The Project Gutenberg eBook of Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, by E. Norman Gardiner

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.

192. Isocrates, Panegyrikos.

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).

194. Paus. v. 24; Ol. Ins. 252.

195. Such must certainly have been the statue of Victory by Calamis set up by the Mantineans. Paus. v. 26, 6.

196. Paus. v. 26, 1.

197. Paus. v. 27, 11; 24, 4.

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.

199. Hence the term “Mercatus Olympiacus,” Vell. Paterc. i. 8; Cicero, Tuscul. v. 3; Krause, Olympia, p. 190, n. 2.

200. Lucian, Herodotus.

201. Paus. vi. 3, 14.

202. Paus. vi. 18, 2.

204. Thuc. v. 31 and 49.

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?

206. Xenophon, Hell. iii. 2, 31.

207. Förster, Ol. Sieger.

208. Xenophon, Hell. iv. 5. 1, 2.

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.

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.

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.

212. Ol. Ins. 260.

213. Quintilian aptly contrasts the bulging muscles, “tori,” of such athletes with the “lacertus” of soldiers.

214. Paus. v. 21, 10.

215. Polyb. 27, 7 A.

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.

217. Roberts and Gardner, Greek Epigraphy, ii. p. 145.

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.

219. Ditt. Syll. 2nd Ed., 522, 523, 524, 672, 673, 674.

220. Krause, Olymp. p. 215. Diodorus and Ulpian assign the founding of these games to Archelaus, another account assigns it to Philip II.

221. Xen. Hell. vi. 4, 29.

222. Arr. Anab. ii. 15.

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.

224. Alexandrian victories in 272, 256, 240, 228, 212 B.C. Vide Förster, op. cit.

225. Ol. Ins. 294.

227. This victory was commemorated by the founding of a new festival, the Soteria, which is mentioned in various athletic inscriptions of the period.

228. Fränckel, Antiq. Pergam. viii. 1, pp. 8, 10.

229. Ol. Ins. 308.

230. Ol. Ins. 306, 307.

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.

232. B.C.H., 1899, pp. 565 ff. The inscription is dated by the archonship of Dion, 258 B.C.

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.

234. The only statue from Sicily is that of Hieron II. of Syracuse.

235. Tacitus, Annals, xiv. 20. For the attitude of the Romans towards athletics vide Wilkins, Roman Education, pp. 31-33.

236. Ol. Ins. 191-210.

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.

238. Julius Caesar, c. 39.

239. Octavianus, c. 45.

240. Ol. Ins. 59-141.

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.

242. Louis Dyer, “The Olympian Council House,” in Harvard Studies, vol. xix. pp. 36 ff.

243. Ol. Ins. 56; cp. Mie, Quaestiones Agonisticae, p. 43.

244. Krause, Olympia, p. 203.

245. I.G. xiv. 739, πρωτελληνοδίκης ἐν Ἐφέσῳ καὶ ἐν Σμύρνη.

246. Curtius, Ol. Text, i. 52; Krause, Olympia, p. 207.

247. Suetonius, Nero, c. 23 ff.

248. Dion of Prusa, Or. xxxi.

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.

250. Or. vii. Διογένης ἢ περὶ ἀρετῆς; Or. viii. Διογένης ἢ Ἰσθμικός.

253. Or. xxix., xxx.

254. Dio Cassius, lii. 30.

255. Suetonius, Octavianus 45.

256. Krause, Gym. p. 131; I.G. xiv. 1102-1110.

257. I.G. xiv. 1054, 1055.

258. Mie, Quaestiones Agonisticae, p. 46.

259. I.G. xiv. 746.

260. Ol. Ins. 436.

261. B.S.A. xii. p. 452.

262. Historia Numorum, p. 357.

263. Ol. Ins. 150-153.

264. Ol. Ins. 225.

265. I.G. xiv. 1102-1104.

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.

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.”

268. Pindar, Ol. vii., ix.

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.

270. The Alexandrine Olympia were probably founded in A.D. 176 by Marcus Aurelius, I.G. xiv. 1102.

271. I.G. xiv. 746.

272. πρῶτος τῶν ἀπ’ αἰῶνος πυκτῶν, I.G. iii. 128. Cp. πρωτοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκουμένης, C.I.G. 2723.

273. N.H. vii. 20; cp. ii. 73.

274. Ol. Ins. 356.

275. The matter of this section is taken from the reports of the B.S.A., vols. xii., xiii.

276. B.S.A. xii. 314.

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.

278. B.S.A. x. 63, xii. 212.

279. B.S.A. xii. 352, xiii. 182.

280. The whole mosaic is published by Secchi in his Musaico Antoniniano, and a large portion of it in Baumeister’s Denkmäler, Fig. 174.

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.

282. Vide Jüthner, op. cit. pp. 285 ff.

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).

284. L. Weniger, Clio, 1905, pp. 1-38.

285. L. Weniger, Clio, 1904, pp. 126 ff.

286. Ib. p. 127, n. 1.

287. Quoted in Schol. Pindar, Ol. v. 6.

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.

289. Schol. Pindar, Ol. v. 8, iii. 33.

290. Schol. vet. Pindar, Ol. v. 8 πεμπταμέροις ἁμίλλαις· ἐπεὶ ἐπὶ πέντα ἡμέρασ ῎θγετο αὐτὰ τὰ ἀγωνίσματα.

292. Hellen. vii. 4.

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.

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.

295. Clio, 1904, p. 127; Krause, Olympia, p. 84.

296. Paus. vi. 15, 5.

297. Quaest. Symp. ii. 5.

298. Paus. vi. 13, 3. The same order is twice adopted by Philostratus in Gym. ch. 4 and 32.

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.

300. Paus. vi. 6, 5; vi. 15, 4.

301. Plut. Quaest. Symp. ii. 5, 2; Paus. iii. 14, 3; Phil. Gym. 7; Artemidorus, Oneirocrit. i. 65.

302. Paus. vi. 24, 1.

303. Lucian, Timon, 50.

304. Robert and Mie hold that the crowns were presented after each event, Weniger that they were all presented on the 16th.

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.

306. Paus. v. 21, 14.

307. Africanus, 6, 67, R.

308. Imag. ii. 6. This passage is particularly important, as the picture represents the very moment after the contest is over.

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.

310. Weniger, Clio, 1905, pp. 184-218.

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.

312. Philostr. Gym. 11, 18, 54.

313. Ib. 25; Paus. vi. 23, 24.

314. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. v. 43.

315. Paus. v. 16, 8.

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.

318. Dio Cass. lxxix. 10.

319. Pind. Ol. v. 6; i. 90.

320. Paus. vi. 20, 15; vii. 17, 14.

321. Anth. Pal. xi. 16, 33.

322. Philostrat. Im. ii. 6.

323. The evidence for most of the statements contained in this paragraph is late. It will be found in Krause, Olympia, pp. 138, 139.

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.

325. Lucian, Hermotim. 39.

326. Paus. v. 20, 2.

327. Arch. Zeit., 1853, 52, 3; Gerl. A. V. 274, 1. Cp. Stephani, O. R. Atlas, 1874, pl. vii.; Krause, Olympia, p. 173.