Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. E. Norman Gardiner

of the proportion of boy victors as compared with men, and the increase is more than maintained during the fourth century. The change is perhaps connected with a change in the character of athletics. There can be no doubt that athletics were already becoming more specialized, and the specialized athlete did not appeal to the artist of the fifth century. In the following age we find an increasing diversity of type, but in the Periclean age the ideal of athletic youth dominates all treatment of the human figure. We can see it in the figures of children and young boys which, despite their small stature, have the proportions and muscular development of men, or in the figures of women which, whether undraped or, as was more usual, draped, differ little in framework and proportion from the figures of graceful youths. In the Periclean age, we cannot distinguish between the athlete and the ephebos. Every educated youth is an athlete, and every athlete is an educated youth and a citizen of a free state. Of the strictly athletic statues unfortunately we possess only marble copies, which in the transference from bronze have lost much of the grace of the originals. But the ephebos is known to us from many a grave relief, and above all from the sculptures of the Parthenon. The grave reliefs are at least originals, though we do not know the artists’ names, while the Parthenon sculptures were executed under the direction of Pheidias. A truer idea of the athletic youth of this age can be formed from the Theseus of the pediment, or the epheboi of the frieze, than from late copies of Polycleitus.

      In all these figures the prevailing impression is one of a perfect harmony, an absence of all exaggeration. Beauty of line is not exaggerated into softness, nor strength into coarseness. There is, too, a graceful ease of movement and of action which tells of an education in which music goes hand in hand with gymnastic. Musical drill and dances formed an important part of Greek education; even at the great festivals the competitors in the pentathlon performed to the accompaniment of the flute. The influence of music is especially suggested by the rhythmic movement and poise of the Diadumenos. Hence these harmonious shapes produce an effect deeper than that of mere physical beauty, they seem to be the outward expression of the spirit within. καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός—beauty and goodness—are inseparable to the Greek. The heads, too, are in perfect harmony with the body; somewhat passionless perhaps, they seem to denote a mind well ordered as the body. They are not the heads of students or philosophers, much less of mere athletes, but the heads of healthy, vigorous youths, to whom all activity whether of mind or body is a joy. In the clear-cut, strong features we read courage and resolution, endurance and self-control. The expression is calm and dignified, yet without a trace of arrogance or pride. The face is often turned slightly downwards, and the downcast eyes produce an impression of modesty which is most marked in those statues which, like the Diadumenos binding the victor’s fillet round his head, expressly represent victory. Such is the beautiful bronze head of the ephebos shown in Fig. 16. This combination of dignity and modesty is part of what the Greeks called αἰδώς,^[111] a word which we shall see is the keynote of Pindar’s athletic ideal, and which expresses more than any other the spirit of these statues.

      Fig. 16. Bronze head of ephebos. Munich, Glyptothek, 457. (From a photograph by Bruckmann.)

      The influence of athletics is equally plain in the lesser arts. On coins and gems it is seen chiefly in the nude figures of gods and heroes. Sometimes, however, we find a purely athletic type. On the coins of Aspendus in Pamphylia we have a long series of wrestling groups (Fig. 109), and on the other side a naked slinger, a punning allusion it seems to the name Aspendus. On the coins of Cos occurs a most interesting figure of the diskobolos, a crude attempt to represent the very moment selected by Myron (Fig. 86). Both series date from the early fifth century. On gems of a later date we have frequent copies of the actual work of Myron. In Sicily we find no representations of the athlete proper, but the close connexion of Sicily with Olympia, and the successes of its cities and tyrants in the chariot and horse races are commemorated by numerous coins bearing a horseman or a chariot.^[112]

      These, however, are but isolated examples; the art which above all other was influenced by athletics was that of the vase painter. Athletic scenes are among the earliest on the vases. This may be partly due to the connexion of games with funeral rites, for which many of the painted vases were made. But there is another and more general reason for the vase painter’s preference. Athletic scenes were especially adapted for the spaces which he wished to fill, whether it were a long band running round the whole vase, or an oblong panel. In the former case, the foot-race or the horse-race, or a series of athletes engaged in various sports, offered an effective variation of the procession of men or animals so common on early vases, while nothing could be better adapted for a panel than a boxing or a wrestling match with umpires or friends looking on. So effective was the latter scheme found that it was applied to mythological subjects. The contests of Heracles with giants or with monsters become a wrestling match or pankration in which gods and goddesses take the place of umpires. So in the fifth century, on the red-figured cups the exploits of Theseus in ridding the world of monsters and bullies are depicted as events in the palaestra. To Theseus was ascribed the invention of scientific wrestling: he appears on the vases as a graceful youth triumphing by trained skill over the brute force of his opponents.

      The story of athletic types follows the same course on the vases as in sculpture, though, as the development of the simpler art was more rapid, the changes took place earlier. The bearded athletes of the black-figure vases disappear at the beginning of the fifth century, and on the red-figure vases, from the time of the Persian wars, the ephebos is ubiquitous. Moreover, it is not so much the actual competitions that we see as the daily life and training of the palaestra. Strigils, oil-flasks, and jumping-weights hang upon the walls; picks and javelins are planted in the ground. Trainers in their long mantles and naked assistants stand about and watch the practice of the youths. Sometimes with outstretched hands they instruct them; sometimes they correct them with their long forked rods. The youths themselves run, leap, wrestle, throw the diskos or the javelin; some look on and chat, others prepare for exercise, anointing their bodies with oil, binding on the boxing thongs, or fitting the cord to the javelin; others having finished their work scrape themselves with strigils, or standing round a basin empty vessels of water over each other. All the varied life of the palaestra is before us.

      The vases on which these scenes abound belong chiefly to the middle of the century, the period of the “fine style,” as it is called. But, as I have noted before, the actual athletic types have already become somewhat conventional, and we feel that the artist’s interest in them has become secondary. It is rather the variety of the life, with its possibilities of grouping and composition, that appeals to him. At Athens, at least, a change is beginning in the attitude of the people towards athletics. The fine period of vase painting ends about the year 440 B.C., and in the vases of the decline this change is more marked. We still see the palaestra; but it is indicated sketchily by an occasional pair of halteres on the wall; and the youths stand about idly gossiping and arguing, but take no part in manly exercise. This disappearance of athletics from the vases is significant: the sculptor could still work out his own ideals, but the vase painter was dependent for his trade on the popular taste, and the vases are therefore a true index of the feeling of the time. If we compare one of these later vases with such a vase as the Panaetius kylix in Munich (Fig. 17), we cannot help being reminded of the contrast drawn by Aristophanes in the Clouds between the old education of the men who fought at Marathon and the education of his day. The vases enable us to date the change about the year 440, and we shall find other indications that confirm this date.

      Fig. 17. R.-f. kylix. Munich, 795.

      There is, however, in this athletic art something more than mere beauty or mere strength. The outward harmony is but the expression of that harmonious development of mind and body which it was the aim of Greek education to produce by means of music and gymnastic. For the interpretation of this spirit we can turn to the living word—a surer guide than merely subjective impressions. Athletic poetry arose like athletic sculpture in the sixth century, but while the athletic ideal continued to influence Greek art during the whole of its history, the hymn of victory, like the athletic painting