Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals quotes

The practical value of these exercises explains their importance in Greek education. They constituted what the Greeks described as “gymnastic,” the term “athletics” being properly confined to competitions.

Gymnastic trained the body as music trained the mind.

There was no artificial separation, no antagonism between the two such as has disfigured much of our modern education. The one was the complement of the other: together they comprised the whole of Greek education.

Many of his exercises were performed to music, and he paid as much attention to the style in which he performed as to the result of his performance. This love of form refined even his competitions.

Hence, in spite of his love of competition, the Greek was no record-breaker.

In this we have one of the principal differences which distinguished Greek from modern athletics, in which the passion for records is becoming more and more prevalent.

Hence, in spite of his love of competition, the Greek was no record-breaker. In this we have one of the principal differences which distinguished Greek from modern athletics, in which the passion for records is becoming more and more prevalent.

The Greek did not care for records, and he kept no records.

It is futile, therefore, to try to compare the performances of Greek athletes and of modern. But of the effect which athletic training produced on the national physique in the fifth century, we can judge from the art which it inspired.

We hear of competitions in drinking and in keeping awake. Strangest of all was a competition in kissing, which took place at the Dioclea at Megara. But no competitions were so numerous or so popular as athletic and equestrian competitions.

The Greek was always competing or watching competitions; yet, strange to say, among all the evils produced by over-competition, betting was not found.

Competitions were from an early time associated with religious Festivals. And it is to this association with religion that Greek athletics owed their wonderful vitality.

Unfortunately the signs of excess are no less manifest to-day than they were in the times of Xenophanes and Euripides.

History repeats itself strangely.

We have seen the same growth of competition, the same hero-worship of the athlete, the same publicity and prominence given to sport out of all proportion to its deserts, the same tendency to specialization and professionalism. Sport has too often become an end in itself.

Even in Pindar it is no longer unalloyed. With the stress of competition other feelings and motives have entered in, and something of the heroic courtesy is lost: side by side with the joy of victory we are conscious of the bitterness of defeat.

In Homer we feel only the joy, the joy of youth.

The description of the games in the Iliad could only have been written by a poet living among an athletic people with a long tradition of athletics, and such are the Achaeans.

The charioteers draw lots for their places, and then the chariots take their place in a line. Commentators gravely debate whether the Greek means “in a line” or “in file,” like a row of hansom cabs!

But there is no subject wherein commentators are so rampant as in athletics, and there is no athletic absurdity which they do not father upon the Greeks, who, after all, really did know a little about sports.

We are not told how the horses were started—we must hurry on with the poet to the finish.

Only one instance is recorded of this rule being broken. Pherenice, a member of the famous family of the Diagoridae, in her anxiety to see her son Peisirodus compete in the boys’ boxing, accompanied him to Olympia disguised as a trainer.

In her delight at his victory she leapt over the barrier and so disclosed her sex.

The Hellanodicae, however, pardoned her in consideration for her father and brothers and son, all of them Olympic victors, but they passed a decree that henceforth all trainers should appear naked.[55]

In her delight at his victory she leapt over the barrier and so disclosed her sex.

The Hellanodicae, however, pardoned her in consideration for her father and brothers and son, all of them Olympic victors, but they passed a decree that henceforth all trainers should appear naked.

[55]

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.

It is to the credit of the Greeks that no such self-denying ordinance was introduced or found to be necessary, and that the Greeks themselves never raised any such objection till a much later date.

It is only when sport becomes too competitive and too lucrative and the professional and commercial spirit enters in that elaborate safeguards are required against unfairness.

This story is valuable evidence that the Eleans were at this time seeking to improve their arrangements. What the improvements were we do not know, but that some sort of reorganization took place is rendered probable by the tradition recorded above, that in Ol.

Theagenes of Thasos, who lived at the time of the Persian wars, is said to have won no less than fourteen hundred crowns.[95] To such men athletics were no longer a recreation, but an absorbing occupation.

The professional amateur is but a short step removed from the true professional.

For a time wealth and leisure gave a great advantage to the wealthy individual, and the wealthy city. In the sixth century the most successful states are the rich cities of Sicily and Italy.

The exploits of Samson with wild beasts find many parallels in the stories of Greek athletes; but the most characteristic exercise of the sixth century was weight-lifting.

Milo practised weight-lifting on most scientific principles with a young bull calf, which he lifted and carried every day till it was fully grown.

A still more famous weight-lifter was Titormus, a gigantic shepherd who lived in Aetolia, and did not, as far as we know, compete in any competitions.

… 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.

18). The element of risk must always add a zest to sport, and it certainly does in Pindar’s eyes.

“Deeds of no risks,” he says, “are honourless whether done among men or among hollow ships.”

[123] It follows then that the most necessary qualities for an athlete are courage and endurance. On the latter virtue Pindar, like his countrymen generally, insists even more than on courage, perhaps because the Greeks felt the need of it more.

It is aidos which makes a man a “straight fighter,” εὐθυμάχας, the epithet with which Pindar describes the boxer Diagoras of Rhodes, “who walks in the straight path that abhors insolence.”[130] The commercial spirit is incompatible with this feeling.

“Aidos is stolen away by secret gains,”

[131] says Pindar in his praise of Chromius of Aetna. Was he thinking of the scandal aroused a few years before by Astylus of Croton when for the sake of gain he proclaimed himself a Syracusan? It is tempting to suppose so.

Nowhere is excess more dangerous than in athletics, and the charm of poetry and art must not blind us to that element of exaggeration which existed in the hero-worship of the athlete.

The nemesis of excess in athletics is specialization, specialization begets professionalism, and professionalism is the death of all true sport.

We have seen how even before the time of Pindar the growth of competition had developed athletics beyond their legitimate sphere of exercise and recreation till they became an end in themselves, and how success in the great games demanded an undue expenditure of time …

So he exercised himself in running, and in wrestling “only so far as he could stand on his feet,” but he spent most of his time in the practice of arms.[154] Equally unsuitable for war was the habit of life produced by athletic training.

“The athlete’s nature,” says Plato, “is sleepy, and the least variation from his routine is liable to cause him serious illness.”

[155] Such a man is incapable of standing the various vicissitudes of a campaign, and therefore we find athletics condemned not only by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle but by generals such as Epaminondas, Alexander, and Philopoemen.[156] “The athlete,” says Euripides, “is the slave of …

… his routine is liable to cause him serious illness.”[155] Such a man is incapable of standing the various vicissitudes of a campaign, and therefore we find athletics condemned not only by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle but by generals such as Epaminondas, Alexander, and Philopoemen.[156]

“The athlete,” says Euripides, “is the slave of his jaw and of his belly.”

Medical science confirmed the verdict of the philosopher and the soldier.

But athletic success could not satisfy his restless and ambitious spirit, and, like Xenophanes two generations before, he could not be blind to the unreality of the worship of athletics, and to the evils which it was producing.

“Of all the countless evils throughout Hellas,” he cries, “there is none worse than the race of athletes.”

The evil is not confined to Athens; it is widespread throughout Hellas. “In youth they strut about in splendour, the pride of their city, but when bitter old age comes upon them they are cast aside like threadbare garments.”

“Of all the countless evils throughout Hellas,” he cries, “there is none worse than the race of athletes.” The evil is not confined to Athens; it is widespread throughout Hellas.

“In youth they strut about in splendour, the pride of their city, but when bitter old age comes upon them they are cast aside like threadbare garments.”

It is not the athletes themselves but the nation that is to blame for such results. “I blame the custom of the Hellenes who gather together to watch these men, honouring a useless pleasure.” And then, echoing the words of Xenophanes, he proceeds:

The evil results of professionalism were not long in showing themselves.

When money enters into sport, corruption is sure to follow.

It will be remembered how Astylus of Croton had sold his victory for the favour of a Sicilian tyrant. In Ol.

The practice commended itself especially to the sophists and rhetoricians who travelled about amassing large sums of money by their learning, real or pretended. Some of these have been already mentioned.

Olympia was a meeting-place for all.

There one might have seen Socrates listening with polite amusement to the encyclopaedic Hippias of Elis as he proclaimed to an admiring audience his varied knowledge and accomplishments, and told them that everything he had about his person was the work of his own hands, …

Yet in spite of this fresh insult Sparta, deeming the occasion inexpedient to excite the religious susceptibilities of Greece, did nothing, but bided her time, and Elis, three years afterwards, joined the Argive alliance.

Sparta never forgot and never forgave.

In 399 Agis led an army against Elis, nominally to force Elis to acknowledge the independence of the Arcadian and Triphylian towns, in reality to wreak vengeance for her conduct during the Peloponnesian war. Agis had also a recent and more personal grievance.

The highest paid of all the staff was the teacher of music, who received 600 drachmae. The general supervision of this education was in the hands of a paidonomos, who, it is specified, must not be less than forty years of age.

In the present day, in making appointments to head-masterships it is commonly specified that candidates must not be over forty. Which is right?

Such training seems to have been universal in Greek states. The instances given suffice to show how entirely it differed from the training of athletes who competed in the great games.

Alexander’s ambition was too vast to find satisfaction in victories at Olympia. He treated with contempt the athletics of his day. Though himself vigorous and athletic of body, he had an aversion for the exercises of the palaestra, regarding them as useless for war.

When asked whether he would compete in the foot-race at Olympia, he replied, “Yes, if I had kings for my antagonists.”

There is no doubt that his refusal was fully justified; he could gain no honour by entering into competition with professionals. But though he despised the athletic part of the festivals, he appreciated to the full their social and political importance.

Finally Mummius commemorated the defeat of the Achaeans, the destruction of Corinth, and the restoration of unity to Greece by dedicating at Olympia a bronze statue of Zeus and twenty-one golden shields arrayed above the colonnade surrounding the temple of Zeus.

But the unity thus commemorated was secured at the cost of liberty.

It was the spirit of independence which had given life to those great athletic meetings where the free citizens of free states contended not for personal glory so much as for the honour of their states.

It was the spirit of independence which had given life to those great athletic meetings where the free citizens of free states contended not for personal glory so much as for the honour of their states.

These states were no longer free, and all the pomp and splendour lavished on the festivals by their imperial patrons could not recall to life the spirit that had fled.

that Greek athletes and actors first appeared at the Roman games; but a more pleasing innovation must have been the importation in the same year of lions and panthers from Africa to provide more exciting sport for the spectators in the circus.

When in 167 B.C. some famous Greek flute-players who were performing at a festival failed to please the Roman audience, the managers ordered them to box, a performance which caused boundless delight to the spectators.

When in the second century B.C. the Romans were first brought into closer contact with Greece, they found ample justification for their anti-athletic prejudice in the vicious and corrupt state into which athletics had fallen at that period in Greece.

Finally he boldly puts upon his head the celery crown, and when the indignant officials protest, asks them,

“Will ye take the crown from me and give it to him who is stuffed with most meat?”

The rhetoric is for the most part mere commonplace of the schools; yet we cannot doubt that the description is true of the Isthmia and of other festivals, especially of those in the rich cities of the East.

To this question Galen replies emphatically, “No.” “The mind is higher than the body, for the mind we share with the gods, the body with the animals. In the blessings of the mind athletes have no share.

Beneath their mass of flesh and blood their souls are stifled as in a sea of mud.

Nor do they enjoy the best blessings even of the body. Neglecting the old rule of health, which prescribes moderation in all things, they spend their lives in over-exercising, over-eating, over-sleeping, like pigs.

The fault lay in the ignorant and pedantic application of the principle. No deviation from its routine was permitted, and no account was taken of the individual’s actual condition. Philostratus tells a story of a contemporary athlete,

Gerenius, who three days after winning an Olympic victory celebrated his success by a banquet at which he ate and drank things to which he was not accustomed.

The next day, suffering from indigestion and want of sleep, he repaired to the gymnasium as usual, and being put through a more than usually severe course of exercise by his irritated trainer, actually died under the treatment.

Be this as it may, the last Olympic victor whose name we know was the Armenian prince Varazdates, who won the boxing-match in Ol. 291 (A.D. 385). Varazdates traced his descent from the Arsacidae, and was subsequently placed by Theodosius on the throne of Armenia.

There is a pathetic irony in the circumstance that, at the festival linked beyond all others with the cause of Hellenism at war with barbarism, the last-recorded victor came not from Hellas but from the land of her hereditary foes.

… for judging the claims of boys and colts to compete as such.[313] Philostratus tells us that at the close of the training they called together the competitors and addressed them[314] in words which well illustrate the high standard which Olympia maintained even under the Empire:—

“If you have exercised yourself in a manner worthy of the Olympic festival, if you have been guilty of no slothful or ignoble act, go on with a good courage. You who have not so practised, go whither you will.”

The whole company quitted Elis a few days before the festival. First came the Hellanodicae and other officials, then the athletes and their trainers, the horses and chariots, their owners, jockeys, and drivers.

But the reverse is the case. Out of more than sixty names only seven are Athenians, and of these five are pankratiasts.[402] These figures show how utterly unathletic Athens became after the fifth century in spite of all her competitions.

Watching sports never makes an athletic nation; at Athens it produced a crowd of idle critics and spectators.

Nearly half the victors known to us come from Asia Minor and the Aegean: not only Colophon and Ephesus, but Tyre and Sidon figure in the lists. On the mainland Corinth, Sicyon, Argos, Boeotia, and Epirus are best represented.

But Greek methods of discipline were more drastic than our own.

“Those who start too soon are beaten,” says Adeimantus to Themistocles in the historic council before Salamis.

[479]

… maintained that the hoplitodromos advanced by a series of leaps and bounds, and has deduced therefrom the theory that jumping was the best training for this race, and that therefore the statue of a hoplitodromos practising, described by Pausanias, represented him not running, but jumping!

The Greek athlete has certainly been hardly treated by some of his admirers.

Fig. 58. Panathenaic amphora. British Museum, B. 608. Archonship of Pythodelus, 336 B.C.

A concoction of equisetum was recommended as a cure for the stitch, and some runners for a similar purpose wore a girdle of horses’ teeth.

Athletes have always been superstitious.

[530]

We meet with it first in Zenobius, a collector of proverbs who lived in the time of Hadrian, and the artificiality of its style is characteristic of the epigrams of this period. But whatever its date it can hardly be regarded as serious evidence.

The sporting story is notorious, and the sporting epigram is even less trustworthy than the sporting story.

The pages of the Anthology abound in epigrams on famous athletes such as Milo and Ladas, some of them no less incredible.

Milo, we are told in one epigram, picked up a four-year-old heifer at Olympia, and after carrying it round the Altis in triumph, killed it and ate it all in a single day.

Nobody has yet elaborated a theory to account for this extraordinary gastronomic feat, and yet it rests upon just as good evidence as Phaÿllus’ jump.

The mere fact that the numbers five and ten were used by the Greeks proverbially, just as we use the terms “half a dozen” or “a dozen,” sufficiently explains why an epigrammatist wishing to describe a prodigious jump should select such a number as fifty-five.

Again, the following words, as has been pointed out, are an obvious reminiscence of Myron’s diskobolos.

Can any one conceive of Myron’s statue tilted forward on a sloping platform?

Were it so, there would be indeed some excuse for Herbert Spencer’s criticism that he is about to fall on his face.

If only a certain number of competitors were admitted to the wrestling, the necessity for a bye could be easily avoided.

German archaeologists, with a strange perverseness, seem to delight in introducing compulsory byes at every turn.

So far, then, we have established the principle that victory in three events was sufficient but not necessary. If no competitor won three events, or two won two events, how was the victory decided? The pentathlon of Peleus supplies the answer.

Fig. 109. Wrestling types on coins, in British Museum. a, b, c, Aspendus, fifth and fourth centuries. d, Heraclea in Lucania, fourth century. e, f, Syracuse, circa 400 B.C. g, Alexandria, Antoninus Pius. (J.H.S. xxv. p. 271.)

These fights are one of the many forms under which Greek imagination loved to picture the triumph of civilization and science over barbarism and brute force.

To the Greek wrestling was a science and an art. Theseus, the reputed discoverer of scientific wrestling, is said to have learnt its rules from Athena herself.[633] The greatest importance was attached to grace and skill;

It is probable that this is the result not so much of a direct prohibition as of the practical riskiness of such a hold under the conditions of upright wrestling.

A wrestler who stoops low enough to catch an opponent’s foot is certain to be thrown himself if he misses his grip.

On the other hand, there is no practical objection when once the wrestlers are engaged to catching hold of an opponent’s thigh whether for offence or defence.

Further, in describing the physical qualities of the boxer he regards a prominent stomach as a possible advantage, because it renders it less easy for an opponent to reach the face! Nor does he anywhere make any reference to body blows.

Boxing like fencing is governed by artificial laws, and it is just possible that the laws of Greek boxing prohibited intentional blows on the body, just as blows below the belt are prohibited to-day.

Perhaps they were forbidden by the unwritten law of tradition. Whatever the explanation, the fact seems fairly established that body hitting was not practised, and consequently the body was left unguarded;

The combination of boxing and wrestling known as the pankration was a development of the primitive rough and tumble.

To get his opponent down, and by throttling, pummelling, biting, and kicking, to reduce him to submission, is the natural instinct of the savage or the child.

But this rough and tumble was too undisciplined for athletic competition. Competitions require law, and in the growth of law the simpler precedes the more complex.

… it was only natural that particular forms of fighting such as boxing and wrestling should be systematized first, and so made suitable for competition, before any attempt was made to reduce to law the more complicated rough and tumble of which they both formed part.

Wrestling and boxing were known to Homer, but not the pankration

, and Greek tradition was following the natural order of development in assigning the introduction at Olympia of wrestling to the 18th, of boxing to the 23rd, and of the pankration to the 33rd Olympiad.

A favourite Greek story told by Plutarch of Alcibiades, and in another place of a Spartan wrestler, illustrates this suggestion.[754] Being hard pressed and about to be thrown, he bit his opponent’s hand. Letting go his hold, the latter exclaimed,

“You bite, Alcibiades, like a woman.” “No,” he replied, “like a lion.”

Biting, as we know, was strictly forbidden, and some confirmation of the explanation of the vase may be found in the attitude of the official on the right, who seems to be awarding the palm to the other pankratiast.

… at the Isthmus, the spirit of Glaucus the son of Sisyphus who was killed by his horses at the games of Adrastus, while at Nemea the panic of the horses was caused by a gleam like fire reflected from a red stone near the turn.

But nowhere was there any Taraxippus which inspired such terror as the Taraxippus at Olympia!

The Olympic aphesis was something exceptional. Usually horses and chariots were started much in the same way as runners.

But of this we may be certain, that physical training did not, and could not, do for Galen’s contemporaries what athletics had done for their ancestors. Nor can physical training ever take the place of our own games.

For it lacks the element of competition and cannot inspire.

There is no antagonism between the two. Both are valuable, but their spheres are different. Physical training is a branch of education—a most important branch, and one hitherto shamefully neglected in England—and it must therefore be carried out under discipline:

Both are valuable, but their spheres are different. Physical training is a branch of education—a most important branch, and one hitherto shamefully neglected in England—and it must therefore be carried out under discipline: it is a matter of compulsion.

Athletics and games are, or ought to be, a matter of free choice, and compulsion tends to kill the spirit of joy which is their essence.

Physical training develops the body and imparts habits of discipline, but it cannot impart those still higher qualities, courage, endurance, self-control, courtesy, qualities which are developed by our own games, or by such manly sports as boxing and wrestling when conducted in the true spirit …