The final contest at the funeral games for Patroklos was that of javelin-throwing. When Agamemnon and Meriones rose to compete, Achilles at once adjudged Agamemnon victor because of his well-known excellence in this feat.
The scenes of the Iliad are too serious to allow the poet to dwell upon the amusements of the common soldiery. Only at the close of the poem, after a lull in the tumultuous succession of events, is a thought given to sport. But even here, excepting the chariot race, the descriptions are made with a certain careless brevity, as if the poet would dispose of them as quickly as possible, and as if he would say: “This is not my theme.” Achilles superintends the games with a lofty indifference, and even cuts some of them short, as if other things were on his mind.
In the Odyssey, on the other hand, the poet seems to evince a greater inclination to linger over the scenes of sport, as being more in harmony with his theme. A certain voluptuousness pervades the Odyssey; the stern scenes of war, have vanished from the poet’s imagination, and have been replaced by those of festivity and pleasure. A new generation is described. Athletics have become less violent and the scenes are embellished by the interspersion of music, dancing, and poetry.
The poet, conscious of the change, portrays the new order of things among the Phæacians, a people inhabiting a blissful island on the western edge of the world. Hither he leads the ocean-tossed Odysseus, the representative of the older generation. The shipwrecked stranger does not ask in vain of King Alkinoös for an escort that may guide him homeward. Says Alkinoös to Odysseus:
“Say from what city, from what regions tossed,
And what inhabitants those regions boast?
So shalt thou quickly reach the realm assigned
In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind;
No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;