Thus at the beginning of the sixth century Olympia had acquired a unique position as the national festival of Hellas. Competitors and spectators of all classes gathered there from every part of Greece. The sacred truce-bearers proclaimed the month of peace throughout the Greek world, and in response, cities of Asia and of Sicily vied with one another in the splendour of the official embassies (θεωρίαι) sent to represent them at the festival. The old aristocratic character survived in the chariot-race and horse-race, which afforded to tyrants and nobles an opportunity of displaying their riches and their power. The athletic programme was now practically complete, the only important innovation of later times being the race in full armour introduced 520 B.C., and this programme was truly democratic. In athletic events noble and peasant met on equal terms. The aristocratic prejudice against these popular contests did not yet exist; and though the honour of the Olympic crown was open to the poorest citizen of Greek birth, such was the prestige of the festival that it was coveted even by the highest. The representative character of Olympia was due to a variety of causes. The geographical position of the place, its ancient sanctity, the athletic vigour of the pre-Dorian Greeks, the discipline and training of the Spartans, the enthusiastic patriotism of the colonies, the ambition of tyrants, the new spirit of democracy—these and other causes contributed to the result, and the importance of the result was recognized by the founding within the next half-century of three other Panhellenic festivals at Delphi, at Nemea, and at the Isthmus, and of many another festival which, like the Panathenaea, aspired to but never attained Panhellenic dignity.
Yet, despite the growth of the festival and the development of athletics, there was little change in the appearance of the Altis or the organization of the games. Some of the wooden pillars of the Heraeum were perhaps replaced by stone, but no fresh building appeared till the treasuries, the earliest of which date from the close of the seventh century. The games still took place near the altar, where a course could be easily measured and marked out before each meeting. The new events added were merely variations of those which we find in Homer. Popularity and competition had no doubt improved the standard of performance, but athletic training did not yet exist. In the towns, indeed, gymnasia and palaestrae were already springing up; but these were educational rather than athletic, intended to train and discipline the young as useful soldiers rather than to produce champion athletes. The bulk of the population living an open-air country life in which war, hunting, and games played a considerable part, had no need of training. Thus, though athletics had become popular, they still maintained the spontaneity and joy of the Homeric age: they were still pure recreation.
CHAPTER IV
THE AGE OF ATHLETIC FESTIVALS, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.
The sixth century is the age of organized athletics. The rise of Sparta and her success in sport and war gave to the Greek world an object lesson on the value of systematic training, and henceforth the training of the body was an essential part of Greek education. Palaestrae and gymnasia were established everywhere, and Solon found it necessary to lay down laws for their conduct. These institutions were originally intended for the training of the young, but the growth of athletic competition soon called into being a new and specialized form of training, the training of competitors for the great games. An art of training sprung up, and in the time of Pindar the professors of the new art, besides reaping a rich harvest from their pupils, received honour scarcely inferior to that of the victors themselves. The rapid development of the Olympic festival had shown the value of athletics as a bond of union between Greeks throughout the world, and the general yearning after a unity which was destined never to be realized found expression in the establishment of other festivals for which Olympia served as a model.
At Delphi, the Isthmus, and Nemea, local festivals and competitions had long existed.[72] The oracle of Delphi had already acquired a Panhellenic, almost a cosmopolitan importance, rivalling that of Olympia. The Pythian festival was said to have been founded to commemorate Apollo’s victory over the Python. To expiate the death of the dragon, Apollo had been condemned to nine years of exile, and the festival was therefore held every ninth year, or, according to our reckoning, once in eight years. Later legend asserted that there had been athletic games at Delphi, and various heroes were named as victors in these sports. But it seems probable that the original competitions at Delphi were purely musical, and in the hymn for Apollo Delphusa expressly commends Delphi as the home for the god on the ground that there his altar will be undisturbed by the “whirling of fair chariots or the sound of swift-footed steeds.” The innate ambition of the Greek and his desire to outshine his fellows found vent in competitions of every sort. Musical competitions were specially connected with the worship of Apollo at Delos and at Sparta; at Delphi a prize was given for a hymn to Apollo chanted to the accompaniment of the cithara.
Such the festival remained till the outbreak of the first Sacred war. The war was due to the impious conduct of the Crisaeans, who, having command of the plain and the harbour of Cirrha, had enriched themselves at the expense of the Delphians and Apollo, by levying exorbitant tolls on the pilgrims who landed at Cirrha on their way to the oracle. The Delphians appealed to their natural protectors, the Amphictyonic League at Thermopylae, who straightway proclaimed a sacred war. The command of the expedition was given to the Thessalian Eurylochus; the Athenians, on the advice of Solon, sent a contingent under Alcmaeon, while Cleisthenes, the ambitious tyrant of Sicyon, eagerly embraced the opportunity of posing as a champion of Greek religion. The festival was restored and reorganized in 590 B.C. New musical events were added, a solo on the flute and a song accompanied by the flute; athletic and equestrian competitions also were introduced on the model of those at Olympia; but since Delphi as yet had no stadium, the games were held in the plain of Crisa below. The chariot-race for some reason or other was omitted, but two additional athletic events found a place, a long race and a diaulos race for boys.
The war, however, broke out afresh and lasted for six years, at the end of which, in 582, the festival was finally reorganized out of the spoil of Crisa as a pentaëteris, and placed under the control of the Amphictyons. The year 582 dates as the first Pythiad, and from this time the festival was held every fourth year, in the August of the third year of each Olympiad. The valuable prizes which had been offered of old were abolished, and in their place was substituted a crown of bay leaves plucked from the Vale of Tempe. The somewhat scanty details which we possess as to the festival and its history will be discussed in a later chapter. For the present it is sufficient to note one significant fact: the chariot-race which had been omitted in 590 was introduced in 582, and the first victor was Cleisthenes of Sicyon himself. The plains of Sicyon were admirably adapted for breeding horses, a pursuit which afforded its tyrants a ready means of increasing and displaying their wealth. Myron had already gained a victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, and his grandson Cleisthenes, shortly after his Pythian success, secured the same honour on the occasion when he issued his invitation to the suitors for the hand of Agariste. At Sicyon itself he commemorated the part which he had played in the Sacred war by a splendid colonnade built out of the spoils of Cirrha, and at the same time he reorganized as a local Pythia an ancient festival connected with the Argive hero Adrastus, whose memory he delighted to insult.[73] We may therefore safely regard the introduction of the chariot-race at Delphi as due to the tyrant’s influence, and the remodelling of the festival as part of his pushing Panhellenic policy.
Almost