

games.[239]

With the Empire a new era opened for Greece. As the conquests of

Alexander had spread Hellenism throughout the East, so the Roman Empire

gradually hellenized the whole civilized world. Though Greece was

incorporated in the Roman Empire, cities like Athens and Sparta

preserved the outward forms of independence; the bodies which controlled

her ancient festivals continued to exercise their hereditary functions,

and were treated as a rule with all honour and respect. In the sphere of

literature and art Greece had long been recognized as the mistress and

teacher of her conqueror. Hence the feeling of subjection disappeared,

and so complete was the fusion between conquered and conqueror that in

the second century, while the ancient families of Elis or of Sparta bore

the names of their Roman patrons, such as the Julii, or the Flavii, and

were enrolled in Roman tribes, the Greek language had become the

language of communication throughout all the Eastern half of the Empire,

and at Rome herself was supplanting Latin as the language of literature.

These results were largely due to the Philhellenism of the emperors, and

nowhere is this Philhellenism more conspicuous than in connection with

athletic festivals. The old festivals were celebrated with increased

splendour and ceremony, new festivals were introduced in close imitation

of them, sumptuous race-courses and gymnasia were provided not merely in

Greece but in Italy and in Rome herself, athletic guilds were formed;

and though the athletic revival was purely professional and had little

effect on the people, whether of Greece or Rome, the privileges and

rewards showered on the successful athletes were certainly no less

substantial if less honourable than those bestowed on the victors of the

fifth century B.C.

The Julii claimed admission to the festivals of Greece as the

descendants and heirs of the gods who presided over those festivals. At

Olympia their claim was recognized by the re-dedication to their service

of the little temple of the Mother of the Gods, in which were placed the

statues of Augustus and his successors. Under their patronage the

festival recovered much of its ancient glory. The horse-races, which had

been discontinued, were revived shortly before our era, when members of

the imperial family, emulating the triumphs of the princes of Sicily and

Macedon, entered as competitors for the Olympic crown. Inscriptions

record the victory of the youthful Tiberius in the chariot-race, and a

few years later of Germanicus Caesar in the same event. The building of

the arched entrance into the stadium and other improvements possibly

belong to the reign of Augustus. The remarkable continuity of Olympic

administration is shown by a series of inscriptions recording the names

of the various officials connected with the sanctuary.[240] These lists

begin in 30 B.C. and continue down to A.D. 265. They include every

variety of official, from the seers and heralds of the sacred truce down

to the cook and baker who provided the sacrificial feasts, and perhaps

catered for the higher officials and for distinguished visitors. One

important officer bore the title of official guide or exegetes; his duty

doubtless was to explain to the crowds of visitors the historical

monuments of the Altis. In the second century, owing to the increasing

numbers of visitors a second guide was appointed. It was from these

guides that Pausanias derived much of the information contained in his

books on Elis. The higher offices seem to have formed a regular scale of

honours, a _cursus honorum_, hereditary in the families of the Elean

nobility, most of whom bear Roman names. It is curious to find one

bearing the name of Flavius Heracleitus, who had the charge of the

statue of Zeus, calling himself a descendant of Pheidias. The activity

of the administration is shown by the revival of the practice of

dedicating honorary statues of athletes and others: perhaps it is to

this revival that we may ascribe the rule recorded by Pliny that

portrait statues were only allowed in the case of athletes who had won

three Olympic victories.[241] It is in the inscriptions of these

honorary statues that after a long interval we find mention of the

council who seem to have held supreme authority over the sanctuary and

whose sanction was necessary for the erection of statues in the

Altis.[242] The revival of ancient forms of administration is

characteristic of Roman conservatism and love of order.

The Philhellenism of the Caesars and their Roman love of archaism are

particularly manifest in the numerous festivals founded by them in

various parts of the Empire. Of most of these we know little besides the

names which are mentioned in inscriptions and on coins; a few deserve

special notice and may be taken as typical of the rest. Augustus

celebrated his victory at Actium, not only by holding Actian games at

Rome but by instituting at the newly founded Nicopolis an Actian

festival intended to rival or even surpass Olympia. A local festival had

long been held at Actium every two years. The new festival which,

besides athletic, musical, and equestrian competitions, included a

regatta, was, like the Olympic festival, held every four years. The

victors received crowns and bore the title Actianicae, and the Actiads

were intended to form the basis of a new chronology which was to

supplant that of the Olympiads. We feel in all this something of that

spirit of conscious rivalry between Rome and Greece which made the Roman

poet herald the _Aeneid_ as a work greater than the _Iliad_. But though

in imperial inscriptions the Actia rank with, or even take precedence of

the Panhellenic festivals, the new games were destined never to acquire

the prestige of the old.

The same spirit of conscious rivalry appears again in the proud title

“ἰσολύμπια” applied to the Augustalia at Naples. These games, founded in

1 B.C., were reorganized in A.D. 2 as a quinquennial festival with the

magniloquent name “Italica Romaia Sebasta Isolympia.” The new era which

began with them was reckoned by “Italids.” The terms ἰσολύμπια and

ἰσοπύθια referred originally to the conditions of competition and

particularly to the age of competitors. Thus the expressions Olympian,

Pythian, Isthmian boys, denote boys within the age-limit for the boys’

events at these respective festivals. Under the Empire the terms have

often merely an honorary significance, and such apparently is the use of

the word here. A long, unfortunately much mutilated, inscription[243]

found at Olympia contains regulations for this festival, for the age of

competitors, the date of entry, provision for them during the time of

training, and the penalties imposed for any breach of these rules. The

festival fell into two parts, the first part of which, like the old

Olympia, consisted only of equestrian and athletic events. The prize, as

at Olympia, was a wreath. The second part, as we learn from another

inscription, resembled the Pythian and Nemean festivals in its

regulations with regard to ages and prizes. It contained, besides

athletic and equestrian events, musical and dramatic competitions, and

some of the competitions were confined to citizens of Naples. The prizes

consisted in sums of money.

Somewhat similar was the character of the Olympic and Pythian festivals

which we find in Rome, Athens, Ephesus, and a number of other places.

The right to bestow these titles must originally have rested with the

authorities at Olympia and Delphi, but seems later to have been

exercised by the emperors.[244] Each new festival founded was the

beginning of a new series of Olympiads. At Rome the great Capitolia,

founded by Domitian in A.D. 86, bore the title Olympia, and Flavius

Archibius, an Olympic victor in Ols. 220, 221, is also described as

victor at Rome in the 3rd and following Olympiads. The judges at these

festivals were sometimes called Hellanodicae,[245] and doubtless many

other features of the original festivals were reproduced. Perhaps the

most interesting of all these games are those held at Daphne near

Antioch. Founded originally by Antiochus Epiphanes, they obtained from

the Eleans the title of Olympia in A.D. 44. Their interest lies in the

fact that the model of Olympia was followed in every particular, not

only in the programme and administration, but in the relations existing

between Daphne and Antioch, which corresponded entirely to these between

Olympia and Elis. In the fourth century a fierce dispute arose between a

popular party, which wished to transfer the important part of the

festival from Daphne to Antioch, and the conservative party headed by

Libanius, who characterized the proposed change as sacrilege and a

violation of the true Olympia. We have frequent references to the

festival in the writings of St. Chrysostom, for a long time presbyter at

Antioch; and it continued to be celebrated as late as the reign of

Justinus in the sixth century.[246]

Imperial patronage was not at all times an unmixed blessing for the

Greeks. Caligula would have carried off to Rome the statue of Olympian

Zeus had he not been prevented by the miraculous protest of the statue

itself. Nero actually carried off to Rome thousands of works of art, and

in his jealousy caused the statues of victors at the games to be pulled

down and thrown into the sewers. Despite his pretended flattery of the

Greeks and desire to win their approbation for his art, he had so little

respect for religion that he caused the times of the festivals to be

altered so that they might all be celebrated during his visit to

Greece.[247] At Olympia contests in tragedy and singing were introduced

into the programme at his behest; a house was built for his

entertainment at the south-east corner of the Altis, and almost opposite

it a magnificent processional entrance was constructed, the Altis wall

being at the same time extended southward so as to include the

triangular strip between the old wall and the northern line of the

council house. The story of his performances at the games is a piteous

proof of the degradation of the festivals and of the servility of the

Greeks. At Olympia he won crowns in the chariot-races, in the

competitions for singing and for tragedy, and in the heralds’

competition. For the latter he entered wherever he competed in order to

have the privilege of proclaiming his victories with his own voice. In

the hippodrome he appeared in a chariot drawn by ten horses; thrown from

his chariot, he was picked up and replaced, resumed the race, and was

finally awarded the prize by the obsequious officials. Though he was

said to be fond of wrestling, he had sufficient respect for Roman

prejudice to abstain from exhibiting his skill in the stadium, and

contented himself with playing the part of a brabeutes, sitting on the

ground during the rounds, and with his own hands pulling the combatants

back if they got too far away. The servile Hellanodicae were rewarded

with Roman citizenship and with large sums of money, which they had to

disgorge in the reign of his successor. Finally, at the end of his tour,

he proclaimed himself at the Isthmian games as the restorer of the

liberty of Greece. Returning to Italy with 1808 crowns which he had won,

he was welcomed at Naples with all the most extravagant honours which

were ever recorded to have been paid to an Olympia victor. A breach was

made in the city wall through which he entered in a chariot drawn by

white horses. The same farce was repeated at Antium and Albanum. He

entered Rome in the chariot in which Augustus had triumphed, clothed in

purple, with the Olympic crown upon his head, and holding the Pythian

crown in his right hand, while before him marched a procession of

courtiers carrying the crowns which he had won, and proclaiming to the

populace the names and details of his triumphs. No wonder that such as

remained of the old Roman stock regarded the competitions of the Greeks

with amused contempt, that Seneca and other writers of the first century

were unanimous in their condemnation of Greek athletics, and that the

Olympic competitor became the butt of the epigrammatist. That Olympia

survived even this degradation is perhaps the strongest proof of its

vitality.

While the emperors were introducing Greek festivals into Italy, the

influence of Rome was degrading and brutalizing the public taste of

Greece. Gladiatorial shows had been introduced into the East nearly two

centuries before Christ. They had long been popular with the

cosmopolitan crowds of Antioch and Alexandria. In Greece they found a

congenial home in the equally cosmopolitan crowd of Corinth, which,

refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar, quickly regained her

commercial supremacy, and eclipsed even the records of her past in

wealth and luxury and vice. Athens followed and even improved upon the

example set by her rival. For while at Corinth the gladiatorial shows

had been held in a ravine outside the city, at Athens they were

exhibited in the theatre of Dionysus.[248]

The growing love of excitement and bloodshed is evident in boxing. The

caestus had, as we have seen, become gradually more ponderous and more

murderous, and boxing consequently less scientific. Every one is

familiar with the description of the boxing match in the _Aeneid_. The

brutal, unscientific fight is in perfect keeping with the ponderous

character of the weapons, and even the gentle and refined Vergil can

only represent a heroic fight by heaping horror upon horror, and by

ascribing the heavy caestus to heroic times, he actually reverses the

whole history of boxing. We should not perhaps take Vergil’s description

as typical of Greek boxing even in his day, but only of the feeling at

Rome, where scientific boxing was of so little account that even

Augustus preferred to watch a fight between two street roughs to a match

between trained boxers. But the brutality of boxing even in Greece is

strikingly illustrated in a collection of epigrams written by or

collected by one Lucilius in the reign of Nero. Their tone of

persiflage, so different from that of the early Greek epigrammatist, is

just what we should expect from such an age. Some of them are skits upon

the athletes or would-be athletes of the age; a whole series are devoted

to describing the disfigurement and mutilation of the boxer. Here is an

old translation of one of them which may be taken as typical of them

all:—

This victor, glorious in his olive wreath,

Had once eyes, eyebrows, nose, and ears and teeth.

But turning cestus champion, to his cost,

These, and still worse! his heritage he lost,

For by his brother su’d, disowned, at last

Confronted with his picture he was cast.[249]

Dion Chrysostom gives us an interesting glimpse of the Isthmia during

the first century, in the story he tells of Diogenes’ visit to the

festival.[250] The scene is laid in the fourth century B.C., but the

details are clearly drawn from the orator’s own experience. Diogenes the

Cynic happens to visit Corinth at the time of the festival. There, at

the cross-roads of the world, he finds gathered together visitors from

Ionia and Sicily, from Italy and Libya, from Massilia and the

Borysthenes. Around the temple of Poseidon are wretched sophists

shouting and abusing one another, their pupils are fighting, historians

are reading meaningless compositions, poets are reciting verses,

miracle-mongers are working miracles, augurs are interpreting omens,

thousands of orators are wrangling, and merchants of every sort are

bargaining. The crowd, regardless of all other interests, is watching

the performances of the athletes, “mere slaves,” he calls them, “that

run and jump and dance.” Here Diogenes sees a band of friends carrying a

victor in the foot-race in triumphant procession, while the people shout

and cheer and heap upon him fillets and garlands. The Cynic stops him

and points out that after all he is not as swift as the hare or the

deer, the most cowardly of animals. He himself has won a victory over

adversaries that cannot be overcome by men “stuffed and puffed, who

spend whole days in eating and snore all night like pigs,” for he has

won a victory over pain and pleasure. Finally he boldly puts upon his

head the celery crown, and when the indignant officials protest, asks

them, “Will ye take the crown from me and give it to him who is stuffed

with most meat?” The rhetoric is for the most part mere commonplace of

the schools; yet we cannot doubt that the description is true of the

Isthmia and of other festivals, especially of those in the rich cities

of the East.

In such soil corruption throve. Philostratus, writing more than a

century later, tells us that victories were publicly bought and sold;

even the trainers encouraged the traffic, lending money for bribery to

athletes at exorbitant rates of interest.[251] At the Isthmia a

competitor who had promised his rival 3000 drachmae to let him win,

refused to pay on the ground that he had won on his merits. Recourse was

had to the oath, and the defeated competitor publicly swore before the

altar of Poseidon that he had been promised the money if he allowed

himself to be defeated. “What,” adds Philostratus, “might not happen in

Ionia or in Asia?”

At Olympia the honour of the games was still maintained. Bribery was

severely punished. In Ols. 192 (12 B.C.) and 226 (A.D. 125) we read of

fines exacted for corruption from which as of old Zanes were

erected.[252] In the former case it was a father who bribed his son’s

opponent, and the fine was therefore exacted from the parents. In Ol.

218 (A.D. 93) one Apollonius of Alexandria was fined for coming too

late and thereby disqualifying himself from competition. He pleaded

that he had been detained by contrary winds. But it was proved that

the plea was false, and that the real cause of his delay was that he

had been “pot-hunting” in Ionia. It seems as if the authorities at

Olympia even made an attempt to check the arrogant pretensions and

self-advertisements of the professional fighter by abolishing the

title “Successor of Heracles.” The title was won for the last time in

Ol. 204 (A.D. 37) by one Nicostratus, after whose victories the Eleans

made a secret decree that no one should thereafter be allowed to win

in both wrestling and the pankration. The account given by Dion of the

Isthmia gathers force from its contrast with the veneration which he

expresses for the Olympia, and his charming picture of the youthful

Melancomas.[253] He and his father, himself an Olympic victor, seem

even in that age of athletic decay to have lived up to the ideal of

the best days.

A curious development of professionalism which we now meet with was the

growth of athletic guilds resembling the dramatic guilds which had long

existed. Victorious athletes at Rome, as in Greece, received certain

privileges, including maintenance at the public cost, which privilege

Maecenas advised Augustus to confine to winners at Olympia and Delphi

and Rome.[254] Augustus, we are told, maintained and increased the

privileges of athletes.[255] Guilds were one of the features of the

early Empire, and it was therefore natural for athletes to form such

combinations. These athletic guilds were called Xystoi from the xystos

or covered colonnade which formed part of a gymnasium. The most famous

of these clubs was that of the Herculanei,[256] a club which seems

originally to have been formed at Sardis. In the reign of Trajan it was

dissolved and transferred to Rome. One M. Ulpius came to the emperor as

their spokesman to petition for quarters at Rome, and we possess copies

of two letters of Trajan granting their petition.[257] He appoints them

a house where they may keep their sacred things and records, near the

baths built by his grandfather Trajan, and conveniently situated for the

great Capitolia. Here they had a gymnasium and a council-chamber in

which discussions could take place on all questions affecting the

welfare of athletes, the holding of competitions, and the erection of

honorary statues. They were a sacred guild, and within their precinct

were statues of emperors and members of the guild. Their president or

xystarches was also high-priest of the guild. He was often a

distinguished athlete and held the office for life; and with it also the

office of overseer of the imperial baths. The religious character of

these guilds is a curious survival of the immemorial connexion between

religion and athletics. Sometimes there were special competitions for

members of certain guilds. At the Augustalia at Naples we find a series

of competitions confined to members of the Augustan class, while mention

is also made of a pankration for Claudian boys. These expressions seem

to denote clubs or guilds bearing the name of Augustus and

Claudius.[258] The most important guild at Naples was “the holy

itinerant synod of the Alexandrini.” The term περιπολιστική, which

corresponds to our “nomads” or “wanderers,” indicates that they did not

confine their attentions to local festivals, but went about from place

to place.[259] An Olympic inscription of the year A.D. 85 records the

erection of a statue in honour of Lucius Vetulenus Laetus by the whole

body of athletes gathered together “from the inhabited world” for the

festival, and by the holy synod of the Xystos.[260] This particular

xystos was presumably a local Elean guild. The title xystarches is known

also at Sparta, and occurs in an inscription recently discovered at

Sparta by the British excavators. The inscription contains regulations

for a Spartan festival, probably the Leonidaea, a festival held in

honour of those who fell at Thermopylae, and confined to Spartan

competitors.[261] The xystarches is to place oil in the stadium, and

discharge the usual duties of his post. As the president of the local

gymnasium, he naturally took an important part in local festivals. He

seems generally to have been a man of some importance, often an old

athlete. His duties were probably as vague and depended as much on his

personal inclination as those of the president of a modern athletic

club.

[Illustration: Fig. 22. Athletics under the Romans. From a mosaic found

at Tusculum.]

A mosaic found at Tusculum (Fig. 22) gives a vivid picture of the life

of these professional athletes under the Empire. A comparison of these

scenes with those represented on the Panaetius kylix in Fig. 17 will

illustrate better than any description the difference between the two

ages.

The renaissance of Hellenism which marked the second century brought

with it a revival of the Greek athletic festivals and Greek athletics,

which, under the patronage of the “Greekling” Hadrian and his

successors, attained an outward prosperity and splendour unparalleled

since the fifth century. It was the object of these emperors, who were

as much at home in Greece as in Italy, to revive the glories of the

past, and restore to the mainland of Greece that pre-eminence in the

Hellenic world which had been usurped by the great cities of the East.

Everywhere splendid buildings testified to the lavish munificence, if

not always to the good taste, of the emperors, and of wealthy subjects

who emulated their example. Countless monuments and inscriptions

throughout Greece bear witness to the activity of Hadrian. At Athens he

built a gymnasium and library, at Corinth he provided baths, at Nemea he

instituted a winter festival, while at Mantinea and Argos he founded

quinquennial festivals in honour of his beloved Antinous, whose cult

spread rapidly throughout the Empire. His reverence for Olympia and its

ideals is shown by a series of coins bearing on one side the emperor’s

head, on the other a representation of the Zeus of Pheidias.[262] But

Hadrian’s monuments sink into insignificance in comparison with the

prodigal generosity of Herodes Atticus, who rebuilt in stone the stadia

at Delphi and Athens, the latter in marble from Pentelicus. At Olympia

he contributed to the comfort of the spectators by providing a new

system of water-supply, while he left a more conspicuous if less useful

monument of himself in the so-called exedra, a pompous and incongruous

semicircular building erected between the Heraeum and the western end of

the treasuries, at the only vacant spot commanding a view of the altar

of Zeus. The exedra was dedicated to Zeus in the name of his wife

Regilla, who held at Olympia the honoured position of priestess to

Demeter Chamyne. Statues of Regilla and Herodes were placed by the

Eleans in the exedra, which also contained the statues of Hadrian,

Antoninus and other members of the imperial family, who from this place

of honour seemed to look on for ever as spectators and patrons of the

festival. Under such patronage the games attracted crowds from all parts

of the “inhabited world,” and indeed exercised considerable influence.

For the religious idea expressed in the statue of Olympian Zeus

fascinated the thought of the age. But for the Greeks themselves

regeneration was no longer possible. Physically, morally, politically

they were too degenerate. In the Olympic records of the second century

there are few names from the mother-country; most of the victors came

from the cities of Egypt and the East, especially from Alexandria. The

marble stadium of Herodes Atticus at Athens witnessed all the

brutalities of the Roman gladiatorial shows.

The artificiality of the athletic revival is nowhere more evident than

in the numerous inscriptions of this period, which in their pompous

verbosity afford a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of the

time when athletics were a real part of the national life. As we read

them we feel ourselves in another world, a world-of professionalism, of

self-advertisement, and of records, which bears no little resemblance to

that in which we are living to-day. Compare, for example, the simple

inscriptions at Olympia recording the victories of the Diagoridae[263]

with the first-century inscription in honour of Publius Cornelius

Ariston of Ephesus, who won the boys’ pankration in Ol. 207 (A.D. 49),

or better still with the second-century inscriptions found in Italy

enumerating the exploits of Titus Flavius Artemidorus of Adana of

Cilicia, or of Marcus Aurelius Asclepiades of Alexandria. The very names

are significant of the change that has taken place. “Diagoras (son) of

Damagetus a Rhodian” such is the simple formula of early days. The only

description of the contest vouchsafed is the name of the festival and

the event, with the single word ἀκονιτεί added occasionally to denote a

“walk over.” Occasionally a simple couplet is added. But the pedestal of

Ariston’s statue[264] had inscribed on it, besides the usual formula, a

poem of twenty-four lines describing his powers and his fame, how in a

field of seven he won all his heats without having the advantage of a

bye, and how his glory was proclaimed not only throughout all Hellas but

throughout Asia.

A few examples of these inscriptions will best illustrate the character

of the age. They begin with a fulsome list of the victor’s honorary

titles. That on Asclepiades[265] informs us that he and his father both

held for life the office of “high-priest of the whole xystos and

overseer of the imperial baths,” that he was “chief of the temple

guardians of Great Serapis, a citizen of Alexandria, Hermopolis, and

Puteoli, and councillor of Neapolis, Elis, Athens, and many other

cities.” Then follows a glowing description of his unbeaten record as “a

pankratiast, a periodonikes invincible, immovable,[266] unrivalled.” “I

neither challenged any nor did any one in my time dare to challenge me,

nor did I divide the crown with any, nor did I decline a contest or

enter any protest,[267] nor did I abandon any contest, nor take part in

a contest to please royalty, nor did I gain a victory in any new-fangled

games, but in all the contests for which I ever entered my name I was

crowned in the actual ring and was approved in all the preliminary

trials.” This emphatic insistence on the cleanness of his record is

clearly an answer to those malicious attacks of which he complains at

the end of the inscription, and which caused him to abandon athletics.

He proceeds to enumerate his victories in a manner which reminds one of

nothing so much as those photographs which we see often in illustrated

papers representing some professional athlete with his whole body

covered with medals, belts and scarves which he has won, or standing

triumphant in the midst of his cups and trophies. “I contended,” he

says, “among three nations in Italy, in Hellas, and in Asia, and in all

the contests mentioned below I was victorious in the pankration,—in the

Olympia at Pisa in Ol. 240, in the Pythia at Delphi twice, at the

Isthmia twice, in the Nemea twice, at the contest for the shield of Hera

at Argos, in the Capitolia at Rome twice, in the Eusebea at Puteoli

twice, in the Sebasta at Neapolis twice, five times at Athens in various

games, five times at Smyrna, three times at the Augustea at Pergamum,

three times at Ephesus, at Epidaurus in the Asclepiea, at Rhodes in the

Haliea, at Sardis in the Chrysanthina, besides numerous games for money

prizes (Θεματείτας), including the Heraclea in Lacedaemon, the games at

Mantinea and others.” In this list Olympia and Adriania are mentioned at

Athens, Smyrna, and Ephesus. At Ephesus one of his victories was won at

the Balbillea founded by the celebrated astrologer Balbillus in the

reign of Vespasian. It is interesting to compare this list of victories

with the victories won by Diagoras of Rhodes or Epharmostus of Locrian

Opous which are enumerated in the odes of Pindar.[268] With the

exception of Rhodes, all their recorded victories were won in festivals

of the mother-country, at the four Panhellenic festivals, at Argos,

Athens, Pellene, Aegina, Megara, and at various places in Arcadia and

Boeotia. The difference may be summed up in the word οἰκουμένη which

occurs frequently in late inscriptions. The games are no longer

Hellenic, they are Oecumenical, and with this change their whole

character is altered. Even at Olympia, most Hellenic of all festivals,

athletes and spectators alike are gathered no longer from Hellas only

but from “the inhabited world.”[269]

In the enumeration of his exploits Asclepiades constantly records that

“on various occasions” he brought his opponents to a standstill

(στήσας), sometimes without further comment, but usually with the words

“from the start, after the first lot, after the second lot.” The phrase

seems to imply that on these occasions his opponents all withdrew from

the competition after the first or second heat, or even before any

contest. Such incidents may have been misinterpreted by his enemies, who

maliciously accused him of bribing or intimidating his rivals. At all

events, he tells us that after six years he retired from athletics at

the age of twenty-five, owing “to the dangers and jealousy which beset

him.” After an interval of some years he was induced to reappear at the

Olympic games of his native Alexandria, where he won the pankration in

the sixth Alexandrine Olympiad.[270]

It was an age of record-breaking. We see it in the expenditure on

magnificent buildings and entertainments, in which each new public

benefactor aimed at surpassing the work of his predecessors, and it is

no wonder that the same spirit affected athletics. The inscription set

up by the itinerant synod of the Alexandrines in honour of Flavius

Archibius,[271] and recording his long list of victories, is punctuated

by the incessant refrain, “first of mankind.” For example, in the

Pythian festival he won the pankration at one Pythiad, the pankration

and wrestling in the next, the pankration again in the next, “first of

mankind.” Similarly, Marcus Tullius of Apamea in Bithynia describes

himself as “the first boxer from all time”[272] to win a certain series

of victories. Such phrases are of constant occurrence. A passage in

Pliny’s _Natural History_[273] suggests that at Rome records were kept

in long-distance running, and that running against time was a popular

amusement. After describing various feats of strength, he notes how

records in distance-running had been frequently broken. The record of

Pheidippides, he says, long held the field until Philonides, and Anystis

in Alexander’s time ran from Sicyon to Elis and back, a distance of 1300

stades, in a single day. “In the circus,” he adds, “we know that some

athletes have run 160 miles in a day; and recently in the Consulship of

Fonteius and Vipsanius, a youth of eight (surely a mistake for eighteen)

ran 75 miles between mid-day and sunset.” The accuracy of Pliny’s

statements on athletics is not beyond question, but the passage is good

evidence as to the practice of the times.

The second century was an age of antiquarianism. Conscious of their own

inferiority, men thought to make up for their want of originality by

studying and reproducing the forms of the past, regardless of the fact

that these forms had lost their meaning. The writings of this period

abound in allusions to the great athletes of earlier times. Lucian of

Samosata sets forth at length the old athletic ideal in his dialogue

entitled “Anacharsis,” in which he makes Solon defend Greek athletics

against the criticism of the barbarian. The gist of his argument is that

athletics make a man a better and more useful citizen, and fit him to

serve his city in peace and war. But alas! the cosmopolitan Greek of his

day had no longer any city to defend, and the appeal to civic patriotism

can have carried little weight with men who claimed the citizenship of

half-a-dozen cities at the same time. Philostratus, an equally

enthusiastic admirer of the old athletes, seeks to find a cure for the

athletic degeneracy of his own time by a return to the simpler and more

rational methods of training of the past. But his appeal likewise fell

on deaf ears. Athletics had become the monopoly of professional trainers

and quacks, who regarded them merely as a source of selfish profit.

Olympia, above all, appealed to the antiquarian spirit of the age. It is

chiefly to the traveller and antiquarian Pausanias, who visited Elis in

173 A.D., that we owe our knowledge of the festival. The mass of details

which he gathered from the official guides of Olympia is sure evidence

of the interest which the festival aroused. Phlegon of Tralles, like

Aristotle in Macedonian times, revised and edited the Olympic register,

making it the chronological basis of his history from 776 B.C. to 137

A.D. One C. Asinius Quadratus carried his zeal for Olympia to such

lengths as to place the founding of Rome in the year of the first

Olympiad, for which act of flattery he received from the Eleans a

monument, “because he had honoured Olympia both in word and deed.”[274]

Others, not content with a chronology that dated back only to Coroebus,

invented a new Olympic era 800 years earlier. On an inscribed diskos

dedicated by Publius Asclepiades, a pentathlete of Corinth, the date is

given according to the two chronologies, Ol. 255 and Ol. 456! and also

by the name of the Alytarch for the year, “Flavius Scribonianus, kinsman

of senators and consulars.” Archaism took a more practical shape in the

minute observance of ceremonies and customs. In the inscription of

Claudius Rufus, mentioned in a previous chapter, he is commended

especially for having diligently practised in the sight of the

Hellanodicae, “in accordance with the ancestral custom of the games.”

Our knowledge of the usages of the festival is chiefly derived from

authors of this period. We have already seen how these usages were

reproduced in the new festivals.

No state preserved so large a measure of independence under Roman rule

as Sparta. In A.D. 214, when Caracalla appeared in Greece as a second

Alexander to lead a new war against the East, he appealed to Sparta for

assistance; and Sparta, as a free federate state, sent two regiments of

volunteers bearing the time-honoured names of the Laconian regiment, and

the regiment of Pitane, as her contribution to what an inscription

styles “the most fortunate alliance against the Persians.” The

excavations conducted by the British School of Athens have shed a flood

of light upon the history and condition of Sparta at this period.[275]

We see her as a flourishing provincial town with her Roman

fortifications, theatre, baths, and suburban villas. But though changed

in outward appearance, Sparta clung only the more tenaciously to the

traditions and customs which she derived from Lycurgus. The love of

archaism characteristic of this period showed itself in an exaggerated

revival of the Lycurgean discipline. Sparta, for centuries, had taken

little part in the athletic history of Greece. The one object of her

physical education was to produce endurance, and the supreme test of

this endurance was the so-called “Contest of Endurance” by means of

successive scourgings which took place upon the altar of Artemis. The

altar itself has been discovered standing on the site of earlier altars,

where from time immemorial this ancient ceremony had taken place. The

interest attaching to the contest in Roman times is shown by the

numerous references in contemporary writers; and still more by the fact

that towards the close of the second century A.D., a large theatre,

surrounding the altar, was built for the convenience of spectators. An

inscription discovered in the Artemisium records the victory of a boy in

this contest. Greek writers represent the contest as a humane substitute

for human sacrifice; but Professor Bosanquet[276] has shown that there

is good reason for thinking that Greek tradition mistook the meaning of

the ceremony, which originated in an ancient ritual practice of whipping

away boys who tried to steal cheeses from the altar; and that the

“Contest of Endurance” was a brutal exaggeration of the old practice,

due to the late and artificial revival of the Lycurgean discipline. It

certainly justifies, in part, the contemptuous tone in which

Philostratus speaks of Spartan athletics.

If Sparta took little part in the great competitions, she had her own

games and her own competitions. One of these, the Leonidaea, was

celebrated in honour of those who fell at Thermopylae. Two inscriptions

have been discovered containing regulations for this festival which it

appears must have been reorganized about the time of Nerva.[277] It was

a yearly festival, and only Spartans were allowed to compete. This is

perhaps the reason why the programme contained the pankration, an event

for which no Spartan might enter at other festivals. The most

interesting inscriptions are those referring to certain games in which

teams of Spartan boys competed. The late Mr. Kenneth Freeman, in his

book, _The Schools of Hellas_, maintained that the prototype of the

English public school system was to be found in the Spartan system of

education. Certainly the Spartan games resemble our English games more

closely than any other games of which we know in the ancient world. The

game of Platanistas was played on an island surrounded by a ditch,

between two teams of boys who, entering the ground by bridges at either

end, strove by fighting, hitting, kicking, and biting, to drive their

opponents into the water. But for the absence of the ball, this game

bears considerable resemblance to the primitive football scrimmage

before any of the existing rules were introduced, and, as we shall see,

ball games were of considerable importance at Sparta. The game of

Platanistas, like the scourging, may have had its origin in some ritual

practice denoted by the sacrifice of a boar, but in the time of

Pausanias it was certainly played in the form described.

A series of inscriptions, all with one exception dating from the time of

the Antonines, commemorate victories won by teams of ball-players at

some yearly competition.[278] The name σφαιρεῖς was given to Spartan

youths in their first year of manhood. The competitions took place in

the Dromos under the direction of the Bideoi, a board of five officials

responsible for the management of the Platanistas and other ephebic

games. The teams represented the local districts of Sparta called the

Obes, and it seems probable that the expenses connected with the team

were provided by a local obe official, the διαβετής, who is mentioned in

the inscriptions. Each team was under a captain called the πρέσβυς, but

the number of members in a team cannot be decided owing to the

mutilation of the inscriptions. It seems not to have been less than

fifteen. The competition was arranged on the tournament system, for

several inscriptions record the fact that the winning team had not drawn

a bye. Unfortunately, we have no clue to the manner of playing the game.

A yet more numerous group of inscriptions found in the Artemisium, and

belonging mostly to the same period, consists of dedications to Artemis

in honour of victories won by teams of young boys in certain musical and

athletic competitions.[279] The competitors seem to be mostly about the

age of ten, the age denoted by the term μικιζόμενοι, and each team was

under a captain, βοαγός, chosen perhaps for family reasons, who held the

title for life. There seem, however, to have been similar competitions

for older boys, for one of the inscriptions commemorates a βοαγός whose

team was successful in a boys’ competition and also in a competition for

youths of twenty (εἴρενες). Two musical contests are mentioned, called,

respectively, Μῶα and Κελῆα, the precise nature of which cannot be

determined. The third competition bears the name Καθθηρατόριν, which

seems to describe some rough game resembling the hunting of wild beasts,

perhaps some such game as prisoner’s base. The victor was crowned with

bay and received as a prize a sickle which was affixed to the inscribed

tablet and dedicated to Artemis. The presence of musical competitions

suggests that the narrowness of Spartan education has been perhaps

exaggerated by Greek historians. Much of our knowledge of Sparta is

derived from the accounts of her enemies.

In spite of all these outward signs of athletic life, the writers of

this period leave us in no doubt as to the real character of the

athletic revival. We are no longer forced to draw what inferences we can

from the doubtful evidence of casual allusions; we possess in the works

of Plutarch, Galen, and Philostratus definite treatises on physical

culture and gymnastic. Different as is the point of view of these

authors, they agree in condemning the athletics of their day, and prove

beyond possibility of doubt how far from realization was the old ideal

set forth by Lucian and Dion of Prusa. That old ideal, in which the

culture of body and of mind went hand in hand, was inseparable from the

ideal of free citizenship that existed when every citizen was both

soldier and politician, and when to develop mind and body to the full

extent of which each was capable was a duty that the citizen owed to the

state. All this had long been changed; war was now the business of paid

professional soldiers, politics of the imperial government. The

individual, thrown back on self, had no other interest but personal

profit and enjoyment. Speculative and mystical philosophy and religion

taught men to despise the body, and as a consequence the training of the

body no longer maintained its importance in education. Gymnastic,

deprived of its proper province in education, found itself confined to

the training of professional athletes, who developed the body but

neglected the mind. But as life became more sedentary and less active

the claims of the body reasserted themselves: hunting was impossible

except for the few, games were of little importance in most places,

hence there arose a need for artificial exercise, and the need was

supplied by the medical gymnastic which aimed at producing health. The

Romans, though they despised athletics, realized the importance of

exercise for maintaining health. The bath and massage were essential

parts of this gymnastic, and the exercises prescribed included walking,

gentle running, jumping up and down, the use of halteres as dumb-bells,

throwing the diskos and the javelin. Health-culture has its use for men

who lead a sedentary, artificial life, but it is not athletics; neither

is physical training or gymnastics, to use the word in its restricted

modern sense—invaluable as such training is in education of the young,

especially in thickly populated cities. But health-culture and

gymnastics lack the moral value which friendly rivalry gave once to

Greek athletics and gives to-day to the games of our public schools.

Professional athletics equally lack this moral value; for when

livelihood depends on success, rivalry ceases to be friendly, and the

door is opened for corruption. Both health-culture and professionalism

are poles removed from the true Greek ideal of athletics.

Plutarch’s opinion about the athletics of his day is evident from many

passages in his Lives, to which reference has already been made. His

tract on the Preservation of Health, intended as it is chiefly for the

ordinary, middle-aged, business man, hardly concerns us here except so

far as it continually condemns by implication the artificial and

unhealthy training to which athletes were subjected. Galen and

Philostratus are so little known to the ordinary reader, and their works

are so important, that some account of them is indispensable.

Born at Pergamum in A.D. 130, Galen studied philosophy and medicine at

Alexandria, Smyrna, and Corinth. At Alexandria he was appointed

physician to the school of gladiators. At the age of thirty-four he came

to Rome, where he became the friend and physician of the Emperor Marcus

Aurelius, but after a few years he returned to his native land. His wide

experience of men and countries, his knowledge of medicine and anatomy,

his breadth of mind and fearless love of truth make his judgment of

special value. He wrote numerous works on Health, but the two which are

of most importance to us here are his essay on “Exercise with the Small

Ball,” a masterly statement of the true principles of exercise, and his

“Exhortation to the Arts,” an attack on professional athletics.

The best of all exercises, he says in his treatise on Ball-play, are

those which combine bodily exertion with mental recreation, such as

hunting and ball-play. But ball-play has this advantage over hunting

that its cheapness puts it within reach of the very poorest, while even

the busiest man can find time for it. Moreover, it can be practised with

any degree of violence or moderation, at all times and in all

conditions. It exercises every part of the body, legs, hands, and

eyesight alike, and at the same time gives pleasure to the mind. In

contrast with athletic exercises, which make men slow or produce

one-sided development, ball-play produces strength and activity, and

therefore trains all those qualities which are most valuable for a

soldier. Finally, it is free from dangers, and does not expose the

player to all those accidents which too often leave the wrestler, “like

the Homeric Litai, either halt, or distorted, or altogether bereft of

some limb.” The practice of games of ball is of particular interest in

view of the importance which they possessed at Sparta. These games must

have varied in character almost as much as those with which we are

familiar to-day, and no better defence of such games has ever been

written, though we may doubt whether Galen would have approved of the

extent to which they are carried in the present day.

The ostensible object of the “Exhortation” is to urge men to devote

themselves to some art or profession which will last them all their

life; but the real subject of the discourse is whether athletics

deserves the title of an art or profession. τέχνη is defined as having

for its aim “the improvement of life,” and therefore there can be no art

in tumbling or walking the tight-rope. Does the athlete’s life benefit

the athlete himself or the state? To this question Galen replies

emphatically, “No.” “The mind is higher than the body, for the mind we

share with the gods, the body with the animals. In the blessings of the

mind athletes have no share. Beneath their mass of flesh and blood their

souls are stifled as in a sea of mud. Nor do they enjoy the best

blessings even of the body. Neglecting the old rule of health, which

prescribes moderation in all things, they spend their lives in

over-exercising, over-eating, over-sleeping, like pigs. Hence they

seldom live to old age, and if they do, they are crippled and liable to

all sorts of disease. They have not health nor have they beauty. Even

those that are naturally well-proportioned become fat and bloated; their

faces are often shapeless and unsightly, owing to the wounds received in

boxing or the pankration. They lose their eyes and their teeth, and

their limbs are strained. Even their vaunted strength is useless. They

can dig and plough, but they cannot fight. They cannot endure heat and

cold, nor, like Heracles, wear one garment summer and winter, go unshod

and sleep on the open ground: in all this they are weaker than new-born

babes.” Such is the picture which Galen draws of the professional

athletes of his day, most of whom, as we have seen, were boxers and

wrestlers; and we can judge of the truth of the picture from the mosaics

in the baths of Caracalla, where we see represented, in all their

brutality and coarseness, the portraits of those professional

prize-fighters and athletes whom the degraded and unathletic mob and

court of Rome delighted to honour (Fig. 23).[280] There they stand with

their clumsy, ill-proportioned bodies, their scarred and mutilated

faces, their small and brainless heads rendered yet more hideous by the

top-knot (cirrus) in which their scanty hair is tied. It is the last

stage in the decline of athletics, which had begun centuries earlier in

the exaggerated honours paid to mere bodily strength, to that lower

nature which man shares with the animals, and in which man must remain

the inferior of the animals. Galen ends his argument by pressing home

this lesson in a parable, in which he imagines an Olympia to which the

heralds have summoned all the animals to compete. There man would not

win a single event. The horse would win the long race, the hare the

short race, the deer the diaulos. None of the successors of Heracles

could compete with the lion or the elephant. And I expect, says he, that

the bull will win the crown for boxing, and the donkey in a kicking

match will carry off the crown. Yes, and in an elaborate history, donkey

will record that “once he defeated man in the pankration, and that it

was the twenty-and-first Olympiad when Brayer was victorious.”

[Illustration: Fig. 23. Professional boxer, from mosaic in Thermae of

Caracalla. Lateran.]

The athletes of the second century must at least be credited with a

certain amount of brute strength, but in the generation which succeeded

Galen even their strength fell off, if we may believe the statement of

Philostratus, who wrote in the first half of the third century. His work

on the art of gymnastic reads like an answer to Galen’s attack on

athletics, and is marked by a strong bias against the medical

profession, whom he holds responsible for enervating athletics by the

introduction of ridiculous and effeminate rules of diet.[281] By

gymnastic, he understands the art of training athletes, which in

opposition to Galen he describes as an art inferior to no other and akin

to the arts of the doctor and paidotribes. The latter is concerned

merely with actual exercises and movements, while the trainer requires a

knowledge of the human body which may enable him to prescribe in each

case the diet and training necessary to correct any defect. Thus the

gymnastes cures by exercise and massage diseases for which the doctor

employs potions, plasters, and fomentations. The decline in the

athlete’s physique Philostratus ascribes to a vicious system of training

due in the first instance to the quackery of doctors. The

valetudinarianism of the second century had produced, as it always does,

a host of impostors with quack systems and rules for health, some of

which were imported into athletics. Medicine, says Philostratus, has

pampered athletics, and rendered athletes dainty and luxurious. They are

told to remain seated, stuffed with food, for a long time before taking

exercise. Their diet consists of seasoned breads, of fish, and pork.

Different kinds of fish are credited with different qualities; their

pork must come from pigs fed only on cornel nuts and acorns and not

reared in the neighbourhood of the sea or of rivers. We all know this

sort of fad; our own age has produced by the score systems no less

absurd. The inventors of such systems always insist that their patients

must follow their rules without deviating from them a hairbreadth. So

the Greek trainers developed hard-and-fast systems of training which

they applied indifferently to all alike, to boys as well as men, without

any regard to the individual’s needs. Boys trained on the same

principles as men lost all the buoyancy and activity natural to their

age and became lazy, heavy, and sluggish. The most absurd of these

systems was that known as the Tetrad, a scheme of work for four days, by

which the athlete’s life was regulated. Each day had its own work. The

first day’s work, consisting of light and quick movements, “prepared”

the athlete; the second “extended” him and tested all his powers of

endurance; the third “relaxed” him by means of gentle movements; the

fourth, consisting apparently of movements of defence, left him in a

middle state.

Such is the somewhat obscure account given of the tetrad.[282] It was

intended clearly for pankratiasts and boxers who practically formed the

whole class of professional athletes. The principle of the gradual

increase and diminution of work on which it is founded is absolutely

sound, and is one of the essential principles of the “Ling” system of

physical training. The fault lay in the ignorant and pedantic

application of the principle. No deviation from its routine was

permitted, and no account was taken of the individual’s actual

condition. Philostratus tells a story of a contemporary athlete,

Gerenius, who three days after winning an Olympic victory celebrated his

success by a banquet at which he ate and drank things to which he was

not accustomed. The next day, suffering from indigestion and want of

sleep, he repaired to the gymnasium as usual, and being put through a

more than usually severe course of exercise by his irritated trainer,

actually died under the treatment. The tetrads, says Philostratus, have

ruined all athletic training; and the purpose of his book is to show the

absurdity of such artificial systems, and by introducing sounder

principles of athletics to restore the glory of the stadium. The main

principle which he inculcates is the necessity of a thorough knowledge

of the human body, and of suiting the training to the individual’s

requirements. He discusses at length the various physical qualities

which are best for different sports,—the qualities of the boxer, the

wrestler, or the runner,—and gives a fanciful classification of the

different types of athletes, the lion type, the eagle type, the bear

type, the plank type, the rope type! He has a profound reverence for the

traditions of Olympia, and regards the Eleans as the sole repositories

of athletic lore, accepting all that they tell him with childlike

simplicity. With much common sense he mingles an amount of rhetoric and

fancifulness such as we should expect from the credulous biographer of

Apollonius of Tyana, which seriously diminishes the practical value of

his work.[283]

With Philostratus our history draws to a close. The Olympic records of

Africanus end with Ol. 249 (A.D. 217); the last victor recorded on

Olympic Inscriptions is the herald Valerius Eclectus of Sinope, who won

the heralds’ competition in Ol. 256 and the three succeeding Olympiads;

the lists of Olympic officials cease almost at the same time. The Roman

empire was now engaged in a desperate struggle with hordes of invading

Goths, and in the struggle the Greeks were once more called upon to

fight for their country. The Goths were repulsed, but the silence which

ensues tells but too clearly of the effects of their ravages. The end

was close at hand. Hitherto the Greeks had preserved some semblance of

political liberty; but the policy of centralization and unification

introduced by Constantine stamped out the last vestiges of the city

state. The ancient festivals of Greece were the stronghold of paganism,

and therefore recognized as the greatest obstacle of Christianity, now

adopted as the Imperial religion. Delphi was dismantled by Constantine,

and its treasures removed to adorn his new-built Hippodrome at

Constantinople, and in the time of Julian its site was desolate. The

Olympic festival was abolished by the emperor Theodosius, though whether

by Theodosius I. or Theodosius II. is not certain. The generally

received tradition is that it was abolished in 393 by Theodosius I. The

emperor had set himself to sweep away all vestiges of paganism, but in

390 he had incurred the displeasure of the all-powerful St. Ambrose by

his cruel massacre of the Thessalonians, and had been forced to do

public penance for his sin. Was the edict that abolished the Olympia a

token of his new-born zeal for righteousness? Be this as it may, the

last Olympic victor whose name we know was the Armenian prince

Varazdates, who won the boxing-match in Ol. 291 (A.D. 385). Varazdates

traced his descent from the Arsacidae, and was subsequently placed by

Theodosius on the throne of Armenia. There is a pathetic irony in the

circumstance that, at the festival linked beyond all others with the

cause of Hellenism at war with barbarism, the last-recorded victor came

not from Hellas but from the land of her hereditary foes.

Footnote 235:

Tacitus, _Annals_, xiv. 20. For the attitude of the Romans towards

athletics _vide_ Wilkins, _Roman Education_, pp. 31-33.

Footnote 236:

_Ol. Ins._ 191-210.

Footnote 237:

Africanus states that the discontinuance of these events lasted from

Ol. 178 to Ol. 194, when the chariot-race, after being “long

prohibited,” was won by Germanicus. The inaccuracy of this statement

is proved by the discovery of an earlier inscription recording the

victory of Tiberius Claudius Nero. _Ol. Ins._ 220-221.

Footnote 238:

_Julius Caesar_, c. 39.

Footnote 239:

_Octavianus_, c. 45.

Footnote 240:

_Ol. Ins._ 59-141.

Footnote 241:

No satisfactory explanation of this rule has been offered. It

certainly does not seem to have been always observed in earlier times.

For example, Xenombrotus, _Ol. Ins._ 170, seems to have set up a

portrait statue of himself for a single victory in the horse-race.

Footnote 242:

Louis Dyer, “The Olympian Council House,” in _Harvard Studies_, vol.

xix. pp. 36 ff.

Footnote 243:

_Ol. Ins._ 56; cp. Mie, _Quaestiones Agonisticae_, p. 43.

Footnote 244:

Krause, _Olympia_, p. 203.

Footnote 245:

_I.G._ xiv. 739, πρωτελληνοδίκης ἐν Ἐφέσῳ καὶ ἐν Σμύρνη.

Footnote 246:

Curtius, _Ol._ Text, i. 52; Krause, _Olympia_, p. 207.

Footnote 247:

Suetonius, _Nero_, c. 23 ff.

Footnote 248:

Dion of Prusa, _Or._ xxxi.

Footnote 249:

_Anth. Pal._ xi. 75. The translation is taken from the “Dissertation

on the Olympic Games,” in a translation of the _Odes of Pindar_, by

Gilbert West (London, 1753), vol. ii. p. 92.

Footnote 250:

_Or._ vii. Διογένης ἢ περὶ ἀρετῆς; _Or._ viii. Διογένης ἢ Ἰσθμικός.

Footnote 251:

_Gym._ 45.

Footnote 252:

Paus. v. 21.

Footnote 253:

_Or._ xxix., xxx.

Footnote 254:

Dio Cassius, lii. 30.

Footnote 255:

Suetonius, _Octavianus_ 45.

Footnote 256:

Krause, _Gym._ p. 131; _I.G._ xiv. 1102-1110.

Footnote 257:

_I.G._ xiv. 1054, 1055.

Footnote 258:

Mie, _Quaestiones Agonisticae_, p. 46.

Footnote 259:

_I.G._ xiv. 746.

Footnote 260:

_Ol. Ins._ 436.

Footnote 261:

_B.S.A._ xii. p. 452.

Footnote 262:

_Historia Numorum_, p. 357.

Footnote 263:

_Ol. Ins._ 150-153.

Footnote 264:

_Ol. Ins._ 225.

Footnote 265:

_I.G._ xiv. 1102-1104.

Footnote 266:

The word ἀσυνέξωστος recalls the feats recorded of Milo and other

athletes, whom no one could move from the place where they had taken

their stand.

Footnote 267:

Such I take to be the meaning of the words μήτ’ ἐπεξελθὼν μήτε

παραιτησάμενος. But the precise meaning of this and the following

phrases μήτε κατὰ χάριν βασιλικήν ἀγῶνα ἔχων μηδὲ καινὸν ἀγῶνα

νεικήσας is hard to determine. ἐπεξελθόντα bears this meaning in the

Iobacchi Inscription. Roberts and Gardner, _Epigraphy_ ii. 91, l. 92.

The antithesis of παραιτησάμενος would rather suggest the rendering

“seeking a contest,” _e.g._ “pot-hunting.”

Footnote 268:

Pindar, _Ol._ vii., ix.

Footnote 269:

_Ol. Ins._ 54, 436. Both inscriptions belong to the close of the first

century A.D. In two earlier inscriptions of the time of Augustus (53,

366) the distinction between οἱ Ἕλληνες and ἡ οἰκουμένη is still

maintained.

Footnote 270:

The Alexandrine Olympia were probably founded in A.D. 176 by Marcus

Aurelius, _I.G._ xiv. 1102.

Footnote 271:

_I.G._ xiv. 746.

Footnote 272:

πρῶτος τῶν ἀπ’ αἰῶνος πυκτῶν, _I.G._ iii. 128. Cp. πρωτοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς

οἰκουμένης, _C.I.G._ 2723.

Footnote 273:

_N.H._ vii. 20; cp. ii. 73.

Footnote 274:

_Ol. Ins._ 356.

Footnote 275:

The matter of this section is taken from the reports of the _B.S.A._,

vols. xii., xiii.

Footnote 276:

_B.S.A._ xii. 314.

Footnote 277:

_B.S.A._ xii. 445 ff. Another Spartan festival mentioned in

inscriptions is the Euryclea founded by Eurycles, a rich and powerful

friend of Herod the Great, _C.I.G._ 1378, 1389.

Footnote 278:

_B.S.A._ x. 63, xii. 212.

Footnote 279:

_B.S.A._ xii. 352, xiii. 182.

Footnote 280:

The whole mosaic is published by Secchi in his _Musaico Antoniniano_,

and a large portion of it in Baumeister’s Denkmäler, Fig. 174.

Footnote 281:

Dr. Jüthner, in the introduction to his _Philostratus_, shows that

there was a long-standing quarrel between doctors and trainers. The

doctors resented the encroachments of the trainers on their domain,

and regarded them as ignorant and unscientific quacks.

Footnote 282:

_Vide_ Jüthner, _op. cit._ pp. 285 ff.

Footnote 283:

I am glad to find my estimate of Philostratus in substantial agreement

with that of Dr. Jüthner. Philostratus had, as he shows, no technical

knowledge of gymnastic. He was a rhetorician, writing an essay on what

was evidently a burning question, and, like a modern journalist, he

naturally derived his knowledge from one of the many technical

treatises on gymnastic which existed, and as naturally made mistakes

(_op. cit._ pp. 97-107).

CHAPTER IX

THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL

[Illustration: Fig. 24. Staters of Elis, in British Museum (enlarged).

Fifth century. (_a_) Head of nymph Olympia. (_b_) Victory seated, with

palm; olive twig below.]

Many of the details and regulations connected with the Olympic festival

have been already mentioned in previous chapters, where the reader can

readily find them by consulting the index. In the present chapter we

shall attempt to give some account of the festival itself, as it existed

in the fifth century. First we must premise that the details of the

festival are involved in the greatest obscurity, largely owing to the

fact that the bulk of our information is derived from late writers whose

evidence as to what took place five or six hundred years before their

time must always be received with a certain amount of reserve. Still,

religious conservatism was nowhere stronger than at Olympia, and much

that is recorded of the second century of our era existed with little

difference in the fifth century B.C. Therefore, though many details

remain obscure we can feel fairly certain as to the general outline of

the festival.

The festival took place at the second or third full moon after the

summer solstice, in the months of Apollonios and Parthenios

respectively.[284] Its date was fixed by a cycle of eight years or

ninety-nine-months, the divergence between the year of twelve lunar

months and the solar year being rectified by the insertion of three

intercalary months, one in the first four years, two in the second. Thus

it fell alternately after forty-nine or fifty lunar months. The

fourteenth day of the month seems to have been reckoned as the day of

the full moon, though the actual full moon varied from the 14th to 15th.

This day must, from the earliest time, have been the central day of the

festival.[285] The Greek day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, and as

Greek custom demanded that sacrifice to the Olympian gods should be

offered in the morning, before mid-day,[286] it follows that the great

sacrifice to Zeus was offered on the morning after the full moon. The

festival lasted five days. According to Herodotus, a historian of the

fifth century, the five days’ festival was ordained by Heracles.[287]

Certainly it lasted five days in Pindar’s time.[288] Scholiasts of

various dates, while affirming that it lasted five days, state that it

began on the 10th or 11th and lasted till the 15th or 16th.[289] The

discrepancy may be due to the variation in the date of the full moon

already noticed, more probably to the addition to the festival of one or

more preliminary days necessitated in later times by the multiplication

of competitions and religious ceremonies. To these days the preliminary

business of the festival may have been transferred, but they were not

reckoned as part of the actual festival. The seventh ode of Bacchylides,

written in honour of Laches of Ceos, who won the boys’ foot-race in 452

B.C., proves beyond doubt that in this year the festival ended on the

sixteenth day. If then the festival lasted five days, the fourteenth,

the day of the full moon, was the central day of the whole festival. The

recognition of the importance of this fact is due to Ludwig Weniger,

whose conclusions I have in the main adopted in the following pages.

These five days included sacrifices, sports, and feasts. Sacrifices and

feasts, both private and public, formed part of each day’s programme,

especially of the first and last days, which must have been largely, if

not entirely, occupied by such ceremonies. How many days were devoted to

the actual sports we do not know. A scholiast states that they took

place on five days,[290] but the statement is unsupported and certainly

was not true of earlier times. The growth of the programme must have

necessitated readjustment from time to time, and an extension of the

time allotted to competitions. Such an extension took place, according

to Pausanias, in Ol. 77, though it did not, of course, take effect till

Ol. 78. “The order of the competition,” he says,[291] “existing in our

time—which is that the sacrifice to the god is offered after the

pentathlon and the horse-race—this order was introduced in the 77th

Olympiad. Previous to this date, events both for men and horses took

place on the same day. But on this occasion the competitors in the

pankration were kept on into the night, not having been called in time,

and the delay was caused by the horse-races and still more by the

pentathlon.” This passage gives no countenance to the statement commonly

made that at this time the length of the festival, or the number of days

allotted to sport was suddenly extended from one day to five. Nor does

it prove that before this date _all_ events for men took place on the

same day as events for horses, and that after this date _none_ did. If

the literal meaning of the words is pressed, it may be argued, and

indeed has been argued, that from this date a separate day was assigned

to the horse-races, and a separate day to the pentathlon. Unfortunately,

we have a definite statement by Xenophon[292] proving that in Ol. 104

the horse-races preceded the pentathlon on the same day. Those who

assert that they took place on different days are forced[293] to reject

the evidence of a contemporary writer, who lived for years in the

neighbourhood of Olympia, in favour of a doubtful interpretation of an

obscure and ill-expressed passage written by a traveller who owed his

information to a visit paid to Olympia some five hundred years later.

The alternative is to assume that after Xenophon’s time a separate day

was assigned to the horse-races, presumably at the time when the

programme of these events was raised to its full complement of six. But

this is a mere supposition. All that we can definitely assert is that,

after Ol. 77, the pentathlon and horse-races were transferred to the

_day before the sacrifice to the god_.

What is “the sacrifice to the god”? and when did it take place? On the

answer to these questions depends the interpretation of the passage of

Pausanias, and the reconstruction of the order of the festival. There

can be little doubt that the sacrifice was the official offering of a

hecatomb to Olympian Zeus by the Eleans.[294] It is generally assumed

that this took place on the 16th, the last day of the festival, and it

is certainly natural to connect it with the official banquet in the

Prytaneum which took place on the evening of that day. This arrangement

naturally appeals to a modern sentiment which demands a climax. But the

Greeks had not this sentiment, and there is a mass of evidence to prove

that the usual order of a Greek festival was—sacrifice, sports,

feast.[295] That this was the ancient order at Olympia is clear from two

odes in which Pindar describes the inauguration of the games by

Heracles. In the eleventh _Olympian_ we read how Heracles, returning

victorious from Cleonae, marked out the Altis, and paid honour to the

river Alpheus and the great gods. Then, having first offered sacrifice

of his spoil, he ordained the games, and in the evening the precinct

resounded, as in Pindar’s time, “with songs of festal glee.” So, too, in

the third ode, first he sanctifies the altars, then he ordains the

games. The scholiast, commenting on this ode, explains carefully that

the full moon came first, then followed the sacrifice, and “the rest of

the competitions.” If the games followed the sacrifice, the sacrifice

cannot have taken place on the 16th, but rather on the 14th, the morning

after the full moon. In speaking of “the rest of the competitions” he is

thinking, of course, of the order of the festival in his own time, and

this phrase is a strong argument in favour of the views of Weniger.

The meaning of Pausanias is now clear, and there is no need with modern

editors to assume that the passage is hopelessly corrupt. Previous to

Ol. 78 all the sports followed the sacrifice, mostly on the 15th; but I

see no reason why some should not have taken place on the afternoon of

the 14th, or even on the 16th. The preceding days were occupied with

preliminary business and various religious ceremonies. In Ol. 78 the

horse-races and the pentathlon were transferred to the 13th, the day

before the sacrifice. Some of the preliminary business may at the same

time have been shifted to the 11th day. If at a subsequent date separate

days were allotted to the horse-races and pentathlon, or if, as Weniger

suggests, the boys’ events were after the introduction of the boys’

pankration shifted to the 12th, the 10th day may also have been required

for the preliminaries; but there is not sufficient evidence for either

of these changes.

The same uncertainty prevails as to the order of the events, and still

more as to their distribution into days. The attempts which have been

made to prove that the order was the same as that preserved in two

fragments of the Olympic register must, in my opinion, be regarded as

failures. The order for the fifth century as given in the Oxyrhynchus

papyrus is as follows:—(1) Stade-race, (2) Diaulos, (3) Dolichos, (4)

Pentathlon, (5) Wrestling, (6) Boxing, (7) Pankration, (8) Boys’

foot-race, (9) Boys’ wrestling, (10) Boys’ boxing, (11) Race in armour,

(12) Chariot-race, (13) Horse-race. The list omits the mule chariot-race

(ἀπήνη) and the race for mares, which were discontinued after 444 B.C.

Phlegon’s list for Ol. 177 (72 B.C.) agrees with this except that the

boys’ pankration is added after the other events for boys, and the four

new equestrian events after the horse-race in their order of

introduction.

The principle adopted in this list is obvious. The competition is

divided into athletic and equestrian. The athletic part is divided into

events for men and events for boys. Each division is arranged in the

order, real or fictitious, in which the various events were introduced.

The only exception is the race in armour, which is placed after the

boys’ events, owing to its late introduction, its peculiar character,

and the fact that it was the last event on the programme. The

arrangement is perfectly simple and logical, but it does not follow that

it was the order adopted in the sports. We have seen that in 468 B.C.

(Ol. 78) a change was made in the order, and we know that the

Hellanodicae had power to alter the order under special circumstances.

In Ol. 142, at the request of Cleitomachus, who was competing both in

boxing and in the pankration, they placed the pankration before the

boxing.[296]

From the general uncertainty a few facts emerge:—

1. Plutarch definitely states that at Olympia the boys’ competitions

took place before any of the men’s,[297] and there is no reason for

disbelieving his statement. In framing a register it may be natural to

place the most important events first; in arranging a programme it would

be a ludicrous anti-climax to do so.

2. The foot-races all came on the same day, and probably before any

other of the competitions for men. Their order is doubtful. Pausanias in

his account of Polites[298] implies that he won the dolichos first, then

the stade-race, lastly the diaulos. But practical considerations make

this unlikely. Unless a considerable time elapsed between the events it

is hard to imagine a three-miler proceeding at once to win a 200 yards

and a quarter! Learned writers who have discussed the question all seem

to have forgotten that in the stade race and perhaps in the diaulos

there was a round of preliminary heats, which may well have complicated

the order.[299]

3. Wrestling, boxing, and the pankration took place on the same day and

in the same order.[300]

4. The race in armour was the last event of the whole programme.[301] It

seems possible from the words of Philostratus that it came on the very

last day of the festival.

5. The pentathlon followed the horse-races, and in Xenophon’s time took

place on the same day, the day preceding the sacrifice. Previous to Ol.

78 these events may have followed the foot-races.

6. When the competitions for heralds and trumpeters were introduced in

Ol. 96, they naturally came off on the first day, seeing that the

winners had the privilege of officiating at the festival.

The horse-races and the men’s foot-races took place in the morning; the

pentathlon, and the heavy events, boxing, wrestling, and pankration,

after mid-day.[302] The pentathlon and horse-races, as we know, were in

Xenophon’s time on the same day, _i.e._ the 13th. The foot-races and

heavy events for men also presumably occupied one whole day, the

15th.[303] There was certainly no time on this day for the boys’ events,

which were not sufficiently numerous to occupy a whole day. We may

conjecture that they took place on the afternoon of the 14th. We arrive

therefore at the following probable arrangement for the period beginning

468 B.C.:—

Chariot and horse-races 2nd day of festival (the

13th).

Pentathlon

Boys’ events afternoon of the 3rd day (the

14th).

Foot-races for men

Wrestling, boxing, pankration 4th day of festival (the

15th).

Race in armour

It is uncertain when and where the victors were crowned.[304] The only

definite pronouncement on the point is that of a late scholiast, who

states that the prizes were distributed on the sixteenth day.[305] In

support of this statement is quoted the commencement of the seventh ode

of Bacchylides, unfortunately much mutilated, which appears to connect

the sixteenth day “with judgment for speed of foot and strength of

limb.” But it may be noted that the verb ἐγκρίνω here used, like the

ἁγνὰ κρίσις of which Pindar speaks, does not necessarily imply the

prize-giving, but would be equally applicable to the actual

competitions, or to the rejoicings and feast in which all the victors

took part on the sixteenth day. At the same time, this passage of

Bacchylides may well have given rise to the scholiast’s note on Pindar.

On the other hand, there are certain allusions which seem to indicate

that the victors were crowned by the Hellanodicas immediately after each

event. This is certainly the natural inference from the story told by

Pausanias of Apollonius, who having been disqualified by the

Hellanodicae in the boxing for arriving too late, bound on the boxing

thongs, and made a violent attack on Heracleides, to whom the

Hellanodicae had already awarded the crown, and who had the olive

already on his head.[306] Again, Ageus who won the long-distance race in

328 B.C. ran straight home to Argos and reported the news of his victory

the same day.[307] Surely he must have received the crown first.

Otherwise he must have returned that same night from Argos to Olympia in

order to receive his prize the next day! Lastly, the picture described

by Philostratus of the death of Arrhichion, who died in the moment of

victory in the pankration, represents the Hellanodicas in the act of

crowning him.[308] The stories themselves are fanciful, and their

evidence is by no means conclusive, but, agreeing as they do with the

undoubted practice of the heroic age,[309] it seems to me probable that

the victor received his crown immediately after his victory.

Let us now try to form some idea of the Olympic festival in the middle

of the fifth century, the moment of Olympia’s greatest glory, when

Libon’s temple had been completed, when the stadium and hippodrome had

been laid out, when Pindar and Bacchylides were still singing the

praises of the victors, and Myron and Polycleitus were immortalizing

them in bronze. Some details will be inserted for the sake of

convenience which may belong to a later date, but in such cases the fact

will be noted.

Some weeks before the actual festival the three truce-bearers of Zeus

(σπονδοφόροι), wearing crowns of olive and bearing heralds’ staves, set

forth from Elis to proclaim the sacred truce to all the states of Greece

and bid them to the festival. The truce began from the moment that they

left Elis, and lasted probably three months. During this time all

competitors and visitors on their way to or from the festival enjoyed

its protection, and none might bear arms within the sacred

territory.[310]

Competitors were obliged to give in their names by a fixed date. If they

failed to do so, they rendered themselves liable to a fine or even to

disqualification.[311]

In later times—we do not know when the custom was introduced—they

underwent thirty days’ training at Elis under the supervision of the

Hellanodicae, who had themselves undergone ten months training for their

duties. During this period, and during the festival itself, it seems

probable that they were lodged and boarded by the authorities of the

festival. The training at Elis was noted for its severity: the

Hellanodicae exacted absolute obedience to their orders, and punished

all infraction with the rod.[312] They tested the capabilities of the

athletes, rejecting those who were not fit; they satisfied themselves as

to their parentage and claim to compete; above all, they had opportunity

for judging the claims of boys and colts to compete as such.[313]

Philostratus tells us that at the close of the training they called

together the competitors and addressed them[314] in words which well

illustrate the high standard which Olympia maintained even under the

Empire:—

“If you have exercised yourself in a manner worthy of the Olympic

festival, if you have been guilty of no slothful or ignoble act, go on

with a good courage. You who have not so practised, go whither you

will.”

The whole company quitted Elis a few days before the festival. First

came the Hellanodicae and other officials, then the athletes and their

trainers, the horses and chariots, their owners, jockeys, and drivers.

They went by the sacred way, which, skirting the mountains, followed the

coast-line till it entered the valley of the Alpheus. The journey lasted

two days. At the fountain of Piera, which marked the boundary between

Elis and Olympia, a halt was made, a pig was sacrificed and other rites

of purification were performed.[315] The night was passed at Letrini,

and the next day the whole procession wound up the valley to

Olympia.[316]

Meanwhile, visitors of all classes were flocking to Olympia from every

part of the Greek world. Some came to see, some to be seen; some for

pleasure, some for profit. Tyrants and statesmen, poets and

philosophers, peasants and fishermen, all met at Olympia. The whole

Greek world was represented from Marseilles to the Black Sea, from

Thrace to Africa. The country folk came on foot along the valleys of the

Peloponnese, the richer classes in chariots or on horseback. The river

Alpheus was still navigable, at its mouth was a small port, and tyrants

and merchant-princes from the West could sail in rich barges up to

Olympia itself. Particularly magnificent were the official embassies

from the various states, each of them anxious to outshine the rest. For

all this crowd there can have been little accommodation or provision at

Olympia. Competitors and members of the embassies may have been lodged

at the public expense. The rest had to provide for themselves. Some

slept in tents or booths of wood in the plain around the Altis, the

majority slept on the ground in the open air—no great hardship in summer

at Olympia. There was no town, or even village near, and the needs of

the assembly must have been supplied by merchants, hucksters, pedlars,

who brought in provisions from the country and set up rough stalls and

booths such as may be seen to-day at any local fair.

The first day of the festival, perhaps the day preceding the festival,

was devoted to preliminary business and sacrifice. There were no

competitions, except perhaps those for trumpeters and heralds, which

were not introduced till 396 B.C.; they took place near the entrance to

the stadium, the competitors taking their stand upon an altar. It was

probably on this day that the ceremony in the Council Chamber described

by Pausanias took place.[317] There the competitors, their trainers, and

their friends underwent a solemn scrutiny. They took their stand before

the statue of Zeus Horkios, who was represented with the thunderbolt in

his right hand as a warning to evildoers, and there having sacrificed a

pig, they swore on its entrails to use no unfair means to secure

victory, and further, that they had trained for ten months in a manner

worthy of the festival. The ceremony of the oath is represented on a

red-figured kylix in Fig. 132. Next came the turn of the judges who

decided on the eligibility of boys and colts to compete as such. They

swore to give their decisions honestly and without bribes, and not to

reveal the reasons for their decision. Then the final list of entries

was drawn up and published perhaps on a white board (λεύκωμα).[318]

Throughout the day there must have been various sacrifices both public

and private, but little is known of their details. All through the year

there was daily sacrifice at the great altar of Zeus. Sacrifice was

probably offered on this day at the six double altars which Pindar

mentions, and an offering of blood was made on the mound of Pelops.[319]

Competitors and their friends would offer sacrifices and vows at the

altars of the gods or heroes whom they regarded as their patrons, or who

were specially connected with the events in which they were

competing.[320] The superstitious would consult the oracles and

soothsayers as to their chances of success.[321] The crowd of

sight-seers would wander through the Altis admiring the statuary of the

treasuries or Libon’s new-built temple, perhaps listening to some

rhapsodist reciting Homer, or to Herodotus as he read the story of the

Persian wars, or else visiting the workshop to the west of the Altis

where Pheidias was busy on his ivory and gold statue of Zeus. There were

friends, too, to be seen and greeted—friends from distant parts of the

Mediterranean, who after years spent in the colonies had returned to

meet their kinsfolk and acquaintances at Olympia.

The following days were occupied with the sports, on the details of

which we need not dwell. These took place in the stadium, or the

hippodrome, some of them probably in the open space east of the altar of

Zeus. They began early in the morning and lasted all day. Before

daybreak every point of vantage was occupied. There were no seats:

spectators sat or stood on the banks of the stadium, or hippodrome, on

the slopes of the hill of Cronus, on the rows of steps beneath the

treasuries, on every point which commanded a view of the games or

ceremonies. They were bareheaded, and suffered severely from the sun,

and dust, and thirst. Yet nothing could damp their enthusiasm. As they

watched the sports they shouted and cheered on their friends and

favourites; in their excitement they sprang from their seats, waving

their arms, or their clothes, embracing their neighbours in their

joy.[322]

A special entrance was reserved for the Hellanodicae and competitors at

the north-east corner of the Altis. The vaulted tunnel which served for

this purpose in Roman times still exists. Through this the Hellanodicae

entered first, robed in purple, with garlands on their heads, and took

their places on the seats reserved for them.[323] After them came the

competitors, and the herald proclaiming their names asked if any one had

any charge against any of them. Each day’s proceedings were opened by

the herald with a solemn proclamation.[324] Sometimes the Hellanodicas,

or some other distinguished person, delivered an address to the

assembled competitors. Each event in turn was proclaimed by the herald,

together with the names of the competitors, their fathers, and their

cities. Possibly the names were written on a white telegraph board

(λεύκωμα). In the case of any events requiring heats or ties, lots were

drawn in the presence of the Hellanodicae and spectators. The lots

marked with letters of the alphabet were thrown into a silver urn; each

competitor after uttering a prayer to Zeus drew one in turn, holding it

in his hand but not looking at it till all the lots were drawn. Then the

Hellanodicas went round and examined the lots, arranging the heats or

ties accordingly.[325] Each event was started with a blast of the

trumpet, and after each event the herald proclaimed the victor (Fig.

37).

We have seen that the olive crowns were probably presented to the

victors at once. These crowns were made of branches cut from the sacred

olive-tree, “the olive of fair crowns” which stood behind the temple of

Zeus. They were cut with a golden sickle by a boy of pure Greek birth

whose parents were both living, and were placed on a tripod. At the time

of which we are speaking, the old iron tripod had been already replaced

by the ivory and gold table made by Colotes, which was kept in the

temple of Hera.[326] The table was probably set beside the seats of the

Hellanodicae. There, when the herald had proclaimed his name, the victor

advanced, having bound his head with fillets of wool, and the chief

Hellanodicas set on his head the olive crown, and in later times put in

his hand the palm of victory; while the spectators cheered and showered

upon him garlands, flowers, and presents of all sorts. The crowning of

the victor and the showering him with flowers (φυλλοβολία) are depicted

on the interiors of two kylices, in Figs. 25, 26.[327] In the case of a

tie or dead-heat the crown was not awarded, but was dedicated to the

god; hence the phrases ἱερὸν ποιεῖν, ἱερὸν γενέσθαι, _hieram facere_,

are used to express a dead-heat or draw.[328]

[Illustration: Fig. 25. R.-f. kylix. Bibliothèque Nationale, 532.]

[Illustration: Fig. 26. R.-f. kylix. Canino Coll.]

Then in the evening, beneath the brightness of the mid-month moon, the

precinct rang with revelry and song. The victors and their friends in

festal attire, with garlands on their heads, went in glad procession

round the Altis, while crowds of fellow-citizens chanted to the

accompaniment of the flute the old triumphal refrain of

Archilochus,[329] or some new hymn of victory written for the occasion

by Pindar or Bacchylides. The victors wore the crowns which they had

won, but there is no ground for the statement that they dedicated them

to Zeus; rather it seems that they took them home and dedicated them in

the temples of their own cities. The processionals followed by banquets

given by the victors.[330] Alcibiades after his victory in the

chariot-race entertained the whole assembly at a feast, and borrowed for

the occasion all the plate and vessels belonging to the Athenian

theoroi. Anaxilas of Rhegium and his son Leophron celebrated their

victories in like manner. Empedocles of Aetna being a Pythagorean, and

therefore a vegetarian, had an ox made of costly spices, which he

distributed to the spectators. The banquets often lasted all night long,

and in the morning the victors paid their vows and offered sacrifices to

the gods to whom they owed their victories.

The most brilliant of all the ceremonies was the great sacrifice to Zeus

on the morning after the full moon. The victors, the officials and the

representatives of the different states, went in stately procession to

the altar, where a hecatomb of oxen was sacrificed by the Eleans. This

was the opportunity for the theoroi to display their magnificence and

the wealth of their cities. So we can understand the indignation of the

Athenians at Alcibiades[331] when instead of returning to the theoroi

the vessels which he had borrowed for his banquet the evening before, he

used them the next morning for his private offering; so that when a few

hours later the Athenian theoroi took part in the public procession, the

positions were reversed, and the magnificence of the State appeared but

as the reflection of the magnificence of a private citizen.

Of the sacrifices, processions, and rejoicings on the last day of the

festival we know no details save that in the evening all the victors

were entertained at a public banquet in the Prytaneum. The rewards and

honours which they received on their return home have been described in

a previous chapter.

Footnote 284:

L. Weniger, _Clio_, 1905, pp. 1-38.

Footnote 285:

L. Weniger, _Clio_, 1904, pp. 126 ff.

Footnote 286:

_Ib._ p. 127, n. 1.

Footnote 287:

Quoted in Schol. Pindar, _Ol._ v. 6.

Footnote 288:

Pindar, _Ol._ v. 6 ὑπὸ βουθυσίαις ἀέθλων τε πεμπταμέροις ἁμίλλαις. The

reading and interpretation are much disputed. The scholiasts certainly

interpreted πεμπταμέροις “as lasting five days,” and even if the

reading πεμπταμέροις is correct, the occurrence of the form πεμπτάς

for πεμπάσ, and the analogy of forms like ὀγδώκοντα, ἑβδομήκοντα make

this meaning at least possible, while there is considerable evidence

against the rendering “fifth-day contests.” Mie, _Quaestiones

Agonisticae_, p. 29.

Footnote 289:

Schol. Pindar, _Ol._ v. 8, iii. 33.

Footnote 290:

Schol. vet. Pindar, _Ol._ v. 8 πεμπταμέροις ἁμίλλαις· ἐπεὶ ἐπὶ πέντα

ἡμέρασ ῎θγετο αὐτὰ τὰ ἀγωνίσματα.

Footnote 291:

v. 9, 3.

Footnote 292:

_Hellen._ vii. 4.

Footnote 293:

Carl Robert in _Hermes_ xxxv.; C. Gaspar in Dar.-Sagl. _s.v._

“Olympia.” It had been my intention to discuss Robert’s theory in the

_J.H.S._, but I find that nearly all my objections to it have been

anticipated by Frederic Mie in _Philologus_, lx. Mie’s own theory has

in its turn been superseded by Weniger’s, which alone offers a

satisfactory explanation both of Xenophon and of Pausanias.

Footnote 294:

Robert’s theory of the two sacrifices of thanksgiving offered after

the pentathlon and horse-races on the 3rd and 5th days of the festival

is pure fiction, and has been conclusively disproved by Mie, _l.c._

Footnote 295:

_Clio_, 1904, p. 127; Krause, _Olympia_, p. 84.

Footnote 296:

Paus. vi. 15, 5.

Footnote 297:

_Quaest. Symp._ ii. 5.

Footnote 298:

Paus. vi. 13, 3. The same order is twice adopted by Philostratus in

_Gym._ ch. 4 and 32.

Footnote 299:

If the final of the stade-race followed the dolichos, the heats would

naturally precede it, so as to allow competitors a rest between the

heats and the final.

Footnote 300:

Paus. vi. 6, 5; vi. 15, 4.

Footnote 301:

Plut. _Quaest. Symp._ ii. 5, 2; Paus. iii. 14, 3; Phil. _Gym._ 7;

Artemidorus, _Oneirocrit._ i. 65.

Footnote 302:

Paus. vi. 24, 1.

Footnote 303:

Lucian, _Timon_, 50.

Footnote 304:

Robert and Mie hold that the crowns were presented after each event,

Weniger that they were all presented on the 16th.

Footnote 305:

Schol. Pindar, _Ol._ v. 8 τῆς ἑκκαιδεκάτης ἐν ᾖ τὰ ἆθλα ἐδίδοτο. This

is possibly a paraphrase of an earlier scholion on _Ol._ iii. 35 καὶ

τῃ ἑκκαιδεκάτῃ γίνεται ἡ κρίσις.

Footnote 306:

Paus. v. 21, 14.

Footnote 307:

Africanus, 6, 67, R.

Footnote 308:

_Imag._ ii. 6. This passage is particularly important, as the picture

represents the very moment after the contest is over.

Footnote 309:

In Homer the prizes are set at the finish of the race, or beside the

ring, and are awarded immediately afterwards. They are represented

similarly on black-figured vases. The same idea is suggested by the

well-known epigram on Myron’s statue of Ladas, _Anth. Pal._ xvi. 54

πηδήσει τάχα χαλκὸς ἐπὶ στέφος.

Footnote 310:

Weniger, _Clio_, 1905, pp. 184-218.

Footnote 311:

Paus. v. 21. 13, 14. Cp. _Ol. Ins._ 56, l. 20-30, regulations for the

Augustalia at Naples, which were modelled on those of Olympia.

Athletes were required to give in their names to the Agonothetai

thirty days beforehand; if they failed to give full information, they

incurred a fine; if a competitor arrived late, he had to report the

cause to the Agonothetai, and any one might lodge a protest against

him; if found guilty, he was disqualified from competing.

Footnote 312:

Philostr. _Gym._ 11, 18, 54.

Footnote 313:

_Ib._ 25; Paus. vi. 23, 24.

Footnote 314:

_Vit. Apoll. Tyan._ v. 43.

Footnote 315:

Paus. v. 16, 8.

Footnote 316:

The statement that they quitted Elis a month before the festival is

quite inconsistent with the account given by Pausanias vi. 23, 24, and

with the narrative in Lucian’s _De Morte Peregrini_, ch. 31, 32. The

scene of the earlier chapters is laid in Elis, where the Hellanodicae

are training the athletes. From Elis Lucian goes straight on to the

festival at Olympia. Perhaps the procession from Elis to Olympia took

place on the 10th or 11th of the month.

Footnote 317:

v. 24, 9.

Footnote 318:

Dio Cass. lxxix. 10.

Footnote 319:

Pind. _Ol._ v. 6; i. 90.

Footnote 320:

Paus. vi. 20, 15; vii. 17, 14.

Footnote 321:

_Anth. Pal._ xi. 16, 33.

Footnote 322:

Philostrat. _Im._ ii. 6.

Footnote 323:

The evidence for most of the statements contained in this paragraph is

late. It will be found in Krause, _Olympia_, pp. 138, 139.

Footnote 324:

Quoted in Julian, p. 318:

Ἄρχει μὲν Ἀγων, τῶν καλλίστων

Αθλων ταμίας. καιρὸς δε καλεῖ

μηκέτι μέλλειν. ἀλλὰ κλύοντες

τὰν ἁμετέραν κάρυκα βοάν....

Ιτ’ ἐς ἀντίπαλον ἴστασθε κρίσιν

Νίκης δε τέλος Ζηνὶ μελήσει.

A similar proclamation closed the proceedings, _vide_ Lucian,

_Demonax_, 65. Cp. _Clio_, 1904, pp. 141, 142.

Footnote 325:

Lucian, _Hermotim._ 39.

Footnote 326:

Paus. v. 20, 2.

Footnote 327:

_Arch. Zeit._, 1853, 52, 3; Gerl. _A. V._ 274, 1. Cp. Stephani, _O. R.

Atlas_, 1874, pl. vii.; Krause, _Olympia_, p. 173.

Footnote 328:

_Ol. Ins._ 54, and notes thereon.

Footnote 329:

Pindar, _Ol._ ix. 1, 2.

Footnote 330:

Krause, _Olympia_, pp. 180, 181.

Footnote 331:

Pseudo-Andocides, iv. 29, p. 126.

CHAPTER X

THE PYTHIAN, ISTHMIAN, AND NEMEAN FESTIVALS

[Illustration: Fig. 27. Imperial coins of Delphi, in British Museum

(enlarged). (_a_) Prize table. (_b_) Crown of bay leaves.]

(1) The Pythia

We have seen how in 582 B.C. the old local musical festival which had

been held at Delphi every eight years was transformed into a Panhellenic

four-yearly festival with an athletic and equestrian programme copied

from Olympia under the presidency of the amphictyonic league. Delphi now

became a second centre of this league, which consisted originally of the

twelve tribes dwelling round the shrine of Demeter at Phylae or Anthela.

The league was administered by a council composed of two representatives

from each tribe, the Hieromnemones, who met twice a year in spring and

autumn at Phylae and Delphi alternately. Their autumn meeting must have

coincided every fourth year with the Pythian festival which took place

in the month of Boukatios, about the end of August. An amphictyonic law

of the year 380 B.C.[332] contains full details of the duties of the

Hieromnemones. Besides the general care of the sacred territory,

precinct, monuments, and revenues, they were responsible for all the

preparations necessary for the Pythia. They saw to the repairs of the

stadium, hippodrome, and other buildings; they arranged the programme,

made provision for the sacrifices and processions; they saw that the

sacred truce was duly proclaimed, and sent invitations to the various

states of Greece, while each Hieromnemon was individually responsible

for the state of the roads and bridges by which the official theorioi

would travel to the festival. At the games themselves certain of their

number, with the title of ἐπιμεληταί, acted as stewards and judges, and

presented the laurel crowns to the victors. The actual presidency at the

games seems usually to have been entrusted to the Thessalians, whose

influence predominated in the league.

Though as a festival the Pythia were second only to the Olympia, it may

be doubted whether from a purely athletic point of view they equalled in

importance the Nemea or even the Isthmia. The Peloponnese was, as we

have seen, the real home of Greek athletics, and, moreover, musical

competitions seem always to have held the chief place at Delphi, as was

but fitting in the precinct of Apollo. The chief event in the musical

programme remained throughout all time the ancient Hymn to Apollo, sung

to the lyre (κιθαρωδία), recounting his victory over the Python.

Chrysothemis, Philammon, and Thamyris were among the legendary victors

in this competition, which was said to have been won in the seventh

century four times in succession by Terpander of Lesbos. In 582 two

competitions were added: one in singing to the flute (αὐλωδία)—a

competition which was, however, at once discontinued—and a solo on the

flute, which, like the ancient hymn, represented the various phases in

the contest between Apollo and the Python. This was the celebrated

Pythian nome. The prize was won in 582, and on two subsequent occasions,

by Sacadas of Argos; and Pythocritus of Sicyon is credited with no less

than six successive victories, probably at the close of the sixth

century. Pindar’s twelfth Pythian ode was written to celebrate the

victory of Midas of Agrigentum in flute-playing. The musical programme

was completed in 558 B.C. by the introduction of a competition in

playing on the lyre, of a somewhat similar character. The first winner

was Agesilaus of Tegea. Under the Empire dramatic and poetical

competitions took place at the Pythia; but we cannot say whether they

existed at an earlier date. If we may trust Pliny’s[333] statement,

there must have been a competition in painting in the fifth century; for

he tells us that Timagoras of Chalcis defeated Panaenus, the brother or

nephew of Pheidias.

Next in importance to the musical competitions were the chariot and

horse races, which rivalled in popularity even those at Olympia. At

first they were confined, as at Olympia, to the four-horse chariot and

the horse race. The pair-horse chariot-race (συνωρίς) and the

chariot-race for colts were introduced at Delphi in 398 B.C. and 378

B.C., only a few years after their introduction at Olympia. The

remaining two events, the synoris for colts and the riding race for

colts, which were introduced at Delphi in 338 B.C. and 314 B.C., did not

figure at Olympia till the next century. The popularity of horse-racing

at Delphi was due to the wide-spread influence of the Delphic oracle

among the Greek colonies, and particularly to the intimate connexion

between Delphi and the great horse-breeding lands of Northern Greece,

which belonged to the Thessalian Amphictyony; at a later time also to

the influence of Macedon. Delphi was no less accessible than Olympia to

the Greeks on either side of the Corinthian Gulf, and to the colonies of

the West, and of Africa. The earliest victor in the chariot-race was

Cleisthenes of Sicyon, and in the fifth century we find among the

victors Megacles, the Alcmaeonid of Athens; Hieron of Syracuse, twice

victor in the horse-race, once in the chariot-race; Xenocrates of

Agrigentum, for whom Pindar wrote his earliest hymn of victory; and

Arcesilas of Cyrene. The “Charioteer” is supposed by some archaeologists

to be part of the monument commemorating the victory of Arcesilas.

Still more significant than these names is the number of competitors.

Pindar, in his ode on the victory of Arcesilas, states that in this race

no less than forty chariots fell. The entries, then, must have been

still more numerous. We may doubt whether such a field was possible at

Olympia. The princes of the West can have formed but a small portion of

the entries; few of them can have cared to undertake the expense and

labour necessary to compete so far from home unless they had a good

prospect of success. A field of forty implies large entries from the

home district, and the home district of Delphi afforded an abundant

supply of competitors. Northern Greece was a land of horses, and

therefore, as Aristotle remarks, of oligarchies. Thessaly, in

particular, was famed for producing the finest horses in Greece, and

Thebes was famous for its chariots.[334] In both countries the power was

in the hand of the land-owning classes, whose wealth consisted largely

in their studs of horses. In Thessaly cavalry were first organized and

employed for war. Thebes was credited with the first victory in the

chariot-race, Thessaly with the first victory in the horse-race at

Olympia. They had celebrated local festivals. Pindar’s second Pythian is

in honour of a victory in the chariot-race won by Hieron at some Theban

festival, either the Heraclea or the Iolaea, and the thirteenth ode of

Bacchylides celebrates the victory of Cleoptolemus of Thessaly in the

Thessalian Petraea. Some idea of the proportion of local entries at the

Pythia may be formed from the list of competitors given in the

description of the chariot-race in the _Electra_ of Sophocles. There are

ten competitors. One comes from Sparta, one from Achaea; Orestes himself

is proclaimed an Argive, but drives a team of Thessalian horses; two are

Libyans from Barca, which reminds us of the victory of Arcesilas; the

remaining five are an Athenian, a Boeotian, an Aetolian, a Magnesian,

and an Aenianian. The Magnetes and Aenianes were Thessalian tribes

belonging to the ancient Amphictyony. Thus five came from Northern

Greece, two from the colonies, and three from the Peloponnese, if we

suppose the Achaean to belong to the Peloponnesian and not to the

Thessalian Achaeans. The few records which we possess of the fourth

century and later suggest that the competition was now practically

confined to Northern Greece, the only exception being the victory of

Ptolemaeus, the son of Lagus, in 314 B.C., and he, though king of Egypt,

was a Macedonian. In the second century there seem to have been

horse-races in connexion with the official deputations, Pythaids, sent

from time to time from Athens to Delphi; but these deputations had no

necessary connexion with the Pythian games. In Roman times we find no

mention of horse or chariot races at Delphi, and we may therefore assume

that, owing to the impoverishment of Greece, these competitions had

ceased to exist.

The athletic programme was the same as that of Olympia, with the

addition of two races for boys, the diaulos and the dolichos. In 498

B.C. the race in armour, which had been introduced at Olympia a few

years previously, was introduced at Delphi, and in 346 B.C. the boys’

pankration, which did not appear at Olympia till 200 B.C. The strong

local element which we have noticed in the horse-races is apparent in

athletics, and in the fifth century the festival also attracted numerous

athletes from the colonies of the West. Many of those who were

victorious at Olympia were also victorious at Delphi. The scanty records

do not allow us to draw definite conclusions; but it seems probable that

the athletic competition did not reach the same standard as in the

festivals of the more athletic Peloponnese. Of individual athletes in

the fifth century Phayllus of Croton and Agias of Thessaly deserve

especial mention. Phayllus, who served with distinction in the Persian

wars, won two victories in the pentathlon and one in the stade-race,

which were commemorated by a statue the basis of which still exists.

Agias was a pankratiast of the fifth century. Daochus, a member of the

same family, two generations later set up in Thessaly a group of bronze

statues representing those of his family who had distinguished

themselves, including a statue of Agias by Lysippus. A replica of this

statue in marble has been found at Delphi (Fig. 20).

In Pindar’s time the athletic competitions as well as the horse-races

took place not at Delphi but in the Crisaean plain below. The

horse-races continued to be held there, Delphi itself affording no

suitable space for a hippodrome. But in the second half of the fifth

century the athletics were transferred to a new stadium constructed

above the precinct of Apollo. The change is connected by M. Homolle with

an attempt of the Phocians to reassert their rights to the control of

the games at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.[335] The fourth

century was one of great activity among the states of Northern Greece,

in Thebes, in Thessaly, and in Macedon, and the Pythian festival

regained the importance which it had somewhat lost owing to the doubtful

part played by Delphi and the Northern States in the struggle with

Persia. The Pythian games appealed to the ambitious rulers of Thessaly

and Macedon in the same way as the Olympic games had to the tyrants of

an earlier age. Jason of Pherae usurped the presidency of the games, and

was preparing to celebrate them with extraordinary magnificence when his

ambition was cut short by his murder. Philip of Macedon was more

politic. By espousing the cause of the Amphictyons against the Phocians

in the Sacred war he won their gratitude, and was appointed by them as

president of the games. The new activity at Delphi may be seen in the

numerous additions to the programme made in this century. The gymnasium

was built in this period, and Aristotle undertook the task of drawing up

a register of Pythian victors, being assisted in the task by his nephew

Callistratus. A copy of this register was placed in the temple of

Apollo.[336]

In 290 B.C. during the war between Demetrius Poliorketes and Pyrrhus,

the roads leading to Delphi were in possession of the Aetolians, and

Demetrius therefore ordered the Pythia to be celebrated at Athens, there

being, he said, no more fitting place for the worship of Apollo than

Athens, where he was regarded as the father of the race. The intimate

relations between Athens and Delphi at this period are proved by the

splendid deputations the Pythaids, as they were called, sent to Delphi

from time to time.[337] The splendour of the Pythaids reached its height

in the second century. Their arrival at Delphi was celebrated by

equestrian, musical and dramatic displays and competitions; but these

deputations did not necessarily coincide with the Pythian festival, and

after the capture of Athens by Sulla in 87 B.C. they practically ceased.

We know little of the Pythian games under the Empire: we have the names

of a few victors, many of them in musical or dramatic competitions,

others professional periodonikai. Nero won the Pythian crown, and in

return for it carried off hundreds of works of art from Delphi to Rome.

At a later period Herodes Atticus rebuilt the stadium in the form in

which it exists to-day. The Pythian games still existed in the time of

the Emperor Julian, and were probably abolished finally at the end of

the fourth century when the Olympic games were abolished.

The festival must have lasted several days, but the precise duration is

unknown. The musical competitions appear to have come first, then the

athletic events, and lastly the chariot and horse races. The boys’

events were not, as at Olympia, grouped together; but each boys’

competition preceded the corresponding competition for men.[338] The

prize was a wreath of bay leaves plucked in the vale of Tempe by a boy

whose parents were both living. It is represented on one of the coins in

Fig. 27, while the other coin shows the prize table and on it a crow,

five apples, a vase and a laurel wreath. As at Olympia, the victors had

the privilege of erecting their statues in or near the precinct. The

chief religious ceremony of the festival must have been the official

procession along the sacred way to the temple of Apollo.

[Illustration: Fig. 28. Imperial coin of Corinth, in British Museum

(enlarged).]

(2) The Isthmia

The Isthmian festival, though inferior in athletic standard to the

Olympia and in sanctity to the Pythia, was perhaps the most frequented

of all the Panhellenic festivals.[339] It was held in the second and

fourth year of each Olympiad, under the presidency of Corinth; and

though there is some doubt as to the exact date, it seems certain that

it was held in the spring, probably in April or early May.[340] No

festival was so central and so accessible to all parts of the Greek

world, whether by land or sea, and no place offered such innumerable

attractions to visitors of every sort as Corinth, the city of commerce

and of pleasure. The description which Dion Chrysostom has left of the

crowds which flocked to the Isthmia in the first century A.D. has

already been quoted. It reminds one of the crowd at a modern

race-meeting, where princes, statesmen, millionaires, jostle with

beggars, mountebanks, and sharpers. “The Isthmian festival,” says

Livy,[341] “owed its popularity not only to the national love of

witnessing contests of every sort in arts or strength or agility, but

especially to the advantageous situation of the Isthmus, which,

commanding the resources of two seas, was the natural meeting-place of

the human race, the mart of Greece and Asia.” In these words we have,

summed up, the essential characteristics of the Isthmia, the

attractiveness and variety of their programme, their cosmopolitanism,

and last but not least their commercial importance. Livy is speaking of

the time in the opening years of the second century, when Flamininus

proclaimed the liberty of Greece at the Isthmian festival. We cannot

doubt that he had also in his mind the revived splendour of the festival

in his own time, since Corinth which had been destroyed by Mummius had

been refounded by Julius Caesar and become the capital of Achaia. Of the