Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2) / With General and Particular Accounts of Their Rise, Fall, and Present Condition

by Charles Bucke

Sculpture united with poetry to perpetuate the fame of the champions. Statues were erected to the victors, in the very place where they had been crowned, and sometimes in that of their birth also, which was commonly done at the expense of their country. Amongst the statues which adorned Olympia, were those of several children of ten or twelve years old, who had obtained the prize at that age in the Olympic games. They did not only raise such monuments to the champions, but to the very horses to whose swiftness they were indebted for the Agonistic crown: and Pausanias mentions one, which was erected in honour of a mare, called Aura, whose history is worth repeating. Phidolas, her rider, having fallen off in the beginning of the race, the mare continued to run in the same manner as if he had been upon her back. She outstripped all the rest, and upon the sound of the trumpets, which was usual toward the end of the race to animate the competitors, she redoubled her vigour and courage, turned round the goal, and, as if she had been sensible of the victory, presented herself before the judges of the games.

Nor did the entertainments finish here. There was another kind of competition; and that, too, which does not at all depend upon the strength, activity, and address of the body, and may be called, with reason, the combat of the mind; wherein the orators, historians, and poets, made trial of their capacities, and submitted their productions to the judgment of the public.

It was a great honour, and, at the same time, a most sensible pleasure for writers, who are generally fond of fame and applause, to have known how to reconcile the voices in their favour of so numerous and select an assembly as that of the Olympic games, in which were present all the finest geniuses of Greece, and all the best judges of the excellence of a work. This theatre was equally open to history, eloquence, and poetry.

Herodotus read his history in the Olympic games to all Greece, assembled at them, and was heard with such applause, that the names of the nine Muses were given to the nine books which compose his work, and the people cried out wherever he passed, “That is he, who has written our history, and celebrated our glorious successes against the Barbarians.”

Anciently, Olympia was surrounded by walls; it had two temples,—one dedicated to Jupiter, and another to Juno; a senate-house, a theatre, and many other beautiful edifices, and also an innumerable multitude of statues.

The temple of Jupiter was built with the spoils, taken from certain states which had revolted; it was of the Doric order; sixty-eight feet high, two hundred and thirty long, and ninety-five broad. This edifice was built by an able architect, named Libon; and it was adorned by two sculptors of equal skill, who enriched the pediments of the principal front with elaborate and elegant ornaments. The statue of the god, the work of Phidias, was of gold and ivory, fifty cubits high. On the one pediment, [Oe]nomaus and Peleus were disputing the prize of the race in the presence of Jupiter; on the other was the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. On the summit of each pediment was a Victory, of gilt brass; and at each angle a large vase of the same metal.

This statue was the finest the world ever saw. “Indeed,” says Mr. Dodwell; and he is borne out by the authorities of all those ancient writers who have written of it, “it appears to have united all the beauty of form, and all the splendour of effect, that are produced by the highest excellence of the statuary and the painter.”

The altar in this temple[42] was composed of ashes from the thighs of the victims, which were carried up and consumed on the top with wood of the white poplar-tree. The ashes, also, of the Prytanæum, in which a perpetual fire was kept on a hearth, were removed annually, on a fixed day, and spread on it, being first mingled with water from the Alpheus. The people of Elis sacrificed daily, and private persons as often as they chose.

Olympia[43] preserved, much longer than Delphi, and with less diminution, the sacred property, of which it was a similar repository. Some images were removed by Tiberius Nero. His successor, Caius Caligula, who honoured Jupiter with the familiar appellation of brother, commanded that his image should be transported to Rome; but the architects declared it was impossible, without destroying the work.