Similarly, the exclusion of women from Olympia was doubtless due to some religious taboo rather than to any sense of modesty or decorum. Such a feeling cannot have existed in these times. Certainly the Ionian women attended the festival of Delos, and Spartan girls took part in all athletic exercises with the boys. Pausanias in one passage tells us that the restriction did not extend to unmarried girls, but the truth of his statement is at least doubtful. We never hear of any unmarried women being present at the festival, and Olympia can have afforded little or no accommodation for them. The only certain exception is in the case of the priestess of Demeter, Chamyne, an exception that is quite consistent with the idea of an ancient taboo. Otherwise no woman was allowed to cross the Alpheus during a stated number of days. The penalty for so doing was death, the transgressor being thrown from the Typaean rock. Only one instance is recorded of this rule being broken. Pherenice, a member of the famous family of the Diagoridae, in her anxiety to see her son Peisirodus compete in the boys’ boxing, accompanied him to Olympia disguised as a trainer. In her delight at his victory she leapt over the barrier and so disclosed her sex. The Hellanodicae, however, pardoned her in consideration for her father and brothers and son, all of them Olympic victors, but they passed a decree that henceforth all trainers should appear naked.[55]
Yet, though personally excluded from the games, women were allowed to enter their horses for the chariot-race, and even to set up statues for their victories. They had also their own festival at Olympia, the Heraea.[56] Every four years a peplos was woven for Hera by sixteen women of Elis, and presented to the goddess. At the festival there were races for maidens of various ages. Their course was 500 feet, or one-sixth less than the men’s stadium. The maidens ran with their hair down their backs, a short tunic reaching just below the knee, and their right shoulder bare to the breast. The victors received crowns of olive and a share of the heifer sacrificed to Hera. They had, too, the right of setting up their statues in the Heraeum. There is in the Vatican a copy of a fifth-century statue of one of these girl victors, represented just as Pausanias describes them (Fig. 6). She seems to be just on the point of starting. Unfortunately the arms of the statue are restored, and we cannot feel certain of the motive. The Heraea were said to have been instituted by Hippodameia in gratitude for her marriage with Pelops. Of their real origin and history we are unfortunately ignorant. According to Curtius the Heraea were the prototype of the Olympia, and races for maidens were earlier than those for men, but this is most improbable. The weaving of the peplos reminds us, of course, of the similar ceremony at the Panathenaea, while the races for maidens suggest Dorian influence. Certainly we can hardly make the Dorians responsible for the exclusion of women from Olympia, which may be safely referred to the earlier non-Greek race.
Fig. 6. Statue of Girl Runner. Vatican. Copy of fifth-century original. (From a photograph by Alinari).
In early days athletes wore the loin-cloth which Cretan excavations have shown to have been worn generally in the Mediterranean world. The Homeric Greeks girded themselves for sports, and on some of the earliest athletic vases the loin-cloth is depicted (Figs. 128, 142). Generally, however, the Greek athletes were absolutely naked. This custom is ascribed to an accident. Orsippus of Megara, in Ol. 15, 720 B.C., accidentally or on purpose dropped his loin-cloth in the race. The advantage which he gained thereby produced such an impression that from this date all runners discarded the loin-cloth. This story was commemorated by an epigram, written possibly by Simonides, which was inscribed on his tomb. The practice does not seem to have been adopted by all athletes till a later date, for Thucydides states that the abandonment of the loin-cloth even at Olympia dated from shortly before his own time.[57]
The prizes were originally tripods and other objects of value. It was in Ol. 7 that the crown of wild olive was first introduced on the advice of the Delphic oracle. The branches of which the crowns were made were cut from the sacred olive-trees with a golden sickle, by a boy whose parents were both living. This was henceforth the only prize given at Olympia. Of the rewards and honours bestowed by the victor’s countrymen, and of other details connected with the games, we shall speak in another chapter. Our knowledge is not sufficient for a description of the festival at this early period.
The athletic records of Olympia date from the year 776 B.C., the 28th Olympiad from the organization of the games by Iphitus. This Olympiad, in which Coroebus of Elis won the foot-race, is counted as the first Olympiad in the Olympic register,[58] and from this date we have a complete list of winners in this race copied by Eusebius from the work of Julius Africanus, who brought the register down to the year 217 A.D. The register was originally compiled by Hippias of Elis at the close of the fifth century. It was revised and brought up to date by various writers from Aristotle and Philochorus down to Phlegon of Tralles in the time of Hadrian and Julius Africanus in the third century A.D. A list of victors was set up at Olympia by Paraballon, an Olympic victor, and the father of the boy victor Lastratidas, whose date is fixed by Hyde in the first half of the fourth century B.C.[59] It was not till the third century B.C. that the Olympic register was used as a means of reckoning dates, the year being dated by the number of the Olympiad and the name of the winner of the stade-race. Hence the preservation by Eusebius of the names of the winners of this race. The earlier lists, as we know from fragments of Phlegon and a fragment recently found on an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, contained the names of winners in other events.
The value of the early portions of the register has been called in question by Mahaffy, Busolt, and Körte, who, starting from Plutarch’s sceptical remark that Hippias had no sure basis for his work, contend that no credit should be attached to the records previous to the sixth century. They have proved that the register was imperfect—it could hardly have been otherwise; that the task of compiling it was difficult—men like Hippias and Aristotle would not otherwise have devoted their time to it. But we can hardly believe that Hippias could have imposed a purely fictitious list of victors on the critical Greek world at the end of the fifth century, or that Aristotle would have revised it without some evidence for his work. What sort of record was kept by the priests of Olympia, and when it began, we cannot say. The use of writing at Olympia is proved for the seventh century by the diskos of Iphitus and the decrees or Ϝράτραι of the Eleans with regard to the sacred truce. The official register of Athenian archons dates from 683 B.C., if not earlier, and recent discoveries as to the antiquity of writing in Crete make us hesitate to deny the existence of written records for the eighth century. Besides official lists there must have been many local lists of victors, family records, genealogies, besides inscriptions on monuments. Of the first sixteen victors in the register four at least are connected by Pausanias with monuments or inscriptions, possibly not contemporary with the people commemorated but yet valuable as evidence. If you set up a monument to your great-grandfather, it may be of great importance to a future antiquarian in making out your genealogy. Most people in the present day have no knowledge of their great-grandfathers, or prefer to forget their existence; but in a tribal society with intense respect for birth it is very different, especially in a poetical race. Their only history is the history of the family and clan; family traditions and genealogies are remembered and handed down with a care and accuracy unknown to our cosmopolitan civilization. Such were the sources from which the sophist must have collected material for his register in his travels, and though his list may have been imperfect and often inaccurate, it is yet sufficiently accurate to afford valuable indications of the growth and development of the festival.
In two points we may certainly reject the evidence of the register, and of Elean tradition. During the period of war and confusion preceding Iphitus, they said, the games had been forgotten. For many Olympiads the only competition was the stade-race, but gradually, as the memory of the old games came back to them, one event after another was added. In Ol. 14 the double race (δίαυλος) was added, in Ol. 15 the long race (δολιχός), in Ol. 18 the pentathlon and wrestling, in Ol. 23 boxing, in Ol. 25 the four-horse chariot-race, in Ol. 33 the pankration and the horse-race, in Ol. 37 the first events for boys, the foot-race and wrestling, in Ol. 38 the pentathlon for boys, which, however, was not repeated, in Ol. 41 the boys’ boxing, in Ol. 65 the race in armour. After this date various events for horses and mules were introduced at different times,