CHAPTER XVII
THE PENTATHLON
The pentathlon was a combined competition in five events, running, jumping, throwing the diskos, throwing the javelin, and wrestling. This is one of the few facts regarding the pentathlon which may be regarded as absolutely certain. These five events are vouched for by three epigrams, one of them assigned to Simonides, and by the repeated testimony of Philostratos in his Gymnastike.[[615]] Nothing proves more conclusively the utter unreliability of the statements on athletics made by late scholiasts and lexicographers, than the mistakes which they contrive to make on a matter so clearly established. The lexicon of Phavorinus, following certain late scholia, substitutes boxing for throwing the javelin; and Photius quotes certain writers as substituting the pankration for the jump. Stranger still, such mistakes survive in the present day; and our own standard Greek Lexicon by Liddell and Scott contains, in the latest edition, the appalling statement that the five exercises were the jump, the diskos, running, wrestling, boxing, the last being afterwards exchanged for javelin throwing. After this we are not surprised to find quoted the antiquated theory of Böckh, that “no one received a prize unless he was winner in all five events,” a theory that was disproved by Philip, years before the first edition of Liddell and Scott was published. The introduction of boxing into the pentathlon is due to the mischievous habit of using such inaccurate expressions as “the Homeric pentathlon.”[[616]] In heroic days, as Pindar tells us, there was no pentathlon, “but for each several feat there was a prize.”[[617]]
Fig. 107. Panathenaic amphora, in British Museum, B. 134. Sixth century.
Of these five events, three—the jump, the diskos, and the javelin—were peculiar to the pentathlon, and formed its characteristic feature. These three events were regarded as typical of the whole competition; on the Panathenaic vases given as prizes for the competition one or more of these three events, on two vases all three of them, are represented[[618]] (Figs. [107], [108]). The same events are among the commonest on other vases, especially red-figured vases; but we are not justified in connecting these with the pentathlon, or using them as evidence in discussing the pentathlon. These scenes for the most part represent the daily life of the gymnasium, and all that they prove is the important part which these sports played in that life. They were the only three events which required any form of apparatus; the exercises seem to have been taught in classes, and were performed both in practice and in competition to the accompaniment of the flute. If any of the three was regarded as more representative than another, it was the jump, which perhaps owed its importance partly to the extensive use of halteres in the gymnasium. The halteres were the special symbol of the pentathlon, and were frequently represented on statues of victorious pentathletes.[[619]]
Fig. 108. Panathenaic amphora. Leyden. Sixth century.
These three events, together with running and wrestling, were representative of the whole physical training of the Greeks, and the pentathlete was the typical product of that training. Inferior to the specialised athletes in his special events he was superior to him in general development, in that harmonious union of strength and activity which produces perfect physical beauty; and this beauty of the pentathlete won him the special commendation of thinkers such as Aristotle, who condemned all exaggerated or one-sided development.[[620]]
A combined competition like the pentathlon is obviously later than any of the individual events of which it is composed, and implies a considerable development in athletics and physical education. Not that we are to regard it with certain German writers as an elaborate scheme based on abstract physiological principles evolved with much expenditure of midnight oil out of the brain of some athletic student. The pentathlon was the natural product of a number of exercises which had been familiar for centuries. But before the idea could originate of combining these exercises into a single competition to find the best all-round athlete, these exercises must have become part of the national education. The combination implies a certain amount of thought and conscious reflexion. There is in it an artificiality of which we find no trace in the Homeric sports. In view of this it is remarkable that, according to Greek tradition, the pentathlon was introduced at Olympia as early as the 18th Olympiad.
No importance need be attached to the statement of Philostratus that the pentathlon was invented by Jason. The Greeks always loved to trace their institutions back to heroic times. As, however, the passage which contains the statement is of considerable importance in discussing the method of deciding the pentathlon, it will be useful to quote it in full:—