Chapter III: The Rise of the Athletic Festival (2)

The number of altars had no doubt grown. The altar of Zeus already rivalled, if it did not eclipse, the earlier altar of Hera and the tomb of Pelops. This altar stood on a double elliptical base of stone, the lower base 125 feet, the upper 32 feet in circumference. The altar itself was built up of the ashes of the victims which were brought once every year by the seers from the Prytaneum, kneaded with water from the Alpheus and deposited on the altar. In the time of Pausanias it had reached a height of 22 feet.

There was as yet no race-course at Olympia. The races and games must have taken place in the open space that stretched from the altar of Zeus and tomb of Pelops, below the slopes of the hill of Cronus, from which the spectators doubtless looked on. The races probably finished at the altar, and there, under the immediate protection of Zeus, the victors were crowned. The race, according to a tradition related by Philostratus,[61] originated in a torch-race, in which the competitors, starting from the distance of a stade, raced with lighted torches to the altar, the one who arrived first and lighted the fire receiving the prize; similarly for the double race or diaulos, the runners raced from the altar to summon to the sacrifice the deputations from Greek states and then raced back to the altar; while the long race originated in the practice of the heralds whose office it was to carry declarations of war to different parts of Greece. Of such ceremonial races we shall find examples in many parts of Greece, but the tradition deriving from them the races at Olympia may be rejected as a late invention, which perhaps had its origin in the fact that before the stadium was constructed the races did finish at the altar. Certainly in Pindar’s time boxing and similar events still took place there, and it is doubtful whether they were ever transferred to the stadium.

For the first half-century Olympia remained the local festival of the Elean and pre-Dorian countryfolk of the West. The first victor was Coroebus of Elis,[62] whose tomb appropriately marked the boundary between Elis and Heraea, a symbol of the truce between the two races. Yet the Eleans could not appeal to their athletic records in support of their claims. Of the first eleven victors only one other was an Elean, while the older race was represented by seven Messenians, one Achaean from Dyme, and one native of Dyspontium, a town near the mouth of the Alpheus that belonged to the Pisatan league. According to a scandalous tradition quoted by Athenaeus, Coroebus was a cook, but the scanty records which we possess of these earlier victors prove that the games still maintained their aristocratic character, and the tradition may be set aside as the invention of the enemies of Elis, or the anti-athletic party of a later age.

After Ol. 11 only one Messenian victory is chronicled till the restoration of Messenia in the fourth century. Hypenos, who won the double race on its introduction in Ol. 15, was a Pisatan, though Elis tried to claim him. With these exceptions the old stock disappears, and the Eleans are too supine, or too much occupied with feuds with Argos, to take their place. Yet the athletic vigour of the old race reappears afterwards from other quarters in families like the Diagoridae of Rhodes who were descended from a daughter of the Messenian patriot Aristomenes, in colonies like Achaean Croton, in the late successes of Arcadia at a time when athletics had become a sufficiently lucrative profession to tempt from their poor homes these hardy mountaineers and shepherds. Perhaps the long roll of Spartan successes owed something to the Messenians whom they had conquered. The records of their ancient successes were doubtless jealously treasured by those who had left their homes, and we may well suppose that from such records the early part of the Olympic register was compiled.

The eclipse of the “home counties,” as we may call them, was partly due to the growing importance of the festival, partly to the pressure of Argos and Sparta. Of the part played by Argos we know but little; what we do know is that Pheidon of Argos, whenever he lived, like other tyrants tried to exploit the festival for the extension of his own dominion, that he espoused the cause of the Pisatans, and that there was a feud between the Eleans and the Argives,[63] which perhaps explains the complete absence of Argos in the list of early victors. Elis found a natural ally in Sparta. The valleys of the Eurotas and the Alpheus form a direct means of communication between Sparta and Olympia, and the control of this route by Sparta after the conquest of Messenia gave her a natural advantage over her rival.

The influence of Olympia spread first along the northern coast of the Peloponnese, secondly to Sparta. In the second half-century, Ol. 13-25, Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sicyon, Hyperesia, Athens, Thebes, figure in the list of victors, and yet farther east, Smyrna. All these places communicate with Olympia by the Gulf of Corinth. It is significant that this extension of its influence eastwards coincides with the founding of the first Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. The Corinthians, passing along the north coast of the gulf to Corcyra, crossed over and founded Syracuse 734 B.C. Six years later the Megarians founded a new Megara beside the hills of Hybla, and a century later the two Megaras combined to colonize Selinus. The Achaeans, making a stepping-stone of Zacynthos, founded the rich cities of Sybaris and Croton, and later Metapontum, and built on the Lacinian promontory south of Croton a temple of Hera, which became a centre of worship for the Greeks of Italy. Even the Eastern Greeks of the islands took part in this movement. Gela was colonized by settlers from Rhodes and Crete. All these colonies and many others played a great part in the history of Olympia, the importance of which we can see, not only in their list of victories, but in the remains of the so-called treasuries which they built there, and it is hardly fanciful to suppose that their connexion with Olympia dated from the time when the settlers were leaving the shores of Greece.

The victory of Onomastus of Smyrna in Ol. 23 is no less significant of the full communication existing between the mainland and the East at the commencement of the seventh century.[64] Eastern despots sent offerings to Delphi; poets from the islands and Asia Minor brought into Greece the Phrygian and Aeolian modes of music; even the alphabet came from the East. At Olympia, when the victors’ friends held revel in their honour in the evening, they sang down to the time of Pindar the triumphal song of Heracles composed by Archilochus of Paros.[65] Smyrna, at that time the foremost city of the Eastern coast, was closely connected with the Peloponnese. The poet Mimnermus tells us that his race had come from Neleian Pylos to Colophon first, and had then dispossessed the Aeolian inhabitants of Smyrna.[66]

The first appearance of Thebes is on the occasion of the introduction of the chariot-race in Ol. 25. As we have seen, the chariot-race seems to have been one of the earliest, if not the earliest, event at the Olympia, and one is inclined to suspect that the innovation consisted in the substitution of the four-horse chariot for the older two-horse chariot, which was revived at Olympia in later times.

Thus we see that within a century of the first Olympiad, Olympia had become a centre to which competitors came not only from the Peloponnese, but from Athens, Thebes, and even from the East.

The long list of Spartan successes begins in Ol. 15 (720 B.C.), and continues till Ol. 50 (576 B.C.), from which date they cease almost entirely. During most of this period the superiority of Sparta is undisputed. This superiority may be partially explained by the careful records of athletic victories kept in that most methodical of states, whereas the records of other states were less careful and less accessible to the historian. Yet making full allowance for our imperfect knowledge of other states, the Spartan successes are sufficiently remarkable, and their sudden cessation hardly less so. Aristotle has given us the explanation of these facts.[67] Sparta was the first Greek state to introduce a systematic physical and military training, which for a time made her unrivalled in sport and war; when other states followed her example, her superiority disappeared. Moreover, in the seventh century Sparta was still a progressive, enlightened state, fond of poetry and music, taking an energetic part in all the manifold activities of Greek life; only the good effects of her system were yet apparent; its iron rule had not yet produced that narrow spirit of exclusiveness which was fatal to progress.[68] Hence Spartan participation in the Olympic festival not only raised the prestige of the festival, but gave a new importance and seriousness to athletics. Hitherto they had been a diversion of the nobles; henceforth they were to be part of the education of the people. The physical education of Greece was largely due to Spartan example. At the beginning of the sixth century we find Solon making laws for the palaestrae and gymnasia, and we may suspect that most important cities possessed these institutions.

Sparta is credited with no less than five victories in events said to be introduced for the first time—the long race in Ol. 15, wrestling and the pentathlon in Ol. 18, the boys’ wrestling in Ol. 37, and the boys’ pentathlon in Ol. 38. The latter event was abolished in the next Olympiad owing to Elean jealousy at the success of the Spartan boy Eutelidas. Perhaps the various events for boys were introduced for the benefit of the home counties which had been ousted by increased competition from without, and if so we can understand a certain feeling of soreness at the Spartan success, especially as Eutelidas won the boys’ wrestling in the same Olympiad. The statue in his honour at Olympia was the oldest of all the statues of athletes; it seems to have stood originally on the site occupied by the temple of Zeus, and on the building of the temple to have been moved to the south.[69] Special notice is due to Hipposthenes, the victor in the boys’ wrestling in Ol. 37, who subsequently won five more victories in wrestling at Olympia, and who had a temple built in his honour at Sparta. His son almost equalled his father’s record, winning five victories in wrestling.[70] Another equally famous athlete was Chionis, who won four victories in the stade-race and three in the double race, besides victories in other sports, Ols. 28-31. He is said to have taken part with Battus in the colonization of Cyrene, and his exploits were commemorated at a later date by his countrymen on stone pillars at Sparta and at Olympia, where they also set up in his honour a statue, the work of Myron.

Meanwhile, during the period of Spartan pre-eminence, the influence of Olympia had been steadily spreading, especially among the colonies of the West. In Ol. 33 two new events were added—the riding race, which was won by a Thessalian from Crannon, and the pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling, which was won by Lygdamis of Syracuse, who was said to have had the proportions of Heracles, his foot, like that of the hero, being exactly an Olympic foot. The various events for boys were introduced between Ol. 37 and Ol. 41, and in the boys’ boxing the first winner came from Sybaris. Croton had already begun her victorious career. From Miletus in Ol. 46 came the boy runner Polymnestor, who, as a shepherd boy, was said to have captured hares by speed of foot; while from Samos came the effeminate-looking Pythagoras with his long hair and purple robes. Rejected from the boys’ boxing as a weakling, he entered for the men’s competition and won it. So rapid was the progress of the colonies, and so keen their participation in the Olympic festival, that from Ol. 50 they outstripped the mother country, and the following century may be described as the colonial period of Olympia. The first attempt made by any Greek state to secure for itself a local habitation at Olympia was the building of a treasury by the Geloans at the close of the seventh century. Before the close of the sixth their example had been followed by Metapontum, Selinus, Sybaris, Byzantium and Cyrene, the only representatives of the Peloponnese being the Megarians. Nothing indicates more clearly the predominance of the colonies than this line of treasuries, or rather communal houses,[71] standing on a terrace at the foot of the hill of Cronus between the Heraeum and the entrance of the later stadium, and commanding a view of the Altis, of the altars, and the games. One wonders if the Spartans indulged in lamentations over the decay of Spartan athletics. I think not, for that reserved and silent people had too much pride and dourness; moreover athletics to them were but a means to an end, the training of soldier citizens. Certainly from this date they ceased to figure in the victors’ lists, engrossed perhaps in more serious contests and schemes of aggrandizement, or else estranged from the festival by the new democratic, Panhellenic spirit introduced there by the colonies, and unwilling to suffer defeat at the hands of upstarts.

The influence of the colonies was great. Their competition gave a fresh impulse to that wave of athleticism which reached its height in the sixth century. To Olympia they gave a Panhellenic character as a meeting-place for all the scattered members of the Greek race, and thereby tended to preserve and strengthen that feeling of unity which contact with other nations had already quickened into life. No foreigner could enter as a competitor at Olympia, no barbarous potentates sent offerings to its shrines or consulted its oracle. Olympia remained throughout its history purely and exclusively Hellenic. Again, the colonies brought Olympia into touch with the democratic spirit of the age, and broke down the barriers of Elean and Spartan exclusiveness. The colonial claimed admission purely by virtue of his Greek birth, and no distinctions of rank or caste or wealth were known in the Olympic games. Sport, especially national sport, is a great leveller of social distinctions.

The political importance of such a festival, which drew competitors and spectators from all quarters of the Greek world, could not escape the notice of the clear-sighted and ambitious tyrants and nobles of the seventh century. But the sanctity of the place and the new democratic spirit of the festival were too strong for them. Pheidon of Argos had tried to make himself master of Olympia by force of arms. Other tyrants tried more peaceful means, seeking to win popularity among the assembled crowds and influence with the powers of Olympia by victories in the chariot-race, or by sumptuous offerings to Olympian Zeus. In the middle of the seventh century Myron of Sicyon won a victory in the chariot-race and commemorated his success by dedicating two treasure-chests of solid bronze, one of which weighed 500 talents. These treasure-chests were afterwards placed in the treasure-house of the Sicyonians, built in the fifth century possibly in the place of some more ancient structure. The excavations of Olympia have revealed the solid floor intended to bear the weight of these treasure-chests. His grandson Cleisthenes, himself a victor, took advantage of the festival to proclaim the famous competition for the hand of his daughter Agariste, which Herodotus describes. Cypselus of Corinth, too, dedicated at Olympia a golden statue of Zeus made in the style of the early metal-workers, of beaten gold plates riveted together. His son Periander was victor in the chariot-race, and gave to Olympia the famous chest of Cypselus in which, according to the story, the infant Cypselus had been hidden by his mother from the assassins sent by the oligarchs of Corinth to murder him. From Athens came the would-be tyrant Cylon, who won the diaulos race in Ol. 35; and in the next generation the chariot-race was won by Alcmaeon, the son of that Megacles who was responsible as archon for the death of Cylon and the consequent pollution of the Alcmaeonidae, and the father of Megacles, the successful suitor of Agariste. Yet, in spite of their victories and their offerings, no tyrant secured influence at Olympia, no building there bore a tyrant’s name. The so-called treasuries were the communal houses of states, that of the Megarians, which dates about this time, being set up probably not by the tyrant Theagenes but by the people after his fall, and before their power was weakened by the successes of Athens.

Thus at the beginning of the sixth century Olympia had acquired a unique position as the national festival of Hellas. Competitors and spectators of all classes gathered there from every part of Greece. The sacred truce-bearers proclaimed the month of peace throughout the Greek world, and in response, cities of Asia and of Sicily vied with one another in the splendour of the official embassies (θεωρίαι) sent to represent them at the festival. The old aristocratic character survived in the chariot-race and horse-race, which afforded to tyrants and nobles an opportunity of displaying their riches and their power. The athletic programme was now practically complete, the only important innovation of later times being the race in full armour introduced 520 B.C., and this programme was truly democratic. In athletic events noble and peasant met on equal terms. The aristocratic prejudice against these popular contests did not yet exist; and though the honour of the Olympic crown was open to the poorest citizen of Greek birth, such was the prestige of the festival that it was coveted even by the highest. The representative character of Olympia was due to a variety of causes. The geographical position of the place, its ancient sanctity, the athletic vigour of the pre-Dorian Greeks, the discipline and training of the Spartans, the enthusiastic patriotism of the colonies, the ambition of tyrants, the new spirit of democracy,—these and other causes contributed to the result, and the importance of the result was recognized by the founding within the next half-century of three other Panhellenic festivals at Delphi, at Nemea, and at the Isthmus, and of many another festival which, like the Panathenaea, aspired to but never attained Panhellenic dignity.

Yet, despite the growth of the festival and the development of athletics, there was little change in the appearance of the Altis or the organization of the games. Some of the wooden pillars of the Heraeum were perhaps replaced by stone, but no fresh building appeared till the treasuries, the earliest of which date from the close of the seventh century. The games still took place near the altar, where a course could be easily measured and marked out before each meeting. The new events added were merely variations of those which we find in Homer. Popularity and competition had no doubt improved the standard of performance, but athletic training did not yet exist. In the towns, indeed, gymnasia and palaestrae were already springing up; but these were educational rather than athletic, intended to train and discipline the young as useful soldiers rather than to produce champion athletes. The bulk of the population living an open-air country life in which war, hunting, and games played a considerable part, had no need of training. Thus, though athletics had become popular, they still maintained the spontaneity and joy of the Homeric age: they were still pure recreation.

Footnote 27:

Frazer, _Pausanias_, i. 44, 8; Rouse, _Greek Votive Offerings_, pp. 4,
10; Körte, “Die Entstehung der Olympionikenliste,” _Hermes_, xxxix.,
1904, pp. 224 ff.; Krause, _Die Pythien, Nemeen, und Isthmien_, pp. 9,
112, 171.

Footnote 28:

Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, 2nd Ed. i. 374; ii. 323,
330.

Footnote 29:

Frazer, _loc. cit._

Footnote 30:

P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ireland_, ii. pp. 435 ff.

Footnote 31:

_C.I.G._ 1969, ἀγὼν ἐπιτάφιος θεματικός.

Footnote 32:

_Berl. Vas._ 1665. _Mon. d. I._ X. Pl. iv., v.

Footnote 33:

_Arch. Zeit._, 1885, Pl. viii. The vase is now at Copenhagen. The
silver cup referred to below is in the Uffizi Palace, and is
reproduced in Schreiber’s _Atlas_, xiii. 6, and Inghirami, _Mon. Etr._
iii. 19, 20.

Footnote 34:

_B.M. Vases_, B. 124.

Footnote 35:

Hesiod, _Op._ 654.

Footnote 36:

Paus. viii. 4, 5.

Footnote 37:

Pindar, _Ol._ vii. 77-80.

Footnote 38:

Frazer, _Paus._ i. 29, 30.

Footnote 39:

Plut. _Quaest. Symp._ v. 2.

Footnote 40:

Unless we accept Mr. Myers’ translation of Pindar, _Ol._ i. 94, “And
from afar off he beholdeth the glory of the Olympian games in the
courses called of Pelops.” Most modern editors translate κλέος τηλόθεν
δέδορκε, “his glory shineth from afar,” which, in view of the words
which follow, ἐν δρόμοις Πέλοπος, seems decidedly preferable to making
Pelops the subject.

Footnote 41:

It is perhaps no accident that in our imperfect records of the Olympic
games the earliest victor outside the Peloponnese is Onomastus of
Smyrna, who in _Ol._ 23 won the boxing, an event said to have been
then introduced for the first time. He is said to have drawn up rules
for boxing which were adopted at Olympia. Again, no family was more
distinguished in the history of Greek athletics than the Diagoridae of
Rhodes, whose victories in boxing and the pankration were immortalized
by Pindar. The prominence of boxing in the East reminds us of Minoan
times, and perhaps the tradition may have survived from these days.

Footnote 42:

Paus. iv. 4, 1; iv. 33, 2.

Footnote 43:

Pindar, _Ol._ i. (E. Myers’ translation).

Footnote 44:

_Vide_ Bötticher, _Olympia_, ch. i.

Footnote 45:

For the history of Olympia _vide_ Curtius, “Entwurf einer Geschichte
von Olympia,” in _Ol._ Text. i. pp. 16-68.

Footnote 46:

For the cult of Pelops _vide_ Paus. v. 13, 2; Schol. to Pindar, _Ol._
i. 146, 149.

Footnote 47:

The latest excavations show that this site had been inhabited in
prehistoric days. Traces of six buildings have been discovered below
the geometric stratum; they are characterized by a semicircular
apsidal ending. _Ath. Mitth._ xxxiii. 185; _Year’s Work in Classical
Studies_, 1908, p. 12.

Footnote 48:

Pindar, _Ol._ xi. 64.

Footnote 49:

Cp. Louis Dyer, “The Olympian Council House,” in _Harvard Classical
Studies_, 1908, where a full account of these Peloponnesian leagues
will be found.

Footnote 50:

Paus. v. 20, 1; Plut. _Lycurgus_ 1, 1. The part taken by Cleosthenes
is vouched for by Phlegon, _Frag. Hist. Gr._ p. 602, and in a scholion
on Plato’s _Republic_, 465 D. _Vide_ Dyer, _l.c._ pp. 40 ff.

Footnote 51:

Thuc. v. 49; Demosth. _De fals. leg._, ὑπόθ. p. 335.

Footnote 52:

_Hell._ iii. 2, 31; vii. 4, 28.

Footnote 53:

Hdt. iv. 148.

Footnote 54:

_C.I.G._ 11; Roberts’s _Greek Epigraphy_, 291.

Footnote 55:

Paus. v. 6, 7.

Footnote 56:

Paus. v. 16.

Footnote 57:

Paus. i. 44; _Anth. Pal._ App. 272; Thuc. i. 6.

Footnote 58:

For a full discussion of the register, its history and its sources,
_vide_ Jüthner, _Philostratus_, pp. 60-70.

Footnote 59:

_De Olympionicarum Statuis_, p. 36.

Footnote 60:

Thuc. iii. 8, v. 49; Ditt. _Syll._, 2nd Ed., 256.

Footnote 61:

_Gym._ 4.

Footnote 62:

Paus. v. 8, 6; viii. 26, 3; Athen. ix. 382 B. Details with regard to
the various victors mentioned in this and the following chapters may
be found under their names in Krause, _Olympia_, H. Förster,
_Olympische Sieger_, and W. Hyde, _De Olympionicarum Statuis_, in all
of which full references are given.

Footnote 63:

Paus. v. 2 and 3.

Footnote 64:

Bury, _History of Greece_, p. 110.

Footnote 65:

Pindar, _Ol._ ix. The date of Archilochus is fixed by Hauvette in the
first half of the seventh century. _Cl. Rev._ xxi. p. 143.

Footnote 66:

Mimnermus, _Fr._ 9 (Bergk).

Footnote 67:

Aristot. _Politics_, v. 4.

Footnote 68:

The recent excavations at Sparta prove that the decline of athletics
coincided with the decline of art. Mr. R. M. Dawkins, writing in last
report of the _B.S.A._, vol. xiv. p. 2, says: “In every case we have
the remarkable result that the finest works belong to the seventh
century, and that the sixth already shows the beginning of the decline
which is so marked in the very poor character of the finds of the
fifth century.”

Footnote 69:

Hyde, _op. cit._ p. 56.

Footnote 70:

Paus. iii. 13, 9.

Footnote 71:

For the treasuries at Olympia _vide_ Louis Dyer, in _J.H.S._ vols.
xxv. and xxvi.