Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. E. Norman Gardiner

His homecoming was an occasion of public rejoicing. The whole city turned out to welcome him and escort him in triumph to his home and to the chief temples of the city, where he offered thanksgiving and paid his vows to the gods and heroes to whom he owed his victory. Songs were composed expressly for the occasion by the greatest poets of the age, and sung by choirs of youths and maidens before the temples or before his house. His exploits were recorded on pillars of stone, and his statue was set up in some public place, or even in the sanctuary of the gods, to serve as an incentive to posterity. He received, too, more substantial rewards. We have seen how Solon granted considerable sums of money to the victors in the great games, and we may be sure that the example of Athens was followed by other states. At Athens and elsewhere the victor had the privilege of a front seat at all public festivals, and sometimes, too, the right of free meals in the Prytaneum. At a later time he was exempted from taxation. At Sparta, which seems to have stood somewhat aloof from the athletic movement, he was rewarded characteristically with the right of fighting in battle next to the king and defending his person. In the rich cities of the West the adulation of the victor, at a somewhat later date, took the most extravagant forms. Exaenetus of Agrigentum, who won the foot-race at Olympia in Ol. 92, was drawn into the city in a four-horse chariot, attended by three hundred of the chief citizens, each riding in a chariot drawn by a pair of white horses. Sometimes, it seems, a breach in the city walls was made for the victor’s entry. It is in Italy that we first hear of the worship of the athlete as a hero. Philippus of Croton, an Olympic victor, renowned as the handsomest man in Greece, was worshipped as a hero after his death.^[90] Euthymus of Locri Epizephyrii, who won three Olympic victories in boxing in Ols. 74, 76, 77, was even said to have been so worshipped during his lifetime. It was perhaps a righteous retribution for such impiety that his statues at Locri and Olympia were, according to the story, struck by lightning on the same day.^[91] Theagenes of Thasos and Polydamas of Scotussa were also worshipped as heroes, and the statue of Theagenes was credited with the power of healing fevers.^[92] But these extravagances, if true, belong to a later period, and must have been repugnant to the religious feeling and sound sense of the Peloponnese before the Persian wars.

      Of all these honours the most significant are the hymn of victory and the statue. It was not merely that the greatest artists and poets were employed to immortalise the victor, and that they demanded a high price for their services. The statue and the hymn were honours confined originally to gods and heroes, and, bestowed on mortal athletes, did literally lift these “lords of earth to the gods.” “Not even the mighty Polydeuces nor the iron son of Alcmene could hold up their hands against him.” So wrote Simonides of Ceos, the earliest writer of epinikia, of the famous boxer Glaucus of Carystus, language which, as the late Sir Richard Jebb remarks, would have sounded very like an impiety to Alcman. The words are significant of the changed attitude towards athletics, and the hero-worship founded by the artist and the poet was perhaps largely responsible for the extravagances of a later age. But the influence of athletics on art and literature, and that of art and literature on athletics, are subjects that belong chiefly to the fifth century, and will be dealt with in the next chapter.

      The growing popularity of athletics and the excessive honours showered upon physical excellence could hardly escape criticism. In that age of intense intellectual activity there must have been many far-sighted observers who resented the predominance of athletics, though perhaps they feared to express their feelings. One at least there was who knew no such fear, and fortunately his protest has survived. The bold and original thinker, Xenophanes of Colophon, was exactly contemporary with the movement which we have been describing. Born at Colophon about the year 576 B.C. he was forced to leave his native place at the age of twenty-five, and for sixty-five years travelled about the cities of Greece and Sicily, finally settling at Elea in Italy, where he became the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, and died in the year 480 B.C. A fearless critic of the current ideas about the gods, denying that the godhead could be like unto man, he may well have been scandalized at the representation of gods and heroes as athletes, and at the offering of divine honours to victors in the games; and his wide experience of men and cities showed him clearly the danger of the growing worship of athletics. After enumerating the honours shown to the athlete he continues: “Yet is he not so worthy as I, and my wisdom is better than the strength of men and horses. Nay, this is a foolish custom, nor is it right to honour strength more than excellent wisdom. Not though there were among the people a man good at boxing, or in the pentathlon, or in wrestling, nay, nor one with swiftness of foot which is most honoured in all contests of human strength—not for his presence would the city be better governed. And small joy would there be for a city should one in contests win a victory by the banks of Pisa. These things do not make fat the dark corners of the city.”

      Less than a century later the words of Xenophanes are echoed by Euripides, but the object of the protest is no longer the same. The class of professional athletes whom Euripides denounces did not exist in the days of the older poet. It is against the excessive importance attached to athletics, the false and one-sided ideal, that Xenophanes protests. In his wanderings through the cities of Greece he has learnt by bitter experience the evils that exist, evils of tyranny and party strife, extremes of luxury and poverty, and he feels that the energies of his countrymen are being misdirected. It is not a little curious that foreign writers, deceived by the glamour of Olympia, are wont to treat the protest of Xenophanes as the captious utterance of a soured and peevish cynic. Yet the fragments of his writings which exist show him to have been a man of wide experience and sympathies; and in England, where we have witnessed a similar wave of athleticism, his wisdom is generally recognized. Let us pause to consider what was the state of athletics in the time of Xenophanes.

      The popularity of athletics, the growth of competition, and the rewards lavished on successful athletes completely changed the character of athletics in the sixth century. The actual events remained the same, but a change came over the attitude of performers and spectators. It was a change which will be readily understood by any one familiar with the history of our own sports and games during the last century, the change from spontaneous to organized sport. The change brought with it both good and evil; the standard of performance was greatly improved, but athletics ceased to be pure recreation, and something of the old Homeric joy was lost; and though the spirit of sport survived for a century more, even in the sixth century we can trace signs of the evils which over-competition inevitably brings in its train.

      In every Greek state all boys, whatever their station, received a thorough physical training. Sometimes, as in Sparta, this training was extended to girls. This training consisted partly in the traditional exercises of the public games, partly in dances which corresponded to our musical drill in which the performers went through the various movements of the palaestra or of actual war to the accompaniment of music. Thus every boy was trained to take his part in athletic competitions. Local festivals provided the promising athlete with an opportunity of testing his strength and skill from early boyhood. At Olympia there had been only two classes of competition, for boys and for men. In the festivals of the sixth century we find a third class added for those betwixt the age of boy and man, the beardless (ἀγένειοι). In local festivals of a later date we find three or even four classes for boys only, sometimes confined to local competitors; and perhaps, if we had details of the local festivals of the sixth century, we should find the same. These boys’ events were clearly intended to foster local talent. The youth who won success in his home festival would try his luck in the neighbouring competitions, and if still successful would go farther afield and perhaps enter for the Panhellenic games. Hence the competitors, especially at the Olympia, represented the picked athletes of all the states. The prizes offered at the various festivals enabled many to compete, who in a previous age could not have afforded the necessary time or money; and we may be sure that the emulation of the various states would not have allowed any citizen to lose his chance of the crown for lack of funds. The popular character of athletics is illustrated by a fragment of an epigram ascribed to Simonides on an Olympic victor “who once carried fish from Argos to Tegea.”^[93] At the same time the noble families which had for generations been famed in athletics exerted themselves to their utmost to maintain their hereditary prestige. All classes caught the athletic mania. It was at the close of the century that Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedon, competed in the foot-race at Olympia.

      Competition naturally raised the standard of