Christian emperor Theodosius, in the tenth year of his reign. The last Olympian victor was a Romanized Armenian named Varastad.
Let us attempt to call up the scene which Olympia in its palmy days must have presented as the great festival approached. Heralds had proclaimed throughout Greece the “truce of God.” So religiously was this observed that the Spartans chose to risk the liberties of Greece, when the Persians were at the gates of Pylae, rather than march during the holy days. Those white tents which stand out against the sombre grey of the olive groves belong to the Hellanodicae, or ten judges of the games, chosen one for each tribe of the Eleians. They have been here already ten months, receiving instruction in their duties. All, too, or most of the athletes must have arrived, for they have been undergoing the indispensable training in the gymnasium of the Altis. But along the “holy road” from the town of Elis there are crowding a motley throng. Conspicuous in the long train of pleasure-seekers are the θεωροί or sacred deputies, clad in their robes of office, and bearing with them in their carriages of state offerings to the shrine of the god. Nor is there any lack of distinguished visitors. It may be Alcibiades, who, they say, has entered no less than seven chariots; or Gorgias, who has written a famous ἐπίδειξις for the occasion; or the sophist Hippias, who boasts that all he bears about him, from the sandals on his feet to the dithyrambs he carries in his hand, are his own manufacture; or Aetion, who will exhibit his picture of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana—the picture which gained him no less a prize than the daughter of the Hellanodices Praxonides; or, in an earlier age, the poet-laureate of the Olympians, Pindar himself. One feature of the medieval tournament and the modern racecourse is wanting. Women might indeed compete and win prizes as the owners of teams, but all except the priestesses of Demeter were forbidden, matrons on pain of death, to enter the enclosure.
At daybreak the athletes presented themselves in the Bouleuterium, where the presidents were sitting, and proved by witnesses that they were of pure Hellenic descent, and had no stain, religious or civil, on their character. Laying their hands on the bleeding victim, they swore that they had duly qualified themselves by ten months’ continuous training in the gymnasium, and that they would use no fraud or guile in the sacred contests. Thence they proceeded to the stadium, where they stripped to the skin and anointed themselves. A herald proclaimed, “Let the runners put their feet to the line,” and called on the spectators to challenge any disqualified by blood or character. If no objection was made, they were started by the note of the trumpet, running in heats of four, ranged in the places assigned them by lot. The presidents seated near the goal adjudged the victory. The foot-race was only one of twenty-four Olympian contests which Pausanias enumerates, though we must not suppose that these were all exhibited at any one festival. Till the 77th Olympiad all was concluded in one day, but afterwards the feast was extended to five.
The order of the games is for the most part a matter of conjecture, but, roughly speaking, the historical order of their institution was followed. We will now describe in this order the most important.
(1) The Foot-race.—For the first 13 Olympiads the δρόμος, or single lap of the stadium, which was 200 yds. long, was the only contest. The δίαυλος, in which the course was traversed twice, was added in the 14th Olympiad, and in the 15th the δόλιχος, or long race, of 7, 12 or, according to the highest computation, 24 laps, about 223 m. in length. We are told that the Spartan Ladas, after winning this race, dropped down dead at the goal. There was also, for a short time, a race in heavy armour, which Plato highly commends as a preparation for active service. (2) Wrestling was introduced in the 18th Olympiad. The importance attached to this exercise is shown by the very word palaestra, and Plutarch calls it the most artistic and cunning of athletic games. The practice differed little from that of modern times, save that the wrestler’s limbs were anointed with oil and sprinkled with sand. The third throw, which decided the victory, passed into a proverb, and struggling on the ground, such as we see in the famous statue at Florence, was not allowed, at least at the Olympia. (3) In the same year was introduced the πένταθλον (pentathlon), a combination of the five games enumerated in the well-known pentameter ascribed to Simonides:—
Only the first of these calls for any comment. The only leap practised seems to have been the long jump. The leapers increased their momentum by means of ἁλτῆρες or dumb-bells, which they swung in the act of leaping and dropped as they “took off.” The take-off may have been slightly raised, and some commentators with very little warrant have stated that spring-boards were used. The record jump with which Phayllus of Croton is credited, 55 ft., is incredible with or without a spring-board. It is disputed whether a victory in all five contests, or in three at least, was required to win the πένταθλον. (4) The rules for boxing were not unlike those of the modern ring (see Pugilism), and the chief difference was in the use of the caestus. This in Greek times consisted of leather thongs bound round the boxer’s fists and wrists; and the weighting with lead or iron or metal studs, which made the caestus more like a “knuckle-duster” than a boxing-glove, was a later Roman development. The death of an antagonist, unless proved to be accidental, not only disqualified for a prize but was severely punished. The use of ear-guards and the comic allusions to broken ears, not noses, suggest that the Greek boxer did not hit out straight from the shoulder, but fought windmill fashion, like the modern rustic. In the pancratium, a combination of wrestling and boxing, the use of the caestus, and even of the clenched fist, was disallowed. (5) The chariot-race had its origin in the 23rd Olympiad. Of the hippodrome, or racecourse, no traces remain, but from the description of Pausanias we may infer that the dimensions were approximately 1600 ft. by 400. Down the centre there ran a bank of earth, and at each end of this bank was a turning-post round which the chariots had to pass. “To shun the goal with rapid wheels” required both nerve and skill, and the charioteer played a more important part in the race than even the modern jockey. Pausanias tells us that horses would shy as they passed the fatal spots. The places of the chariots were determined by lot, and there were elaborate arrangements for giving all a fair start. The number of chariots that might appear on the course at once is uncertain. Pindar (Pyth. v. 46) praises Arcesilaus of Cyrene for having brought off his chariot uninjured in a contest where no fewer than forty took part. The large outlay involved excluded all but rich competitors, and even kings and tyrants eagerly contested the palm. Thus in the list of victors we find the names of Cylon, the would-be tyrant of Athens, Pausanias the Spartan king, Archelaus of Macedon, Gelon and Hiero of Syracuse, and Theron of Agrigentum. Chariot-races with mules, with mares, with two horses in place of four, were successively introduced, but none of these present any special interest. Races on horseback date from the 33rd Olympiad. As the course was the same, success must have depended on skill as much as on swiftness. Lastly, there were athletic contests of the same description for boys, and a competition of heralds and trumpeters, introduced in the 93rd Olympiad.
The prizes were at first, as in the Homeric times, of some intrinsic value, but after the 6th Olympiad the only prize for each contest was a garland of wild olive, which was cut with a golden sickle from the kallistephanos, the sacred tree brought by Hercules “from the dark fountains of Ister in the land of the Hyperboreans, to be a shelter common to all men and a crown of noble deeds” (Pindar, Ol. iii. 18). Greek writers from Herodotus to Plutarch dwell with complacency on the magnanimity of a people who cared for nothing but honour and were content to struggle for a corruptible crown. But though the Greek games present in this respect a favourable contrast to the greed and gambling of the modern racecourse, yet to represent men like Milon and Damoxenus as actuated by pure love of glory is a pleasing fiction of the moralists. The successful athlete received in addition to the immediate honours very substantial rewards. A herald proclaimed his name, his parentage and his country; the Hellanodicae took from a table of ivory and gold the olive crown and placed it on his head, and in his hand a branch of palm; as he marched in the sacred revel to the temple of Zeus, his friends and admirers showered in his path flowers and costly gifts, singing the old song of Archilochus, τήνελλα καλλίνικε, and his name was canonized in the Greek calendar. Fresh honours and rewards awaited him on his return home. If he was an Athenian he received, according to the law of Solon, 500 drachmae, and free rations for life in the Prytaneum; if a Spartan, he had as his prerogative the post of honour in battle. Poets like Pindar, Simonides and Euripides sung his praises, and sculptors like Pheidias and Praxiteles were engaged by the state to carve his statue. We even read of a breach in the town walls being made to admit him, as if the common road were not good enough for such a hero; and there are well-attested instances of altars being built and sacrifices offered to a successful athlete. No wonder then that an Olympian prize was regarded as the crown of human happiness. Cicero, with a Roman’s contempt for Greek frivolity, observes with a sneer that an Olympian victor receives more honours than a triumphant general at Rome, and tells the story of the Rhodian Diagoras, who, having himself won the prize at Olympia, and seen his two sons crowned on the same day, was addressed by a Laconian in these words:—“Die, Diagoras, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire.” Alcibiades, when setting forth his services to the state, puts first his victory at Olympia, and the prestige he had won for Athens by his magnificent display. But perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the exaggerated value which the Greeks attached to athletic prowess is a
casual expression which Thucydides employs when describing the