In Pindar’s time the athletic competitions as well as the horse-races took place not at Delphi but in the Crisaean plain below. The horse-races continued to be held there, Delphi itself affording no suitable space for a hippodrome. But in the second half of the fifth century the athletics were transferred to a new stadium constructed above the precinct of Apollo. The change is connected by M. Homolle with an attempt of the Phocians to reassert their rights to the control of the games at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.[[335]] The fourth century was one of great activity among the states of Northern Greece, in Thebes, in Thessaly, and in Macedon, and the Pythian festival regained the importance which it had somewhat lost owing to the doubtful part played by Delphi and the Northern States in the struggle with Persia. The Pythian games appealed to the ambitious rulers of Thessaly and Macedon in the same way as the Olympic games had to the tyrants of an earlier age. Jason of Pherae usurped the presidency of the games, and was preparing to celebrate them with extraordinary magnificence when his ambition was cut short by his murder. Philip of Macedon was more politic. By espousing the cause of the Amphictyons against the Phocians in the Sacred war he won their gratitude, and was appointed by them as president of the games. The new activity at Delphi may be seen in the numerous additions to the programme made in this century. The gymnasium was built in this period, and Aristotle undertook the task of drawing up a register of Pythian victors, being assisted in the task by his nephew Callistratus. A copy of this register was placed in the temple of Apollo.[[336]]
In 290 B.C. during the war between Demetrius Poliorketes and Pyrrhus, the roads leading to Delphi were in possession of the Aetolians, and Demetrius therefore ordered the Pythia to be celebrated at Athens, there being, he said, no more fitting place for the worship of Apollo than Athens, where he was regarded as the father of the race. The intimate relations between Athens and Delphi at this period are proved by the splendid deputations the Pythaids, as they were called, sent to Delphi from time to time.[[337]] The splendour of the Pythaids reached its height in the second century. Their arrival at Delphi was celebrated by equestrian, musical and dramatic displays and competitions; but these deputations did not necessarily coincide with the Pythian festival, and after the capture of Athens by Sulla in 87 B.C. they practically ceased.
We know little of the Pythian games under the Empire: we have the names of a few victors, many of them in musical or dramatic competitions, others professional periodonikai. Nero won the Pythian crown, and in return for it carried off hundreds of works of art from Delphi to Rome. At a later period Herodes Atticus rebuilt the stadium in the form in which it exists to-day. The Pythian games still existed in the time of the Emperor Julian, and were probably abolished finally at the end of the fourth century when the Olympic games were abolished.
The festival must have lasted several days, but the precise duration is unknown. The musical competitions appear to have come first, then the athletic events, and lastly the chariot and horse races. The boys’ events were not, as at Olympia, grouped together; but each boys’ competition preceded the corresponding competition for men.[[338]] The prize was a wreath of bay leaves plucked in the vale of Tempe by a boy whose parents were both living. It is represented on one of the coins in Fig. [27], while the other coin shows the prize table and on it a crow, five apples, a vase and a laurel wreath. As at Olympia, the victors had the privilege of erecting their statues in or near the precinct. The chief religious ceremony of the festival must have been the official procession along the sacred way to the temple of Apollo.
Fig. 28. Imperial coin of Corinth, in British Museum (enlarged).
(2) The Isthmia
The Isthmian festival, though inferior in athletic standard to the Olympia and in sanctity to the Pythia, was perhaps the most frequented of all the Panhellenic festivals.[[339]] It was held in the second and fourth year of each Olympiad, under the presidency of Corinth; and though there is some doubt as to the exact date, it seems certain that it was held in the spring, probably in April or early May.[[340]] No festival was so central and so accessible to all parts of the Greek world, whether by land or sea, and no place offered such innumerable attractions to visitors of every sort as Corinth, the city of commerce and of pleasure. The description which Dion Chrysostom has left of the crowds which flocked to the Isthmia in the first century A.D. has already been quoted. It reminds one of the crowd at a modern race-meeting, where princes, statesmen, millionaires, jostle with beggars, mountebanks, and sharpers. “The Isthmian festival,” says Livy,[[341]] “owed its popularity not only to the national love of witnessing contests of every sort in arts or strength or agility, but especially to the advantageous situation of the Isthmus, which, commanding the resources of two seas, was the natural meeting-place of the human race, the mart of Greece and Asia.” In these words we have, summed up, the essential characteristics of the Isthmia, the attractiveness and variety of their programme, their cosmopolitanism, and last but not least their commercial importance. Livy is speaking of the time in the opening years of the second century, when Flamininus proclaimed the liberty of Greece at the Isthmian festival. We cannot doubt that he had also in his mind the revived splendour of the festival in his own time, since Corinth which had been destroyed by Mummius had been refounded by Julius Caesar and become the capital of Achaia. Of the earlier history of the festival we unfortunately know little; but the few notices which have survived indicate that from the very first the character of the festival differed little from that ascribed to it by Livy and Dion Chrysostom.
The reorganization of the ancient local festival in honour of Poseidon as a Panhellenic trieteris seems to have taken place either during the closing years of the Cypselidae, or shortly after their fall. These princes had laid the foundation of the maritime and commercial greatness of Corinth, which, under their patronage, took the lead in trade and literature and art. From this time her wealth and luxury were proverbial; but wealth and luxury are not the soil on which athletics flourish best. Corinth was not an athletic state; few great athletes hailed from her, and, whatever athletic vigour existed in early times in families such as the Oligaethidae soon died away. The character of the Isthmia cannot fail to have been determined by the character and relations of Corinth.
Corinth, though traditionally Dorian, had little in common with the other Dorian states of the Peloponnese. All her sympathies were Ionian. With the Ionians of the East she was closely connected by that trade which was the basis of her wealth, and by the common worship of Poseidon. The influence of the East is clearly marked in the early art of Corinth, especially in her pottery. Equally close were her relations with Athens. We have seen that Theseus was one of the reputed founders of the Isthmia; and that the Athenian theoroi had a special place of privilege at the festival. Indeed, the Isthmia seem almost to have been regarded as an Attic festival, and were an occasion of merry-making, a sort of public holiday for all classes of Athens, even for slaves. Many an Athenian was debarred from visiting Olympia by the length of the journey, the heat, and other discomforts of the festival itself. The Isthmia suffered from no such drawbacks; it was but a few hours’ journey, either by land or sea; the festival took place in the spring; Corinth offered ample accommodation for such as could afford it; those who could not afford it might take their tents with them and encamp in the neighbourhood. Under these circumstances it is reasonable to suppose that the Isthmia bore more resemblance to the Panathenaea, or even to the Delia, both of which festivals were also said to have been founded by Theseus, than they did to the more strenuous Olympia; and such few facts as we know about the programme confirm this idea.