Читать книгу A Companion to Greek Lyric - Группа авторов - Страница 44

Athletics was itself a complex network of institutions and practices, whose relative importance was itself contested. Just as forms for commemorating victories had multiplied by the end of the sixth century, so too had the venues for winning those victories. The two penteteric festivals, the Olympic and the Pythian games, held pride of place because of their greater antiquity, lesser frequency, and the fact that they (unlike, say, the Panathenaea in Athens, which promoted Athenian interests in various ways) were as close as one could get to neutral spaces, free from the control of the main powerbrokers. The Olympics were regarded as preeminent in athletics, although the Pythia was the most prestigious venue for musical competitions, which were not held at Olympia.¹⁵ The greatest Olympic victors had the potential to be heroized, even within their lifetimes, an option not typically open to those who had only won at other festivals.¹⁶

Two further festivals, founded in the sixth century and held every two years, the Isthmia and the Nemea, made up a group of the four panhellenic contests, with the Isthmia enjoying priority over the Nemea. These four games were called the “sacred contests” and only awarded crowns to their victors, olive at Olympia, laurel at the Pythia, celery at the Nemea and (in this period) the Isthmia. Some athletic memorials clearly prioritize these four games; for example, the Olympic dedication of the great runner Ergoteles recorded his eight panhellenic wins, two at each festival, but no others.¹⁷ Other memorials draw the boundary elsewhere. The Olympic dedication of the boxer Diagoras of Rhodes, who had victories at all four festivals, recorded only his Olympic win,¹⁸ while the wealthiest equestrian competitors seem to have privileged the Olympics and the Pythia, and left the lesser panhellenic games to others.¹⁹

Beyond these four panhellenic contests, there was a wide variety of festivals, some well-known and supported by major cities, such as the Ioleia at Thebes, the Argive Heraea near Argos, or the Panathenaea at Athens, and others obscure. Pindar’s catalogs of his patrons’ wins give some sense of the more prestigious choices. Diagoras, we are told, won at Athens, Argos, Arcadia, Thebes, elsewhere in Boeotia, Pellene, Aegina, and Megara; Epharmostus of Opuntian Locri at Argos, Athens, Marathon, the Lycaea (i.e., Arcadia), Pellene, the tomb of Iolaus (i.e., Thebes), and Eleusis.²⁰ These better-known venues only scratch the surface, however. A stele dedicated on the Spartan acropolis around the time of the Peloponnesian war records the victories of one Damonon at seven obscure festivals in the southern Peloponnese.²¹

When Callimachus arranged Pindar’s odes into books, he separated them by festival, privileging the panhellenic contests, and ordering the books according to the traditional hierarchy: the Olympics first, the Pythian games second, the Isthmian third, and the Nemean fourth. (At some point in transmission the order of the Isthmian and Nemean books was reversed.) The few odes that celebrated victories won elsewhere were tacked on to the end of Isthmian and Nemean books.²² Epinician itself was, however, much less interested in privileging particular victories, whether Olympic, panhellenic, or combinations of many such wins. Epinician odes do not differ in form or quality depending on the place of victory. They certainly recognize the traditional hierarchy among the venues—Olympian 1.7 declares no contest better than the Olympics; Pythian 7.14, in an ode praising a Pythian chariot win describes the family victory at Olympia as the “outstanding” family victory; Pythian 5 ends with a wish for an Olympic victory; and Nemean 2.1–11 speaks of a first Nemean win as a strong platform from which to win victories at other sacred games—but an Olympian ode is no longer, and no grander in its language or design than a Pythian or Nemean one. There was, moreover, no firm demarcation dividing panhellenic from non-panhellenic wins in the odes: local victories were celebrated in catalogs of the victor’s achievements; Isthmian and (especially) Nemean wins can be treated more like the well-recognized local festivals, grouped with them and not precisely tallied;²³ and some odes celebrated as their primary victory a victory won at a non-panhellenic festival.²⁴ The boundary that mattered to epinician was winning a contest, not winning the most prestigious contests; epinician celebrated athletic victory as a whole.²⁵ This inclusiveness perhaps explains why so few of the truly great athletes in the age of epinician seem to have commissioned epinicians: these athletes had the very real possibility of being heroized, if local norms and institutions permitted it, and to commission an epinician meant embracing a vision of the victor that aligned the truly great athlete with many lesser competitors—victors with no Olympic wins, few or even no panhellenic victories, or victories only in the youth categories.²⁶

The different events also formed complex networks. Events were divided between gymnastic (that is, what we call athletic) and equestrian, and, while there was a core of events that featured at most festivals, there were significant differences in programs.

Equestrian events, especially the chariot race, typically enjoyed greater prestige than gymnastic ones,²⁷ a prestige reflected in Callimachus’ choice to place the equestrian events before the gymnastic in his edition of Pindar’s odes. At Olympia, the east pediment of the temple constructed around 460 represented the chariot race of Pelops and Oenomaus as the founding moment of the games, while the Panathenaea, one of the most prestigious games outside of the four panhellenic contests, offered considerably larger prizes for the main equestrian events.²⁸ The great powerbrokers gravitated toward the main equestrian events at the most important festivals. This was at least partly because these events required (and thus demonstrated) significant resources, but also because the meeting of kings, tyrants, and other great aristocrats leant these events distinction. The list of Olympic chariot victors constitutes a roll-call of the great, if not the good: Damaratus, king of Sparta; Gelon, tyrant of Gela (at the time); Theron, tyrant of Acragas; Anaxilas, tyrant of Messene and Rhegium; Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse; Arcesilas IV, king of Cyrene; Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens (on whom, see below); Alcibiades; and others. These wealthy men supported the special distinction of the chariot race and other main equestrian events by conducting themselves as if they were in a different class. At the site of the victory they dedicated statues of their chariots that dwarfed the regular victor statues, set up expensive pavilions during the festival, and played host to the whole assembled gathering. Empedocles, the grandfather of the philosopher, when he won the horserace at Olympia, is said to fed the crowd with some sort of vegetarian ox-substitute made of myrrh, frankincense, and spices.²⁹ Anecdotes report significant tensions between these great men at the games: Plutarch records that at the Olympic games of 476 Themistocles, the great victor of Salamis, wanted Hieron’s tent destroyed and his horses prevented from competing. Hieron had not joined the fight against the Persians, but the Deinomenids had defeated the Carthaginians at around the same time. Plutarch reports that the spectators neglected the victors to applaud Themistocles, but if he really did attend, he left without a crown, while Hieron won the horserace.³⁰

The primacy of equestrian competition did not go uncontested. When Pindar described the first Olympics, he described a festival with six events: the sprint (or stadion), the wrestling, the boxing, the four-horse chariot, the javelin, and the discus.³¹ A different version gained traction in the fifth century that made gymnastic events the original events of the festival, and the stadion the very first, and this was the version that the sophist Hippias—an Elean (and thus a local to the Olympics)—canonized in his Olympic chronology at the end of the fifth century.³² The stadion was much more central to the ritual of the festival, taking place close to the heart of the sanctuary; an account written during the Roman empire claims that in the early days of the Olympic festival, the stadion winner lit the fire that would consume the sacrifice for Zeus.³³ Moreover, in the wake of the Persian wars, the very luxury and kingliness that marked out equestrian competition could also constitute a liability. The often rich clothing that distinguished equestrian competitors from gymnastic ones also linked them to the Persian kings, while the nudity of the gymnastic competitor marked him out as Greek, and perhaps in some cities became identified with a broader (even if still exclusionary) citizenry.³⁴

Within the categories of gymnastic and equestrian athletics, there was a wide variety of events. Equestrian events included four-horse and two-horse chariot races and races for single racehorses. These basic events could be quickly multiplied by having separate races for colts, mares, and warhorses. Mule-cart races were also offered, and the Panathenaea held a race with some third kind of two-horse chariot called a zeugos. Some more complicated events graced the program, events such as the kalpe¯ at Olympia, which called upon the rider to run as well as ride. The second-century program for the Panathenaea included as many as 28 equestrian events for individual competitors, some open, others restricted to various citizen groups. There were eight fewer gymnastic events.³⁵

The relative importance of the main equestrian events was clear: chariots won more prestige than racehorses, four-horse chariots more than two-horse, full-grown horses more than colts, horses more than mules. Questions were surely raised between the categories—was an open racehorse win better than a colt chariot win?—but Olympia avoided such questions by having a spare equestrian program, especially so in the period of epinician’s production. Before 408, Olympia offered only four equestrian contests: the four-horse chariot, the racehorse, a mule-cart race, and the kalpe¯, and the last two were added only around 500 and discontinued only about 50 years later.

By the end of the sixth century, the Olympics offered many more gymnastic events: four in running (the stadion; the diaulos or double sprint; the dolichos, a long race; and the race-in-armor), three in combat sports (boxing, wrestling, and pancration, a kind of kick-boxing), and the pentathlon (combining the wrestling, the sprint, the long jump, the discus, and the javelin). Three youth events were offered, in the sprint, the boxing, and the wrestling. Less prestigious venues offered more events, and multiplied the options for youths, both by opening more events to youths and by having more youth categories. Isthmia and Nemea offered two youth categories: their “beardless” category (perhaps, roughly 17–20 years old) may have constituted an intermediate category (and a more realistic opportunity for a victory) between the youth and adult categories at Olympia and Delphi.³⁶ They also offered some different events, including the horse-course race, a longer running race than the Olympic dolichos, perhaps 800 m.³⁷ As with equestrian events, there was likely a wide array of possibilities at the smaller games, including separate competitions in the long jump, discus, and javelin.³⁸

Youth events ranked below open events. Among the open events, we have seen that Hippias’ chronology privileged the stadion, and, to judge by the Panathenaea in the fourth century, the stadion commanded the biggest prizes for a gymnastic event at regional contests,³⁹ but the combat events enjoyed priority in other ways. The athletes from the late archaic and early classical period that occupied the most space in the oral tradition tended to be combat athletes: the boxer Euthymus of Western Locri with his victory over the vampiric monster of Temesa; the boxer-cum-pancratiast Theagenes of Thasos, whose statue was said to have fallen upon an enemy who was whipping it; the boxer Diagoras of Rhodes, whose children shared his success at Olympia; and, perhaps greatest of all, the wrestler Milo of Croton, who was said to have led a much smaller Crotoniate force to victory over the Sybarites dressed as Heracles and wearing his Olympic crowns. The great sprinters—Astylus of Croton, Crison of Himera—were comparatively anonymous. Most, though by no means all, of the athletes who became the objects of cult or were framed as heroes by the oral tradition were combat athletes.⁴⁰

Various hierarchies, therefore, structured the complex field of athletics, some of them in competition with each other. But just as epinician downplayed differences between venues, so too it downplayed differences between events. It celebrated open and youth contests, and equestrian and gymnastic contests with similar grandeur. Despite the fact that equestrian victors were typically older⁴¹ and rarely participated in the physical work of victory, differences between equestrian and gymnastic contests seem to be actively erased. Gymnastic paradigms sometimes illustrate equestrian victories, and the victories are offered as evidence of the same virtues: hard work, generosity, wisdom and wise expenditure, divine favor, and excellence in general.⁴²

Pindar’s two odes for Melissus of Thebes, Isthmian 3–4, illustrate this lack of distinction. Isthmian 4 celebrates an Isthmian pancration victory, and includes in its catalog the family’s prior equestrian victories, suggesting that the two athletic activities are part of the same story. This sense was then strikingly underlined when Melissus won a chariot race at Nemea. He commissioned a second ode—the ode we call Isthmian 3—but, uniquely among Pindar’s odes, the two odes share the same meter. The second ode does not seem to have been intended simply to extend the first ode (although the repeated metrical scheme would have made it much easier for both to be performed as part of a single celebration),⁴³ but their extraordinary similarity does mark the two victories as part of a unitary athletic activity. The language used to describe the victory also promotes this idea: like the earlier win, the chariot win demonstrates strength and hard work—albeit the “strength of wealth” (Isth. 3.1–2) and the “toils of four-horse chariots” (Isth. 3.17)—as well as the same, vague “excellence” (Isth. 3.4, 3.13) lauded by the earlier ode (Isth. 4.13, 4.38).⁴⁴

Epinician does not avoid descriptions of the events, but rarely spends much time on them.⁴⁵ A particularly prized victory in the combat events and the pentathlon was called a “dustless” victory, a victory seemingly won without having to compete in the final bout. Bacchylides describes how, at the Olympics of 476, Hieron’s racehorse, Pherenicus, won without being soiled by “dust” (5.44) kicked up by any horses in front of him. Pherenicus is claimed to be literally clean here, but epinician’s victory descriptions also metaphorically raise the victors out of the dirt, transforming the sweat, dust and struggle, the blood and violence—the basic physicality of athletic competition—into a beautiful, bodiless radiance. At one point Bacchylides describes a wrestling bout as “the sparkling of the wrestling” (9.36).⁴⁶

As Bacchylides’ inclusion of Hieron’s racehorse suggests, epinician did speak of what might be called the additional personnel involved in athletics. For equestrian events, several different bodies were involved: the horses (or mules), the drivers or jockeys, as well as grooms, breeders, trainers, and managers. In some events at regional or local festivals, the competitors were required to drive or ride, but in the main events it was optional and, while it may have been common for owners to drive at small festivals, at large venues the option was rarely exercised. Pindar records one adventurous victor, Herodotus of Thebes, who drove a team to victory at the Isthmian games, but the example of Melissus of Thebes was typical, and telling. Although himself a prize-winning athlete, he left his chariot to be driven by someone else.⁴⁷ For gymnastic events, athletes typically required trainers when young, for the running events as much for the combat events, and many adults will have continued to practice with a trainer.⁴⁸ Framing the participation of these different agents required care, as their relationship with the victor or the role they played in the victory might undermine its value.

Athletic trainers were largely omitted from victory memorials; their absence at Olympia in this period is confirmed by Pausanias’ surmise that the inclusion of a statue of a trainer in a third-century memorial required special dispensation from the Elean officials.⁴⁹ Epinician follows this strategy for adult victors and youth victors in the running events, but odes for youth victors in the combat events mostly name the victors’ trainers. We thus learn of several trainers from this period: Ilas, Orseas, Melesias, and Menander.⁵⁰ Menander seems to have been particularly successful as a trainer, and such success, while providing an excellent reason to secure his services for a youth, might also suggest that the real agency in a victory belonged to the trainer, and that victory itself was a commodity that could be passed around between strangers. A striking passage in the Hippocratic corpus compares a trainer training an athlete to a smith producing an iron tool.⁵¹ Such a vision of training must have provided strong motivation to pass over the trainer in silence, but epinician mostly confronted the trainer’s involvement directly, at least in the odes for youths in the combat events. It framed the trainer as developing qualities already present in the athlete, rather than producing him, and represented him as a close family friend.⁵² The image of the trainer as the athlete’s whetstone, used twice by Pindar, responds directly to the vision of the athlete as a tool seen in the Hippocratic corpus: both trainer and athlete are things in this image, and the trainer sharpens but does not make the athlete.⁵³

Epinician maintains a studied vagueness about the trainers’ responsibilities. These included technique, character development, and physical development, including diet, exercise routines, and recovery from any injuries. Athletes certainly sustained injuries—Hippocratic texts speak of dislocations needing to be reset in wrestling schools—and trainers need to be understood as healthcare workers, in competition in some areas with the physicians represented by the Hippocratic texts from the late fifth century.⁵⁴ There is, however, no mention of injury in epinician. Obviously a victor is unlikely to have been injured in that particular competition, but one might expect recognition of past injuries, perhaps as an obstacle that the victor has overcome or as a reason for retirement. Injury is not evoked, however; rather, the epinician body proves itself immune to injury and a reliable platform for athletic performance, and 30-year-old epinician bodies are not distinguished from 20-year-old ones.⁵⁵

Statue dedications, vases, and coins often depict the horses, mules, drivers, and jockeys involved in equestrian competition. The absences are more notable. Some fifth-century Olympic chariot victors dedicated single statues of themselves rather than large sculptures of a team,⁵⁶ while at the end of the sixth century the Corinthian Pheidolas seems to have dedicated a statue of a racehorse that lacked a jockey. The story told to Pausanias at Olympia as he visited the sanctuary was that the horse had bucked its rider and won anyway.⁵⁷ There is, in fact, a general tendency to privilege the horse over the jockey or driver: significantly more horses are named by memorials, and the horse is often given the credit. Bacchylides describes Pherenicus “taking care of his helmsman” (5.47), and Pindar claims the same horse won “ungoaded” (Ol. 1.21). The victory vase of Dysniketos says that his horse (as opposed to the victor) won, as does Bacchylides of Pherenicus (5.40, 183).

Agency is, therefore, not an issue for these events, but, as with trainers, the nature of the relationship with the victor. The horses slip easily into the role of close family friend; in this period, they were bred and raised in-house, as we can deduce from the fact that it was only in the second half of the fifth century that raising your own horses became something to boast of.⁵⁸ Jockeys, too, were likely drawn from a wealthy entrant’s estates, although they may have been drawn from the surrounding community too, or even purchased as slaves, and seem to have been a locus of concern. Most concern was focused on the charioteers, however, as their achievements seem to have been genuinely admired and they may have served many victors. Epinician and other memorials largely ignored them, or at least kept them largely hidden behind the horses (literally, in the case of the Delphic charioteer),⁵⁹ but two odes where the charioteer receives considerable attention should be noted. First, Pindar’s Pythian 5 generously praises the driver, Carrhotus, but he was genuinely a close family friend, being the victor’s brother-in-law. Second, Pindar’s Isthmian 2, for Xenocrates of Acragas, reveals the role of a Nicomachus in victories won both by Xenocrates and by his brother, Theron, tyrant of that city. It is surely no coincidence that this extended praise of a charioteer dominates the central section of an ode that opens with the image of the Muse as a prostitute selling herself for profit and addresses head-on the anxiety that epinician itself was a commodity. The charioteer passes without mention in the two odes that Pindar composed to celebrate Theron’s victory when it actually occurred.⁶⁰