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