The first part of this account is obviously absurd in view of the evidence given above for funeral games. There can be no doubt that in the first Olympiad the programme included at least all the events described by Pindar, the foot-race, the diskos, the spear, boxing, wrestling, and the chariot-race. If the Olympic games did develop from a single event, it was probably not from the foot-race, but from the armed fight or the chariot-race. Probably the compiler dated the introduction of each new event from the first occasion on which he found a mention of it. This may explain the number of first events won by Sparta, a state particularly well known to Hippias, one, too, where we should expect athletic records to be kept with especial care. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the programme received many additions, variations of the foot-race such as the double race and the long race, complicated events such as the pentathlon and pankration, especially boys’ events, and there is no valid reason for doubting the date of such additions.
Connected with this story of the evolution of the games is the precedence given to the stade-race, the winner of which gave his name to the Olympiad. This custom, as we have seen, is not earlier than the third century, and arose not from the excessive importance of that event, but from the mere accident of its coming first on the programme and also on the list of victors. The Greek sportsman had doubtless long been in the habit of dating the years by reference to the victory of some famous athlete, especially if he were a fellow-countryman. Thucydides twice quotes in dates Olympic victories, each time victories in the pankration, an event very popular at Athens. In the earliest inscription that uses the Olympiads for chronology the pankration is also the event mentioned.[60] Hence one is inclined to suspect the completeness of the list of winners in the stade-race. Possibly early records and traditions often stated the fact of a victory without mentioning the event in which it was won, and the compiler of the register, having adopted his theory of development, assumed that all such victories were won in the foot-race.
In 776 B.C. Olympia itself had as yet changed but little. The only building was the Heraeum, a long, low, narrow temple built originally of wood. One of the wooden pillars was still standing in the time of Pausanias. As the wooden pillars decayed they were replaced by stone pillars. Hence the pillars, many of which are still standing, differed in size, in material, in their fluting and their capitals, the earliest belonging in style to the seventh or sixth centuries, the latest to the Roman period. The temple was a treasure-house. There was kept the diskos of Iphitus, and at a later period the chest of Cypselus, and the table of ivory and gold on which the crowns for the victors were placed. Of the wealth of votive offerings and statues that once adorned this temple nearly all have perished; but there, at the exact spot described by Pausanias, the German excavators found the Hermes of Praxiteles, which represents the most perfect type of that physical beauty and harmonious development that Greek athletics produced.
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.
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