Another curious thing happened on the spot in my time. A senator of Rome won the prize at Olympia, and wishing some record of his victory to survive in the shape of a brazen statue with an inscription, dug for a foundation, close to this pillar of Œnomaus, and the diggers found fragments of arms and bridles and bits. These I myself saw dug up.
The temple, which is large in size and of Doric architecture, they call to this day the Temple of the Mother, preserving its ancient name, though there is no statue in it of the Mother of the Gods, but only some statues of Roman Emperors. It is inside Altis, and there is a round building called Philip’s House, on the top of which is a brazen poppy as a clamp for the beams. This building is on the left hand as you go to the Town Hall, and is built of baked brick, and there are some pillars round it. It was built for Philip after the fatal defeat of the Greeks at Chæronea. And there are statues there of Philip, and Alexander, and Amyntas the father of Philip. They are by Leochares in ivory and gold, like the statues of Olympias and Eurydice.
CHAPTER XXI.
And now I shall proceed to the account of the statues and votive offerings, which I do not care to mix up together. In the Acropolis at Athens all the statues and everything else equally are votive offerings: but at Altis the votive offerings are in honour of the deity, but the statues of the prizemen are merely a memorial of the contests. Of them I shall speak hereafter: I shall now take the most remarkable votive offerings in order.
As you go to the race-course from the Temple of the Mother there is on the left at the end of the mountain Cronius a basement of stone, near the mountain, and some steps to it. On this basement there are some brazen statues of Zeus, made with the money from a fine imposed on some athletes who had behaved shamefully at the games. These statues are called in the national dialect Zanes. They were six in number at first and were put up in the 98th Olympiad. For Eupolus the Thessalian bribed his rivals in boxing to let him win the prize, Agenor from Arcadia, and Prytanis from Cyzicus, and Phormio from Halicarnassus, who was the champion in the preceding Olympiad. This was the first foul play they say at the boxing matches, and Eupolus and those who had been bribed by him were fined by the people of Elis. Two of the statues are by Cleon of Sicyon, the modeller of the remaining four we do not know. And all these statues, but the third and fourth, have elegiac lines on them. The first says that not with money, but swiftness of foot and bodily vigour, ought one to win prizes at Olympia. And the second says that that statue is raised in honour to the deity, and from piety on the part of the people of Elis, and to inspire fear in such athletes as do not play fair. As to the fifth and sixth, the gist of the inscription on one is a panegyric of the people of Elis, and not least for their punishment of the cheating boxers, and on the other a didactic precept to all the Greeks that nobody is to bribe to win the prize at Olympia.
And subsequently to Eupolus they say that the Athenian Callippus, when contending for the pentathlum, bribed his antagonists in the 112th Olympiad. And when he and his antagonists were fined by the people of Elis, the Athenians sent Hyperides to beg the people of Elis to remit the fine. And when the people of Elis refused this favour, the Athenians treated them with much hauteur, not paying the money and keeping away from Olympia, till the god at Delphi told them he would no longer give them any oracular responses, till they paid the fine to the people of Elis. And when they paid, six more statues were made for Zeus, with elegiac verses on them no less severe than those about the fine of Eupolus. And the purport of these verses on the first statue is that the statues are erected in accordance with the oracular direction of the god, who honoured the decision the people of Elis had come to about the competitors for the pentathlum. And the second and third likewise praise the people of Elis for their conduct in the same matter. And the fourth desires to point out that the contest at Olympia is one of merit and not of money. And the inscriptions on the fifth and sixth shew, one why the statues were made, and the other that the oracle came to the Athenians from Delphi.
And next to those I have enumerated are two statues, made from a fine imposed on some wrestlers, whose names are unknown both to me and the Antiquarians of Elis. There are some inscriptions also on these statues, the first is that the Rhodians paid a fine to Olympian Zeus for the cheating of their wrestler. And the second is that the statue was made out of fines imposed on those who wrestled for bribes. And the Antiquarians of Elis say that the other statues in connection with athletes were erected in the 178th Olympiad, when Eudelus was bribed by the Rhodian Philostratus. I find a discrepancy between this account and the public records of the people of Elis as respects the victors at Olympia. For in these records they say that Straton of Alexandria in the 178th Olympiad won on the same day the prize both in the pancratium and in the wrestling. Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile near Canopus, was built by Alexander, the son of Philip, on the site of a former town of no great size called Rhacotis. In the generation before Straton 3, and 3 after his day, are famous for having received the crown of wild olive both for the pancratium and the wrestling. The first was Caprus a native of Elis, and next of the Greeks beyond the Ægean the Rhodian Aristomenes, and next Protophanes of the Magnetes at Lethæus. And after Straton Marion, also from Alexandria, and Aristeas from Stratonice (both the region and city were anciently called Chrysaoris), and last Nicostratus from the Cilicians by the sea, though he had little in common with the Cilicians but nominally. For, when he was quite a child, he was kidnapped from Prymnessus a town in Phrygia by robbers, who took him to Ægeæ and sold him to the highest bidder. He was of no obscure family, and some time afterwards his purchaser dreamed that a lion’s whelp lay under the truckle bed on which he used to sleep. When Nicostratus grew to man’s estate he had several other victories at Olympia in the pancratium and in wrestling.
And among others that were fined by the people of Elis afterwards was a boxer from Alexandria in the 218th Olympiad. His name was Apollonius, his surname Rhantes, for it is customary among the people of Alexandria to have surnames. He was the first Egyptian condemned by the people of Elis for neither giving nor receiving money, but for the impropriety of coming too late, for which he was not allowed to take part in the games. As to his excuse that he was detained by contrary winds in the Cyclades, Heraclides, also an Alexandrian, proved it to be a falsehood: and said he was really too late because he had been collecting money from the games in Ionia. Accordingly Apollonius and all others not present at the appointed time for the boxing matches were not allowed by the people of Elis to take part in the games, but to Heraclides they gave a crown without a contest. Thereupon Apollonius, who had on his boxer’s cæstus, rushed at Heraclides, and attacked him fiercely, just as he had received his crown of wild olive, and he fled for refuge to the Umpires. This hotheadedness was severely punished. There are also two statues made in our own times. For in the 226th Olympiad they detected some boxers bribing to get the prize. The money of their fine went to make two statues of Zeus, one on the left of the entrance to the course, and the other on the right. Didas was the name of one of these boxers, and the other, who gave the bribe, was Sarapammon, both were from the same district, the latest one formed in Egypt, called Arsinoites. It is wonderful indeed that from any quarter people should have been found to despise the god at Olympia, and to receive or give bribes in connection with the games, but still more wonderful that any of the people of Elis should have ventured to act in that manner. But it is said that Damonicus, a native of Elis, acted so in the 192nd Olympiad. For when Polyctor (the son of Damonicus) and Sosander (the son of Sosander) a native of Smyrna had descended to the arena for the wrestling match, Damonicus, being very anxious that his son should have the victory, bribed the younger Sosander. And when the circumstances got known, the Umpires fined the parents, turning their vengeance on them because they were really the guilty parties. Statues were made with this money too: one in the gymnasium at Elis, the other in Altis, in front of what is called the Painted Portico, because there were in ancient times paintings on the walls. This Portico is called by some the Portico of Echo, because in it a word is re-echoed 7 times, sometimes even more frequently.
And they record that the pancratiast Serapion, a native of Alexandria, in the 201st Olympiad was so afraid of those who were to compete with him, that the day before the contest he absconded. He is the only Egyptian, or indeed member of any nationality, that was ever fined for cowardice in the games.