success from Thee as a simple favour." When young Nestor pleaded for Eumelus, he says, " Αλλ' ωφελεν αθανάτοισιν Ευχεσθαι, το κεν ὅτι πανυςατος ήλθε διωκων.” The failure of Teucer in the competition of shooting with the arrow, and the success of Meriones, are attributed to the unshriven state of the first, and to the pious vows of the second. After solemn prayers and oblations to Jupiter Olympius, the exercises began. Their order of succession is doubtful. We must not trust to the enumeration of scholiasts, who would sacrifice any thing to a hexameter or pentameter: Αλμα, Ποδώκειην, Δισκον, Ακονία, Παλην:” Leaping, running, throwing the quoit, hurling the spear, and wrestling." Some of the Latin editors give another arrange"Jaculum, discus, cursus, saltus, lucta." These constituted the Pentathlon. ment: The Pedestrian race, however, was the principal one. It always gave its record and fame to the Olympiad. We seem to have little notion of the fleetness and endurance which practice gave. The Hemerodrome, or messenger, often performed prodigies. Pheidippides walked one hundred and fifty miles, from Athens to Sparta, three miles an hour for fifty hours. Pliny says, that Pheidippides was surpassed by Anystis, a Lacedæmonian, and by Philonides, the courier of Alexander, both of whom ran in one day a hundred and fifty miles from Elis to Sycion. In Plutarch is the touching narrative of Euchidas. The Oracle having decided that all the altar fires of Greece should be extinguished because the Barbarians had polluted them, and that a virgin flame should be brought from Delphi, he ran from Platæa hither, and returned before sunset, having accomplished his task of the hundred and twenty-five miles. Just able to salute the citizens, he fell and immediately expired. The course of the foot-racer being about the eighth of a mile, there was the greatest difficulty in its being so short, because it must have been a rush, with a full spring of the muscles, demanded at once and not acquired by going. Crescit eundo. Yet there was little trial of sustained vigour. The double race, the Diaulus, was therefore added; and after that the Dolichus, which was twelve and sometimes twenty-four times over the same distance. The inscription of Pindar in the tenth Pythian, is to 2 Διαυλόδρομος, and that of his twelfth Olympiad, to a Δολιχοogomos. This gives a four miles, or an eight miles, race. Such would be quite enough, we may imagine, for wind and sinew. It would seem that the runners were drafted, by ballot, into different classes. The winners of each class were then pitted against each other. Sometimes there were too many to run, and those who had to wait for the turn were called Epsogor. When these were summoned to run with those who had already engaged, from their freshness, the delay was all in their favour. The Discus, or quoit, was the second exercise. Fable assigned it as a pastime of the gods, and Apollo was said, in mischance, to have killed Hyacinthus with one. It was a smooth heavy mass, like a small shield: not, however, horse-shoed or hollowed, as is the one of our village-greens. Much was made of this exploit. It was a warlike missile. From the brawny arm it would be hurled as from a sling. Its stroke would be often terrific. Its regular projectile was allowed for, and it swept an unerring aim. What bone or casque could resist! This was, however, but the mimic sport. It is not very evident whether the excellence of this art consisted in throwing it furthest, or in striking some mark. In the Discobuli which we have preserved to us in casts from the antique, the eye appears measuring something more than distance, while there is a noble expression of the entire shape. From the Lyrist we learn, in his first Isthmian Ode, that these quoits were stone; idivors dio2015. Darting may be considered as the third athletic sport. This does not refer to the flight of the arrow from the bow, but of the javelin from the hand. It was, probably, an instrument somewhat between the pilum of the Roman legions, and the shaft. Xenophon, in relating the advance of Thrasybulus from Phyle, describes the dispositions of his troops. First the • "Trans finem jaculo expedito."-Hor: Carm; lib. i. 8. heavy-armed, then the targeteers and light-armed darters, and the slingers were posted still more below.* In his Treatise on Horsemanship, he shows his reader how best to use his hand in order to give the fullest effect to his lance. Wrestling is the next essay. On a Panathenaic Vase described by Bröndstead, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, two wrestlers are drawn, one of whom has seized the left leg of the other to throw him down: and a master of the games, or agonothetes, attentively watching them. This exercise, in common with all the others, was performed naked. The unseemly fact must be known for a perfect understanding of the institute,-but it need not, after this, be repeated: γυμνοισι σταδίοις. West has shown, from an epigram on Milo, and from a quotation out of Seneca, that three falls amounted to a defeat. The most singular preliminary for the combat was, the anointing of the whole body. There were baths of oil near every palæstra. The officers appointed to superintend this preparation were, the Aliptæ. Thucydides says, "the wrestlers were anointed with oil before they entered the lists." Lycophron, in his Cassandra, speaks of games celebrated by the Argonauts near the African Syrtes, where, though they had washed in the sea, the oil with which they were anointed remained on the shore, nor could be washed away by rain or snow. This is sufficiently hyperbolical: the following is as comic. The Chorus, in the Knights of Aristophanes, resolve to anoint the Sausage-vender, as though a wrestler against Cleon before the Senate, with the fat of his own sausages. This practice must have given great suppleness to the limbs, and rendered the hold very difficult from the slipperiness of the body. We have proof that they rolled themselves, after this, in the dust, that they might be capable of fastening their seizures more tenaciously.† Leaping was the fifth of these efforts. Extraordinary agility here might be expected from the other contests, and from the muscular power of those who were matched in them. But we have nothing authentic. Amphialos sprung further than any of his competitors, but we know not how far that was. Affairs of Greece, Vol. II. + Lucian.-Anacharsis. One singular fact we receive from Pausanias, that this vaulting was always accompanied by the music of flutes. It does not seem to have been much regarded, nor do we, I believe, read of any who were crowned for it. These five contests were the Pentathlon: but it was not necessary for any candidate to undertake them all. Still he might; but if this was his large profession and emulation, failing in any, he was adorned for none. Very early was added the Cæstus, at first a club well loaded with some heavy metal,-afterwards a gauntlet of leather and iron covering the fist,-still later a gauntlet requiring the open and extended palm. These were fierce and cruel passages. They were calculated to brutalise the spectators, and were often of serious consequence to the parties.* This was called emphatically Pugnum; "Neque pugno, neque segni pede, victus."+ West has cited from the Greek Anthology the following lines, expressive of physiognomical disaster: "This Victor, glorious in his Olive wreath, Had once, eyes, eye-brows, nose, and ears, and teeth: But turning cæstus champion, to his cost By the union of the cæstus and wrestling, an institute arose under the name, Pancratium. The victor in both was the Pancratiast. This double strife was much favoured, and this double honour dearly craved.‡ Another addition to the original simplicity was the Armed Course, the Aywv xaxsos. In the first Isthmian Ode we read of the ασπιδοδούποισιν οπλίταις δρόμοις, the course in which the runners carried heavy and clanging shields. The ninth Pythian is dedicated to Ourobouw.§ At one time we may suppose it was a shock, an affray, of arms, of no little peril: but refinement soon turned it into a mere race, encumbered with military ensigns and accoutrements. Olym: v. 34, &c., Nem. iii. 27, &c., Nem : iv. 156. Brachia."-Hor: Carm: lib. i. 8. "Livida gestat armis + Hor: Carm: lib. iii. 12. Nem: iii. 26, &c. § Olym: iv. The most splendid innovation was that of the ChariotRace. This vehicle was a two-wheeled car, balanced with much difficulty, and the hinder part often dragging on the ground. It was yoked with two or four horses, and when with four, they ran all abreast. Open entirely, often made of metal, richly emblazoned, it was driven at a furious speed. The candidate was not always the charioteer. This might be deputed to a substitute. It had to pass twelve times round the course: δωδεκαγναμπτον περί τέρμα δρόμου. * Sometimes there was a profusion of these chariots we find from the fifth Pythian, that in the course near Cyrene, forty chariots were crazed, and their drivers precipitated from them, while Arcesilaus brought his home uninjured. Occasionally the horses were urged without the restraint of reins. On a Panathenaic vaset a two-horse chariot is painted, the driver holding a goad in his right hand, and a long wand in his left, bent at the end, reaching beyond the horses' necks, and capable of stopping them by hooking into some part of their harness, probably that about the head. More frequently they had reins. In the feigned account, given by the Pædagogue, of the death of Orestes in the course, the charioteers are said to have shaken their reins,ηνιας χεροιν Εσεισαν. When the royal youth, from accident, was hurled out of his chariot, he is described as entangled in them: συν δ' ελισσεται Τμητοῖς ἱμᾶσι. This does not seem easy to be done. But in "Burton's Antiquities of Rome," when he narrates the curiosities in the Chariot-room of the Vatican, several bas-reliefs are mentioned in which the drivers have bound the reins in various folds around their bodies. Burton suggests this illustration of the passage in the Electra.‡ In the Rock-Temple, Ebsambul, Rameses is sculptured standing in his chariot drawn by two horses, the reins fastened to his girdle behind him.§ When the son of Alcibiades was the client of Isocrates, it appears that the libel which had been heaped the father's memory was, that he had stolen or taken with violence his famous horses from Tisias. The orator proceeds: "At that time, the Olympic Games were the chief theatre of upon Olym: iii. 59. + Ut supra. |