“Before the time of Jason there were separate crowns for the jump, the diskos, and the spear. At the time of the Argo’s voyage Telamon was the best at throwing the diskos, Lynceus with the javelin, the sons of Boreas were best at running and jumping, and Peleus was second in these events but was superior to all in wrestling. Accordingly, when they were holding sports in Lemnos, Jason, they say, wishing to please Peleus combined the five events, and thus Peleus secured the victory on the whole.”[[621]]
The order of the events and the method of deciding the pentathlon have given rise to a literature equally extensive and inconclusive.[[622]] Almost every combination of events has been tried, and every conceivable method has been devised. Many of the systems proposed are so utterly unpractical that they have only to be stated to be rejected by any one with a rudimentary knowledge of practical athletics. None can be regarded as established. The evidence is too scanty and too contradictory. It consists largely in extracts from scholiasts and lexicographers, and we have seen in considering the constitution of the pentathlon the untrustworthiness of this class of evidence. It is well, therefore, to recognise from the outset that whatever solutions we may accept are only provisional, and that it is therefore in the highest degree unsafe to use such theories as evidence in the interpretation of Pindar or other poets.
First, as to the order of events, it must be premised that we are not certain that the order was fixed, and did not vary at different times and places. Still, the conservatism of the Greeks in such matters certainly makes it probable that there was a fixed order at Olympia, and that this order was generally adopted elsewhere. At all events we shall assume that this was so. The one fact which we know for certain about the order is that wrestling came last. Bacchylides definitely describes it as last, and the evidence of Bacchylides is confirmed by Herodotus and Xenophon.[[623]] Describing the attack on Olympia by the Eleans in Ol. 104, when the Arcadians had usurped the presidency of the games, Xenophon says: “They had already finished the horse-race and the events of the pentathlon held in the dromos (τὰ δρομικὰ τοῦ πεντάθλου) and those who had reached the wrestling were no longer in the dromos but were wrestling between the dromos and the altar.” It is generally agreed that τὰ δρομικά are the first four events, which were held in the stadium, whereas according to the view set forth in a previous chapter wrestling took place in the open space in front of the treasury steps.[[624]] At all events, it is clear from Xenophon’s words that wrestling came last, and common sense tells us that this was the only possible position for it consistent with fairness. After several hard bouts of wrestling no competitor could do himself justice in the other events.
For the order of the first four events we have to fall back on the uncertain and contradictory evidence of various passages in which the events of the pentathlon are enumerated. Now in none of these passages is the order of events of any importance to the writer; in the case of an epigram it is obvious that the order is likely to be modified by metrical considerations. Still, the probability remains that such passages will in spite of metre and carelessness reflect more or less the actual order.[[625]] Thus we find that in five passages wrestling comes last, in two passages it comes first, and in both of these the order of events is merely reversed, in one passage it comes second. The epigram of Simonides gives the following order: Jump, foot-race, diskos, javelin, wrestling. The epigram quoted by Eustathius gives the same order except that the foot-race comes fourth instead of second. Now, except in the epigram of Simonides, the three events peculiar to the pentathlon are always grouped together. It is probable, therefore, that they were grouped together in practice, and that the foot-race cannot have occupied the second place. Why Simonides put it after the jump is obvious, neither δρόμος nor ποδωκείν could possibly begin a hexameter. The foot-race, therefore, came either first or fourth. Once more, if we examine the lists we find the foot-race first in two lists, last in the two reversed lists, while two scholia follow the epigram and place it fourth. As the order in these scholia is identical with that of the epigram, it is doubtful whether they have any independent authority. The evidence, therefore, is slightly in favour of first place for the foot-race, and this order receives some slight support from the passage in Philostratus already quoted concerning the pentathlon of Peleus, and the passage of Herodotus discussed below about Tisamenus and Hieronymus.
For the remaining events the lists appear to support the order of the two epigrams—jump, diskos, javelin, though there is not much to show whether the diskos or the javelin came first. Certain passages in Bacchylides and Pindar have been quoted to prove that the diskos preceded the javelin.[[626]] On the two Panathenaic vases reproduced above, the javelin comes between the jump and the diskos. This is the position assigned to it by Philostratus when he enumerates the events of the pentathlon. Unfortunately the value of this passage is lessened by the distinction which he introduces between light events and heavy events. The heavy events, he says, are wrestling and throwing the diskos; the light events, the javelin, the jump, and the foot-race. The order is obviously reversed, but whether all three light events preceded both heavy events or not cannot be decided from this passage. Such distinctions give us no clue to the actual order, and all attempts to discover the system on which the order of events depended are absolutely futile. It is easy enough to argue that all the exercises were arranged in an ascending scale, or that easy exercises alternated with difficult, that similar exercises were grouped together, or that leg exercises alternated with arm exercises, and if we were constructing an ideal pentathlon such arguments might be of some use. As it is, we are not concerned with an ideal pentathlon but with that of the Greeks, and there is not a particle of evidence to prove that the Greeks arranged their pentathlon on any abstract principle however plausible. All we can do is to confine ourselves to the actual evidence, and the order which this evidence renders probable is foot-race, jump, diskos, javelin, wrestling.
It is unnecessary to discuss in full the various systems that have been suggested for deciding the pentathlon. These systems for the most part fall into certain well-defined groups based on certain hypotheses, and it will be sufficient briefly to examine these hypotheses.
The old hypothesis perpetuated by Liddell and Scott, that victory in all five events[[627]] was necessary, may be briefly dismissed as not only unpractical but contrary to the little evidence which we possess. On such a system a victory in the pentathlon must have been an extremely rare event; for it can seldom have happened that one competitor won all five events. The idea seems to have arisen from the epigram of Simonides, and from a misunderstanding of an important passage in Herodotus (ix. 33), which is in reality a conclusive proof against it.
“Tisamenus,” says Herodotus, “came within a single contest or fall (πάλαισμα) of victory, being matched against Hieronymus of Andros.” Pausanias confirms the victory of Hieronymus (vi. 14), and says of Tisamenus (iii. 11, 6), “In two events he was first, for he was superior to Hieronymus in running and jumping, but he was defeated by him in wrestling and so failed to win the victory.” The true interpretation of the passage is obvious. “Tisamenus came within a single contest of victory,” i.e. he won two events but lost the odd; or perhaps we may go farther still and give to πάλαισμα its literal meaning, “a fall in wrestling.” He came within a “single fall” of winning.
Each had won two events, each had scored two falls in wrestling, and the whole contest depended on the last fall![[628]] just as we talk of winning a golf match by a single putt, or winning a rubber by the odd trick.
Yet obvious as this interpretation is, Hermann and other more recent German writers have asserted that, according to Herodotus, Tisamenus won the first four events, and only missed the victory because he was defeated in wrestling. It is more than doubtful whether the words of Herodotus can bear the meaning “he missed victory by wrestling only”; but apart from this, Hermann’s theory is absolutely contradicted by the very circumstantial statements of Pausanias. If Tisamenus won all four events, why should Pausanias expressly state that he won two? If victory in all five events was necessary, how can Hieronymus have won the pentathlon, seeing that on Hermann’s showing he only won one event? If victory in five events was not necessary, is it not ridiculous to suppose that a solitary victory in wrestling should have not only cancelled the four victories of Tisamenus, but secured the prize for Hieronymus?