A mosaic found at Tusculum (Fig. [22]) gives a vivid picture of the life of these professional athletes under the Empire. A comparison of these scenes with those represented on the Panaetius kylix in Fig. [17] will illustrate better than any description the difference between the two ages.
The renaissance of Hellenism which marked the second century brought with it a revival of the Greek athletic festivals and Greek athletics, which, under the patronage of the “Greekling” Hadrian and his successors, attained an outward prosperity and splendour unparalleled since the fifth century. It was the object of these emperors, who were as much at home in Greece as in Italy, to revive the glories of the past, and restore to the mainland of Greece that pre-eminence in the Hellenic world which had been usurped by the great cities of the East. Everywhere splendid buildings testified to the lavish munificence, if not always to the good taste, of the emperors, and of wealthy subjects who emulated their example. Countless monuments and inscriptions throughout Greece bear witness to the activity of Hadrian. At Athens he built a gymnasium and library, at Corinth he provided baths, at Nemea he instituted a winter festival, while at Mantinea and Argos he founded quinquennial festivals in honour of his beloved Antinous, whose cult spread rapidly throughout the Empire. His reverence for Olympia and its ideals is shown by a series of coins bearing on one side the emperor’s head, on the other a representation of the Zeus of Pheidias.[[262]] But Hadrian’s monuments sink into insignificance in comparison with the prodigal generosity of Herodes Atticus, who rebuilt in stone the stadia at Delphi and Athens, the latter in marble from Pentelicus. At Olympia he contributed to the comfort of the spectators by providing a new system of water-supply, while he left a more conspicuous if less useful monument of himself in the so-called exedra, a pompous and incongruous semicircular building erected between the Heraeum and the western end of the treasuries, at the only vacant spot commanding a view of the altar of Zeus. The exedra was dedicated to Zeus in the name of his wife Regilla, who held at Olympia the honoured position of priestess to Demeter Chamyne. Statues of Regilla and Herodes were placed by the Eleans in the exedra, which also contained the statues of Hadrian, Antoninus and other members of the imperial family, who from this place of honour seemed to look on for ever as spectators and patrons of the festival. Under such patronage the games attracted crowds from all parts of the “inhabited world,” and indeed exercised considerable influence. For the religious idea expressed in the statue of Olympian Zeus fascinated the thought of the age. But for the Greeks themselves regeneration was no longer possible. Physically, morally, politically they were too degenerate. In the Olympic records of the second century there are few names from the mother-country; most of the victors came from the cities of Egypt and the East, especially from Alexandria. The marble stadium of Herodes Atticus at Athens witnessed all the brutalities of the Roman gladiatorial shows.
The artificiality of the athletic revival is nowhere more evident than in the numerous inscriptions of this period, which in their pompous verbosity afford a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of the time when athletics were a real part of the national life. As we read them we feel ourselves in another world, a world-of professionalism, of self-advertisement, and of records, which bears no little resemblance to that in which we are living to-day. Compare, for example, the simple inscriptions at Olympia recording the victories of the Diagoridae[[263]] with the first-century inscription in honour of Publius Cornelius Ariston of Ephesus, who won the boys’ pankration in Ol. 207 (A.D. 49), or better still with the second-century inscriptions found in Italy enumerating the exploits of Titus Flavius Artemidorus of Adana of Cilicia, or of Marcus Aurelius Asclepiades of Alexandria. The very names are significant of the change that has taken place. “Diagoras (son) of Damagetus a Rhodian” such is the simple formula of early days. The only description of the contest vouchsafed is the name of the festival and the event, with the single word ἀκονιτεί added occasionally to denote a “walk over.” Occasionally a simple couplet is added. But the pedestal of Ariston’s statue[[264]] had inscribed on it, besides the usual formula, a poem of twenty-four lines describing his powers and his fame, how in a field of seven he won all his heats without having the advantage of a bye, and how his glory was proclaimed not only throughout all Hellas but throughout Asia.
A few examples of these inscriptions will best illustrate the character of the age. They begin with a fulsome list of the victor’s honorary titles. That on Asclepiades[[265]] informs us that he and his father both held for life the office of “high-priest of the whole xystos and overseer of the imperial baths,” that he was “chief of the temple guardians of Great Serapis, a citizen of Alexandria, Hermopolis, and Puteoli, and councillor of Neapolis, Elis, Athens, and many other cities.” Then follows a glowing description of his unbeaten record as “a pankratiast, a periodonikes invincible, immovable,[[266]] unrivalled.” “I neither challenged any nor did any one in my time dare to challenge me, nor did I divide the crown with any, nor did I decline a contest or enter any protest,[[267]] nor did I abandon any contest, nor take part in a contest to please royalty, nor did I gain a victory in any new-fangled games, but in all the contests for which I ever entered my name I was crowned in the actual ring and was approved in all the preliminary trials.” This emphatic insistence on the cleanness of his record is clearly an answer to those malicious attacks of which he complains at the end of the inscription, and which caused him to abandon athletics.
He proceeds to enumerate his victories in a manner which reminds one of nothing so much as those photographs which we see often in illustrated papers representing some professional athlete with his whole body covered with medals, belts and scarves which he has won, or standing triumphant in the midst of his cups and trophies. “I contended,” he says, “among three nations in Italy, in Hellas, and in Asia, and in all the contests mentioned below I was victorious in the pankration,—in the Olympia at Pisa in Ol. 240, in the Pythia at Delphi twice, at the Isthmia twice, in the Nemea twice, at the contest for the shield of Hera at Argos, in the Capitolia at Rome twice, in the Eusebea at Puteoli twice, in the Sebasta at Neapolis twice, five times at Athens in various games, five times at Smyrna, three times at the Augustea at Pergamum, three times at Ephesus, at Epidaurus in the Asclepiea, at Rhodes in the Haliea, at Sardis in the Chrysanthina, besides numerous games for money prizes (Θεματείτας), including the Heraclea in Lacedaemon, the games at Mantinea and others.” In this list Olympia and Adriania are mentioned at Athens, Smyrna, and Ephesus. At Ephesus one of his victories was won at the Balbillea founded by the celebrated astrologer Balbillus in the reign of Vespasian. It is interesting to compare this list of victories with the victories won by Diagoras of Rhodes or Epharmostus of Locrian Opous which are enumerated in the odes of Pindar.[[268]] With the exception of Rhodes, all their recorded victories were won in festivals of the mother-country, at the four Panhellenic festivals, at Argos, Athens, Pellene, Aegina, Megara, and at various places in Arcadia and Boeotia. The difference may be summed up in the word οἰκουμένη which occurs frequently in late inscriptions. The games are no longer Hellenic, they are Oecumenical, and with this change their whole character is altered. Even at Olympia, most Hellenic of all festivals, athletes and spectators alike are gathered no longer from Hellas only but from “the inhabited world.”[[269]]
In the enumeration of his exploits Asclepiades constantly records that “on various occasions” he brought his opponents to a standstill (στήσας), sometimes without further comment, but usually with the words “from the start, after the first lot, after the second lot.” The phrase seems to imply that on these occasions his opponents all withdrew from the competition after the first or second heat, or even before any contest. Such incidents may have been misinterpreted by his enemies, who maliciously accused him of bribing or intimidating his rivals. At all events, he tells us that after six years he retired from athletics at the age of twenty-five, owing “to the dangers and jealousy which beset him.” After an interval of some years he was induced to reappear at the Olympic games of his native Alexandria, where he won the pankration in the sixth Alexandrine Olympiad.[[270]]
It was an age of record-breaking. We see it in the expenditure on magnificent buildings and entertainments, in which each new public benefactor aimed at surpassing the work of his predecessors, and it is no wonder that the same spirit affected athletics. The inscription set up by the itinerant synod of the Alexandrines in honour of Flavius Archibius,[[271]] and recording his long list of victories, is punctuated by the incessant refrain, “first of mankind.” For example, in the Pythian festival he won the pankration at one Pythiad, the pankration and wrestling in the next, the pankration again in the next, “first of mankind.” Similarly, Marcus Tullius of Apamea in Bithynia describes himself as “the first boxer from all time”[[272]] to win a certain series of victories. Such phrases are of constant occurrence. A passage in Pliny’s Natural History[[273]] suggests that at Rome records were kept in long-distance running, and that running against time was a popular amusement. After describing various feats of strength, he notes how records in distance-running had been frequently broken. The record of Pheidippides, he says, long held the field until Philonides, and Anystis in Alexander’s time ran from Sicyon to Elis and back, a distance of 1300 stades, in a single day. “In the circus,” he adds, “we know that some athletes have run 160 miles in a day; and recently in the Consulship of Fonteius and Vipsanius, a youth of eight (surely a mistake for eighteen) ran 75 miles between mid-day and sunset.” The accuracy of Pliny’s statements on athletics is not beyond question, but the passage is good evidence as to the practice of the times.
The second century was an age of antiquarianism. Conscious of their own inferiority, men thought to make up for their want of originality by studying and reproducing the forms of the past, regardless of the fact that these forms had lost their meaning. The writings of this period abound in allusions to the great athletes of earlier times. Lucian of Samosata sets forth at length the old athletic ideal in his dialogue entitled “Anacharsis,” in which he makes Solon defend Greek athletics against the criticism of the barbarian. The gist of his argument is that athletics make a man a better and more useful citizen, and fit him to serve his city in peace and war. But alas! the cosmopolitan Greek of his day had no longer any city to defend, and the appeal to civic patriotism can have carried little weight with men who claimed the citizenship of half-a-dozen cities at the same time. Philostratus, an equally enthusiastic admirer of the old athletes, seeks to find a cure for the athletic degeneracy of his own time by a return to the simpler and more rational methods of training of the past. But his appeal likewise fell on deaf ears. Athletics had become the monopoly of professional trainers and quacks, who regarded them merely as a source of selfish profit.
Olympia, above all, appealed to the antiquarian spirit of the age. It is chiefly to the traveller and antiquarian Pausanias, who visited Elis in 173 A.D., that we owe our knowledge of the festival. The mass of details which he gathered from the official guides of Olympia is sure evidence of the interest which the festival aroused. Phlegon of Tralles, like Aristotle in Macedonian times, revised and edited the Olympic register, making it the chronological basis of his history from 776 B.C. to 137 A.D. One C. Asinius Quadratus carried his zeal for Olympia to such lengths as to place the founding of Rome in the year of the first Olympiad, for which act of flattery he received from the Eleans a monument, “because he had honoured Olympia both in word and deed.”[[274]] Others, not content with a chronology that dated back only to Coroebus, invented a new Olympic era 800 years earlier. On an inscribed diskos dedicated by Publius Asclepiades, a pentathlete of Corinth, the date is given according to the two chronologies, Ol. 255 and Ol. 456! and also by the name of the Alytarch for the year, “Flavius Scribonianus, kinsman of senators and consulars.” Archaism took a more practical shape in the minute observance of ceremonies and customs. In the inscription of Claudius Rufus, mentioned in a previous chapter, he is commended especially for having diligently practised in the sight of the Hellanodicae, “in accordance with the ancestral custom of the games.” Our knowledge of the usages of the festival is chiefly derived from authors of this period. We have already seen how these usages were reproduced in the new festivals.
No state preserved so large a measure of independence under Roman rule as Sparta. In A.D. 214, when Caracalla appeared in Greece as a second Alexander to lead a new war against the East, he appealed to Sparta for assistance; and Sparta, as a free federate state, sent two regiments of volunteers bearing the time-honoured names of the Laconian regiment, and the regiment of Pitane, as her contribution to what an inscription styles “the most fortunate alliance against the Persians.” The excavations conducted by the British School of Athens have shed a flood of light upon the history and condition of Sparta at this period.[[275]] We see her as a flourishing provincial town with her Roman fortifications, theatre, baths, and suburban villas. But though changed in outward appearance, Sparta clung only the more tenaciously to the traditions and customs which she derived from Lycurgus. The love of archaism characteristic of this period showed itself in an exaggerated revival of the Lycurgean discipline. Sparta, for centuries, had taken little part in the athletic history of Greece. The one object of her physical education was to produce endurance, and the supreme test of this endurance was the so-called “Contest of Endurance” by means of successive scourgings which took place upon the altar of Artemis. The altar itself has been discovered standing on the site of earlier altars, where from time immemorial this ancient ceremony had taken place. The interest attaching to the contest in Roman times is shown by the numerous references in contemporary writers; and still more by the fact that towards the close of the second century A.D., a large theatre, surrounding the altar, was built for the convenience of spectators. An inscription discovered in the Artemisium records the victory of a boy in this contest. Greek writers represent the contest as a humane substitute for human sacrifice; but Professor Bosanquet[[276]] has shown that there is good reason for thinking that Greek tradition mistook the meaning of the ceremony, which originated in an ancient ritual practice of whipping away boys who tried to steal cheeses from the altar; and that the “Contest of Endurance” was a brutal exaggeration of the old practice, due to the late and artificial revival of the Lycurgean discipline. It certainly justifies, in part, the contemptuous tone in which Philostratus speaks of Spartan athletics.