Читать книгу The History of Ancient Greek Sports and Athletic Festivals - Edward Norman Gardiner - Страница 10

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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 caldron⁸⁰ 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.”