THE MOST COMMON ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES.

Other abbreviations will be readily understood.

CORRIGENDA.

Besides the following, there are a few other corrections which are so obvious that they scarcely need to be listed.

CHAPTER I.
EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES.

Plate 1 and Figures 1 and 2.

Before attempting to trace historically the development of monuments of victors in the gymnic and hippic contests at Olympia, and before attempting to reconstruct their different types, it will be useful to devote a preliminary chapter to the early history of Greek athletics and victor prizes in general.

It is a truism that the origin of Greek athletics is not to be found in the recently discovered Aegean civilization of Crete, nor in the latest phase of the same culture on Mycenæan sites of the mainland of Greece. Their origin is not to be sought in the indigenous Mediterranean stock which produced that culture, but rather among the northern invaders of Greece, the fair-haired Achæans of the Homeric poems, and especially among the later Dorians in the Peloponnesus. It was to the physical vigor of these strangers rather than to the more artistic nature of the Mediterraneans that the later Greeks owed their interest in sports. As these invaders settled themselves most firmly in the Peloponnesus, Greek athletics may be said to be chiefly the product of South Greece. It was here that three of the four national festivals grew up—at Olympia, Nemea, and on the Corinthian Isthmus. It was in the schools of Argos and Sikyon that athletic sculpture flourished best and in later Greek history physical exercise was most fully developed among the Dorian Spartans.1

SPORTS IN CRETE.

Centuries before the Achæan civilization of Greece had bloomed, there developed among the Minoans of Crete a passion for certain acrobatic performances and for gymnastics. These Cretans, though strongly influenced by Egypt and the East, did not borrow their love of sport from outside any more than did the later Achæans. On the walls of the tombs of Beni-Hasan on the Nile are pictured many athletic sports, including a series of several hundred wrestling groups,2 but these sports did not influence, so far as we know, Cretan athletics. At Knossos bull-grappling seems to have been the national sport, as we see from the frescoes on the palace walls. In the absence of the horse, which did not appear in early Aegean times in Crete, it is not difficult to understand the development of gymnastic sports with bulls. At Knossos a seal has been found which shows the rude drawing of a vessel with rowers seated under a canopy, superimposed on which is drawn the greater portion of a huge horse. In this design, dating from about 1600 B. C. and synchronizing with the earlier part of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, we doubtless see a graphic way of indicating the cargo, and consequently a contemporary record, it may be, of the first importation of horses from Libya into Crete.3

The Cretan bull seems to have been a much larger animal than the species found upon the island to-day.4 Bull-grappling at Knossos was the sport of female as well as male toreadors. A fragmentary rectangular fresco, dating from about 1500 B. C. (Pl. 1), was discovered there by Sir Arthur Evans in 1901 and is now in the Candia museum. It is executed with extraordinary spirit and shows a huge bull rushing forward with lowered head and tail straight out. A man is in the act of turning a somersault on its back, his legs in the air, his arms grasping the bull’s body and his head raised, looking back to the rear of the animal, where a cowgirl is standing, holding out her arms to catch his flying figure as soon as his feat is concluded. Another cowgirl, at the extreme left, seems to be suspended from the bull’s horns, which pass under her armpits, while she catches hold further up. However, she is not being tossed, but is taking position preliminary to leaping over the bull’s back. Both the man and the women wear striped boots and bracelets; the women are apparently distinguished by their white skin, short drawers, yellow sashes embroidered with red, and the red-and-blue diadems around their brows.[5] On the opposite wall a similar scene was pictured; among its stucco fragments was found the representation of the arm and shoulder of a woman grasping a bull by the horns. The fragmentary representation of another woman and man was also found.

A very similar scene has long been known from a fresco painting from Tiryns, now in Athens.6 A bull is represented galloping to the left, while a man7 clings to its horns with his right hand and is swept along with one foot lightly touching the bull’s back and the other swung aloft. Most early writers interpreted this scene as a bull-hunt, the artist having drawn the hunter above the bull through ignorance of perspective. The execution is very inferior, three attempts of the bungling painter being visible in the painting of the tail and the front legs. Others saw in it the representation of an acrobat showing his dexterity by leaping upon the back of an animal in full career, recalling the description of such a trick in the Iliad, where Ajax is represented as rushing over the plain like a man who, while driving four horses, leaps from horse to horse.8 But this figure must take its place side by side with the one from Knossos just described as another bull-grappling scene. That such sports were not held in the open air, but in an enclosed courtyard, is shown by the seal from Praisos now in the Candia Museum, which depicts a man vaulting on the back of a gigantic ox within a paved enclosure.9 Doubtless the theatral areas discovered at Phaistos by the Italian Archæological Mission10 and at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans in 190311 were not large enough for bull scenes and were used merely for ceremonial dancing and perhaps for the boxing matches to be described.12 Similar acrobats are doubtless to be recognized in the two beautiful ivory statuettes, only 11.5 inches in height, of so-called leapers, found by Dr. Evans at Knossos in 1901.13 These masterpieces of the late Minoan II period represent acrobats (one is probably a woman) darting through the air. “The life, the freedom, the élan of these figures is nothing short of marvellous,” writes Dr. Evans, who calls attention to the careful physical training shown in their slender legs and in the muscles, even the veins on the back of the hands and the finger-nails being plainly indicated as well as the details of the skinfolds at the joints. They doubtless formed a part of an ivory model of the bull-ring and are meant for miniature toreadors, who were hung in the air by fine gold wires14 over the backs of ivory bulls who stood on the solid ground. The heads of the figures are thrown backwards, a posture suitable for such vaulters, but not for leapers or divers. Minoan art culminated in these statuettes and in certain stucco figures in half relief found also at Knossos. Only a few fragments of these reliefs have survived, most of which were decorative or architectonic in character, though among them were also found human disjecta membra in high relief, such as the fragment of a left forearm holding a horn, and not a pointed vase, as Dr. Evans thought. Here the muscles are well indicated, though the veins are exaggerated.15 This fragment may well be a part of the same bull-grappling scenes as those in the frescoes, as also the life-like image of a bull, the details of whose head, mouth, eyes, and nostrils are full of expression, and whose muscles are perfectly indicated.

When compared with the monuments described, the similarity of details on the design of the Vapheio cups ornamented in repoussé, the “most splendid specimens known of the work of the Minoan goldsmith,”16 never again equalled until the Italian Renaissance, makes it more than possible that here again we have scenes of bull-grappling rather than of bull-hunting. On one cup is represented a quiet pastoral scene—a man tying the legs of a bull with a rope, while two other bulls stand near, amicably licking one another, and a third is quietly grazing. On the other, however, are represented scenes of a very different character. In the centre is a furious bull entangled in a net, which is fastened to a tree; to the left a figure, doubtless a woman, is holding on to a bull’s head, while a man has fallen on his head beside the animal, both man and woman being dressed in the Cretan fashion. A third bull rushes furiously by to the right. Most commentators have seen bull-hunting scenes on both these cups. Thus, on the first cup were represented three scenes in the drama of trapping a bull by means of a tame decoy cow; to the right the bull is starting to go to the rendezvous, while in the center the bull stands by the cow’s side and to the left he is finally trapped and tied.17 On the other cup the furious animal at the left was supposed to have thrown one hunter and to have caught another on its horns. But Mosso’s interpretation of this design seems to be the right one.18 The two persons struggling with the bull have no lasso and so can hardly be hunters; besides, if the bull had impaled a hunter with its horns, the hunter would have been represented with his head up and not down. The figure is, however, uninjured and holds on with its knee bent over one horn and its shoulder against the other; it is merely, therefore, intended for a woman acrobat. The net shown in the centre was never used for hunting wild bulls; more probably it was intended as an obstacle in racing. The fallen man has been standing on the netted bull, which, with the gymnast on its back, was expected to have leaped over the net, but has not succeeded; consequently, the acrobat has been tumbled over the bull’s head.

This ancient Cretan sport seems to have been similar to that known in Thessaly and elsewhere in historical days as τὰ ταυροκαθάψια.19 A survival of it still persists to our day in certain parts of Italy, as, e. g., in the province of Viterbo.20

Acrobatic feats of various sorts were attractive to the later Greeks from the time of Homer down. We have already mentioned one passage from the Iliad in which a driver of four horses leaps from horse to horse in motion. On the shield of Achilles tumblers appeared among the dancers on the dancing-place.21 Patroklos ironically remarks over the body of Kebriones, as the charioteer falls headlong like a diver from his chariot when hit by a missile, that there are tumblers also among the Trojans.22 In later centuries the Athenians evinced a great attraction to acrobatic feats. The story told of Hippokleides23 reveals that high-born Athenians did not disdain to practice them. They appear to have formed a sort of side-show attraction at the Panathenaic festival, as such scenes occur frequently on Attic vases. Thus on an early (imitation?) Panathenaic vase from Kameiros in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,24 there is represented behind the driver a man standing on the back of a horse, armed with a helmet and two shields, while in front another appears to be balancing himself on a pole.

But such acrobatic scenes as those of Crete and later Greece can not properly be classed as athletic. They betoken more the love of excitement than of true sport. The only form of real athletics represented on Minoan monuments, one which was classed in later Greece as one of the national sports, was that of boxing, which seems to have been the favorite gymnastic contest of the Cretans, as it always was of the later Greeks. Boxing scenes appear on seals,25 on a steatite fragment of a pyxis found in 1901 at Knossos and, in conjunction with a bull-grappling Boxer Vase Fig. 1.—So-called Boxer Vase, from Hagia Triada (Cast). Museum of Candia. scene, on the so-called Boxer Vase found by the Italians at Hagia Triada (Fig. 1). The vase is a cone-shaped rhyton of steatite, 18 inches high, originally overlaid with gold foil. It belongs to the best period of Cretan art, late Minoan I.26 This vase alone, if no other monumental evidence were at hand, would suffice to show the physical prowess and love of sport of the Minoans. Because of its scenes of boxing and bull-grappling Mosso calls it “the most complete monument that we have of gymnastic exercise in the Mediterranean civilization.”27 The later Greek tradition of the high degree of physical development attained by the Cretans is proved by this monument.28

The reliefs are arranged in four horizontal zones.29 One of these, the second from the top, represents a bull-grappling scene, showing two racing bulls, upon the head and horns of one of which a gymnast has vaulted (not being tossed and helpless, as most interpreters think).30 The other three represent boxers in all attitudes of the prize-ring, hitting, guarding, falling, and even kicking, as in the later Greek pankration. Some are victorious, the left arm being extended on guard and the right drawn back to strike; one (in the top zone) is ready to spring, just as Hector was ready to spring on Achilles;31 others are prostrate on the ground with their feet in the air. The violence of the action recalls the boast of Epeios in the famous match in the Iliad that he will break his adversary’s bones.32

The method of attack by the right arm and defense by the left is the same as that formerly used by English pugilists. In the topmost zone the combatants wear helmets with visors, cheek-pieces, and horse-hair plumes, and also shoes; in the third zone down the pugilists also wear helmets, though of a different pattern, while the bottom zone shows figures, perhaps youths, with bare heads. Some of the boxers appear to wear boxing-gloves. In the lowest zone we see the well-known feat of swinging the antagonist up by the legs and throwing him—if we may so conclude from the contorted position of the vanquished, whose legs are in the air.

A similar figure appears in relief on the fragment of a pyxis found at Knossos.33 A youth with clenched fists stands with left arm extended as if to ward off a blow, while his right arm is drawn back and rests on his hip; below we see the bent knee of a prostrate figure, evidently that of his vanquished opponent. The boxer has a wasp-like waist and wears a metal girdle. His left leg is well modeled, the muscles not being exaggerated.

ATHLETICS IN HOMER.

We have evidence, therefore, that the love of sport existed in Crete as it has existed in all countries since. But the comparatively unathletic character of the Aegean culture is shown by the complete absence of athletic representations—apart from bull-grappling scenes—in the art of its last phase at Mycenæ and Tiryns on the mainland. This is an independent argument for the view that the civilization of the mainland was chiefly the product of the old Mediterranean stock, which was finally conquered by the invading Achæans, who are represented in Homer as skilled gymnasts. In Homer we are immediately conscious of being in another world, for here we are in an atmosphere of true athletics, which are fully developed and quite secular in character.34 They are, however, wholly spontaneous, for there are as yet neither meets nor organized training, neither stadia, gymnasia, nor palæstræ; for such an organization of athletics did not exist until the sixth century B. C. But Homer’s account of the funeral games of Patroklos is pervaded by a spirit of true athletics and has a perennial attraction for every lover of sport. Walter Leaf says of the chariot-race, which is the culminating feature of the description, that it is “a piece of narrative as truthful in its characters as it is dramatic and masterly in description.”35 Such a description could have been composed only by a poet who belonged to a people long acquainted with athletics and intensely interested in them. Nestor often speaks of a remoter past, when the gods and heroes contended. Odysseus says he could not have fought with Herakles nor Eurytos, heroes of the olden time, “who contended with the immortal gods.” The Homeric warrior was distinguished from the merchant by his knowledge of sport. Thus Euryalos of the Phaiakians says in no complimentary tone to Odysseus: “No truly, stranger, nor do I think thee at all like one that is skilled in games ... 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 charge of a cargo homeward bound, and of greedily gotten gains.”36 It is beside the point whether the chief passages in the poems which relate to sports are late in origin or not, even if they are later than 776 B. C., the traditional first Olympiad. In any case the later poet merely followed an older tradition. At the funeral games of Patroklos all the events are practical in character, the natural amusements of men chiefly interested in war. They are, however, not merely military, but are truly athletic. The oldest and most aristocratic of all the events described is the chariot-race—in which the war-chariot is used—the monopoly of the nobles then, as it was always later the sport of kings and the rich.37 Boxing and wrestling come next in importance, already occupying the position of preëminence which they hold in the poems of Pindar. The foot-race between Ajax, the son of Oileus, and Odysseus follows. Of the last four events, three—the single combat between Ajax and Diomedes, the throwing of the solos, and the contest in archery—are admitted to be late additions. The last event of all, the casting of the spear, may be earlier, but we know little about it, as the contest did not take place, Achilles yielding the first prize to Agamemnon. Most of these later events are described in a lifeless manner and have not the vim and compelling interest of the earlier ones. Indeed the contest in archery seems to be treated with a certain amount of ridicule, which shows the contempt of the great nobles for so plebeian a sport. The armed contest, though it is pictured in art certainly as early as the sixth century B. C.,38 never had a place in the later Greek games.39 Jumping, an important part of the later pentathlon, is mentioned but once in the poems, as a feature of the sports of the Phaiakians. But the later pentathlon, as Gardiner says, is certainly not suggested in Homer’s account, though many have assumed it,40 merely because Nestor mentions his former contests at Bouprasion in boxing, in running, in hurling the spear, and in the chariot-race.41 This, however, is not the combination of contests known much later as the pentathlon, in which the same contestants had to compete in the series of events—running, jumping, wrestling, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing.

ORIGIN OF GREEK GAMES IN THE CULT OF THE DEAD.

In these games described in the Iliad we see an example of the origin of the later athletic festivals in the cult of the dead. Homer knows only of funeral games42 and there is no trace in the poems of the later athletic meetings held in honor of a god.43 However, the association of the later games with religious festivals held at stated times can be traced to the games with which the funeral of the Homeric chief was celebrated. The oldest example of periodic funeral games in Greece of which we have knowledge were those held in Arkadia in honor of the dead Azan, the father of Kleitor and son of Arkas, at which prizes were offered at least for horse-racing.44

Though the origin of the four national religious festivals in Greece—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus—is buried in a mass of conflicting legend, certain writers agree in saying that all of them were founded on funeral games, though they were later dedicated to gods.45 Thus the Isthmian were instituted in honor of the dead Melikertes,46 the Nemean in honor of Opheltes or Archemoros,47 the Pythian in honor of the slain Python,48 the Olympian in honor of the hero Pelops.49 To both Pindar and Bacchylides the Olympian games were associated with the tomb of Pelops; Pausanias, on the other hand, records that the ancient Elean writers ascribed their origin to the Idæan Herakles of Crete.50 It was a common tradition that Herakles founded the games, some writers saying that it was the Cretan, others that it was the Greek hero, the son of Zeus and Alkmena.51

Despite the variation in legends relative to the institution of the four national games, we should not doubt the universal tradition that all were funerary in origin. The tradition is confirmed by many lines of argument: by the survival of funeral customs in their later rituals, by the later custom of instituting funeral games in honor of dead warriors both in antiquity and in modern times, and by the testimony of early athletic art in Greece.52 We shall now briefly consider these arguments.

As an example of the survival of funeral customs in later ritual, Pausanias says that the annual officers at Olympia, even in his day, sacrificed a black ram to Pelops.53 The fact that a black victim was offered over a trench instead of on an altar proves that Pelops was still worshipped as a hero and not as a god. The scholiast on Pindar, Ol., I, 146, says that all Peloponnesian lads each year lashed themselves on the grave of Pelops until the blood ran down their backs as a libation to the hero. Furthermore, all the contestants at Olympia sacrificed first to Pelops and then to Zeus.54

Funeral games were held in honor of departed warriors and eminent men all over the Greek world and at all periods, from the legendary games of Patroklos and Pelias and others to those celebrated at Thessalonika in Valerian’s time.55 Thus Miltiades was honored by games on the Thracian Chersonesus,56 Leonidas and Pausanias at Sparta,57 Brasidas at Amphipolis,58 Timoleon at Syracuse,59 and Mausolos at Halikarnassos.60 Alexander instituted games in honor of the dead Hephaistion61 and the conqueror himself was honored in a similar way.62 The Eleutheria were celebrated at Platæa at stated times in honor of the soldiers who fell there against the Medes in 479 B. C.,63 and in the Academy a festival was held under the direction of the polemarch in honor of the Athenian soldiers who had died for their country and were buried in the Kerameikos.64 Funeral games were also common in Italy. We find athletic scenes decorating Etruscan tombs—including boxing, wrestling, horse-racing, and chariot-racing.65 The Romans borrowed their funeral games from Etruria as well as their gladiatorial shows, which were doubtless also funerary in origin.66 Frazer cites examples of the custom of instituting games in honor of dead warriors among many modern peoples, Circassians, Chewsurs of the Caucasus, Siamese, Kirghiz, in India, and among the North American Indian tribes. Gardiner notes the Irish fairs in honor of a departed chief, which existed from pagan days down to the last century.67

The testimony of early Greek athletic art also points to the same funerary origin of the games. The funeral games of Pelias and those held by Akastos in honor of his father were depicted respectively on the two most famous monuments of early Greek decorative art, on the chest of Kypselos dedicated in the Heraion at Olympia and on the throne of Apollo at Amyklai in Lakonia, the latter being the work of the Ionian sculptor Bathykles. Though both these works are lost, the description of one of them at least, that of the chest, by Pausanias,68 is so detailed and precise that the scenes represented upon it have been paralleled figure for figure on early Ionian (especially Chalkidian) and Corinthian vases, contemporary or later, and on Corinthian and Argive decorative bronze reliefs. Many attempts have been made, therefore, to restore the chest, and as more monuments become known, which throw light on the composition and types, these attempts are constantly growing in certainty, even though conjecture may continue to enter in.69

The figures were wrought in relief, partly in ivory and gold and partly in the cedar wood itself, deployed on its surface in a series of bands, such as we commonly see on early vases. This use of gold and ivory is the first example in Greek art of the custom employed by Pheidias and other sculptors of the great age of Greek sculpture. We have already noted its use in the ivory acrobats from Crete, which were made, perhaps, a thousand years before the chest.70 Out of the thirty-three scenes depicted on its surface all but two or three were mythological, and among these were scenes from the funeral games of Pelias, including a two-horse chariot-race (P., §9), a boxing and wrestling match (§10), a foot-race, quoit-throwing, and a victor represented as being crowned (§10), and prize tripods (§11).

The most valuable parallel to some of the scenes described by Pausanias is found on the Amphiaraos vase in Berlin,71 dating from the sixth century B. C., on which the wrestling match and chariot-race correspond surprisingly well with the descriptions of Pausanias, despite certain differences in detail. Another archaic vase depicts a two-horse chariot-race and the parting of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle.72 The scenes on this latter vase appear to have been copied from those on the chest, and it is possible that the scenes on the Berlin vase had the same origin.

Funeral games are commonly pictured on early vases. Thus on a proto-Attic amphora, discovered by the British School of Athens in excavating the Gymnasion of Kynosarges, there are groups of wrestlers and chariot-racers. The wrestling bout here, however, seems to be to the death, as the victor has his adversary by the throat with both hands. It may be a mythological scene, perhaps representing the bout between Herakles and Antaios. A still earlier representation of funeral games is shown by a Dipylon geometric vase from the Akropolis now in Copenhagen, dating back possibly to the eighth century B. C.73 On one side two nude men, who have grasped each other by the arms, are ready to stab one another with swords. This may represent, however, as Gardiner suggests, only a mimic contest. On the other side are two boxers standing between groups of warriors and dancers. A similar scene in repoussé appears on a Cypriote silver vase from Etruria now in the Uffizi in Florence.74 We should also, in this connection, note again the reliefs representing funeral games, which appear on the sixth-century sarcophagus from Klazomenai already mentioned.75 Here is represented a combat of armed men; amid chariots stand groups of men armed with helmets, shields, and spears, while flute-players stand between them; at either end is a pillar with a prize vase upon it; against one leans a naked man with a staff, doubtless intended to represent the spirit of the deceased in whose honor the games are being held.

Games in honor of the dead tended to become periodic. The tomb of the honored warriors became a rallying-point for neighboring people, who would convene to see the games. While some of these games were destined never to transcend local importance, others developed into the Panhellenic festivals. As the worship of ancestors became metamorphosed into that of heroes, the games became part of hero cults, which antedated those of the Olympian gods. But as the gods gradually superseded the heroes in the popular religion, they usurped the sanctuaries and the games held there, which had long been a part of the earlier worship. We are not here concerned, however, with the difficult question of the origin of funeral games. They may have taken the place of earlier human sacrifices, which would explain the armed fight at the games of Patroklos and its appearance on archaic vases and sarcophagi; or they may have commemorated early contests of succession, which would explain many mythical contests like the chariot-race between Pelops and Oinomaos for Hippodameia, or the wrestling match between Zeus and Kronos. In any case such games would never have attained the importance which they did attain in Greece, if it had not been for the athletic spirit and love of competition so characteristic of the Hellenic race. Whatever their origin, therefore, there is little doubt that out of them developed the great games of historic Greece. The constant relationship between Greek religion and Greek athletics can be explained in no other way.76

EARLY HISTORY OF THE FOUR NATIONAL GAMES.

By the beginning of the sixth century B. C. the athletic spirit displayed in the Homeric poems had given rise to the four national festivals—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus. On these four, many lesser games were modeled.77 The origin of all these, as we have already remarked, is lost in a mass of legend. The myths of the origin of Olympia are particularly conflicting. We are practically certain, however, that Olympia as a sanctuary preceded the advent of the Achæans into the Peloponnesus, and that the foundation of the games preceded the coming of the Dorians, but was probably later than that of the Achæans. The importance of the games dates from the time after the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus, when the warring peoples finally became pacified.78 For centuries Olympia was overshadowed by Delphi and the Ionian festival on Delos. The importance of the latter festival in the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. is shown by the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo. Only by the beginning of the seventh century had Olympia begun to gain its prestige. The pre-Dorian Pisatai, in whose territory the sanctuary was situated, probably controlled it early. The Dorian allies, the Eleans, whom legend had King Oxylos lead into the Peloponnesus from Aitolia,79 tried to wrest this control from the Pisatai, who, however, aided by religious reverence for the sanctuary, were able to maintain their rights. On account of the conflict the games languished, until finally a truce was made by the two factions and the games were re-established under their common management. This work was ascribed to Iphitos and Kleosthenes, kings respectively of Elis and Pisa, and to Lykourgos of Sparta.80 The dual control was not successful, as the jealous Pisatai constantly tried to regain their old honor; but the Eleans, supported by the Spartans, prevailed and finally, after the Persian wars, destroyed Pisa and the other revolting cities of Triphylia and henceforth remained in sole control. The restoration of the games under Iphitos and his colleagues took place in 776 B. C., from which date the festival was celebrated every fourth year, until it was finally abolished by the Roman emperor Theodosius at the end of the fourth century A. D. In 776 Koroibos of Elis won the foot-race and this was the first dated Olympiad in the Olympian register,81 and from it, as Pausanias says,82 the unbroken tradition of the Olympiads began. This history of Olympia is very different from the orthodox mythical story told by Pausanias and Strabo and based on the “ancient writings of the Eleans.”83 According to it the games were originally instituted by the Eleans under Oxylos and refounded by Iphitos, his descendant, together with Lykourgos, still under the management of the Eleans. In Ol. 8 the Pisatans invoked the aid of the Argive king Pheidon and dispossessed the Eleans, but they lost the control of Olympia in the next Olympiad. In Ol. 28 Elis, during a war with Dyme, allowed the Pisatans to celebrate the games. Six Olympiads later the king of Pisa came to Olympia with an army and took charge. The story leaves the Pisatans in control from about Olympiads 30 to 51, but some time between Ols. 48 and 52 the Eleans defeated Pisa and destroyed it, and henceforth controlled the games. Such a story was manifestly a contrivance by the later priests of Elis to justify their control of the games through a prior claim. It is contradicted by all the evidence.84 The antiquity of Olympia is known to us from the results of excavations and from its religious history. The latest excavations on the site have disclosed the remains of six prehistoric buildings with apsidal endings, below the geometric stratum, upon the site of what used to be considered the remnants of the great altar of Zeus.85 Such an inference is borne out by many primitive features in the religious history of the sanctuary. The altar of Kronos on the hill to the north of the Altis was earlier than that of Zeus; an earth altar antedated that of Zeus, while a survival of the earlier worship of the powers of the underworld is seen in the custom, lasting through later centuries, of allowing only one woman, the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, to witness the games. We also know that the worship of the Pelasgian Hera antedated that of the Hellenic Zeus; her temple, the Heraion, is the most ancient of which the foundations still stand, a temple built of stone, wood, and sun-dried bricks, whose origin is to be referred to the tenth, if not to the eleventh, century B. C.86 We have already remarked that the worship of the hero Pelops preceded that of the god Zeus.87 All such indications attest the high antiquity of Olympia. That it is not mentioned in Homer, while Delphi and Dodona are, only proves that in the poet’s time it was still merely a local shrine. Not until the beginning of the sixth century B. C. did it attain the distinction, which it retained ever afterwards, of being the foremost national festival of Hellas.88

The periodical celebration of the three other national festivals was not dated—except in legend—before the early years of the sixth century B. C., though local festivals must have existed also on these sites long before.89 The old music festival at Delphi, which finally was held every eight years,90 was changed in 586 B. C., in consequence of the Sacred War,91 into a Panhellenic festival celebrated thereafter every four years (pentaëteris). It was under the presidency of the Amphiktyonic League, which introduced athletic and equestrian events copied from those at Olympia92 and replaced the older money prizes with the simple bay wreath. About the same time the Nemean and Isthmian games were instituted. The local games at Nemea, said to have been founded by Adrastos in honor of a child, were reorganized some time before 573 B. C., the first Nemead.93 Thereafter they were celebrated every two years, in the second and fourth of the corresponding Olympiads.94 They were administered in honor of Zeus by the small town of Kleonai under Argive influence. The games were transferred to Argos some time between 460 B. C. and the close of the third century B. C. Centuries later, Hadrian revived the prestige of the games at Argos. The games held on the Isthmus also originated as an old local festival, which was revived in 586 or 582 B. C. We are not sure whether they were refounded in Poseidon’s honor by Periandros or after the death of Psammetichos in commemoration of the ending of the tyranny at Corinth. The geographical location of Corinth, the meeting-place of East and West, involved it in many wars, and therefore the Isthmian games never attained the prestige of the other national festivals; they were held every two years in the spring of the second and fourth years of the corresponding Olympiads and were administered by Corinth.95

Besides the four national games, many Greek cities had purely local ones, some of which originated in prehistoric days in honor of hero cults, while others were founded at historical dates. Athens was particularly favored in having many such local festivals. The most important of these were the Panathenaic games in honor of Athena, which developed from earlier annual Athenaia or Panathenaia. The festival was remodeled, or perhaps founded, just before Peisistratos seized the tyranny (561–560 B. C.), possibly by Solon, who died 560–559 B. C. The name certainly points to the unity of Athens promoted by Solon, if not to the earlier unification of the village communities of Attika ascribed to Theseus. In any case, under Peisistratos it became something more than a local festival, as the recitation of Homer became a feature of it. Following the games at Delphi and Olympia, the Great Panathenaia were held every four years (the third year of each Olympiad) in the month of Hekatombaion (July), while the more ancient annual festival continued yearly under the name of the Little Panathenaia. There were musical, literary, and athletic contests. The central feature of the festival was the procession which ascended from the lower city to the Parthenon on the Akropolis to offer the goddess a robe woven by noble Athenian maidens and matrons.96 This procession is known to us in detail from the great Parthenon frieze. The Theseia exemplify a festival whose origin can be definitely dated. Kimon, the son of the hero of Marathon, in 469 B. C., discovered the supposed bones of the national hero Theseus on the island of Skyros. The Delphic oracle counseled the Athenians to place them in an honorable resting-place. Perhaps there was a legend that the hero was buried on Skyros; in any case a grave was found there which contained the corpse of a warrior of great size, and this was brought back to Athens as the actual remains of Theseus. Thereafter an annual festival was celebrated by the Athenian epheboi, comprising military contests and athletic events—stade, dolichos, and diaulos running races, wrestling, boxing, pankration, hoplite running, etc. It began on the sixth of Pyanepsion (October), and was followed by the Epitaphia, a funeral festival in honor of national heroes and youths who had fallen fighting for Athens.97 Athletic games were held at the Herakleia in honor of Herakles at Marathon in the month of Metageitnion, and had attained great popularity by the time of Pindar.98 The Eleusinia, in honor of Demeter, took place annually in Athens in the month of Boëdromion, when horse-races and musical and other contests were held. This Attic festival claimed a greater antiquity even than Olympia. The great national festivals encouraged these smaller local ones, so that they attracted competitors from the whole Greek world.