All this was part of the exaggerated pomp with which the festival itself in all its details was conducted; its processions, feastings, proclamations, and sacrifices, where each state vied with the others in making a show of gold and silver plate and displaying all the wealth they possessed. Ostentation was not a common fault in Greece, but it had full scope at Olympia. The two worst defects of the Greek character were also prominent there—a contempt for women which forbade any female even to be present, and an exaggerated idea of racial purity which shut out all competitors except those of undisputed Greek descent. But the spectacle must have been a splendid one, and it undoubtedly inspired some of the finest works of Greek art. The erection of a statue in the Altis was one of the honours given to victorious athletes to glorify their triumph, and if the victor was unable himself to meet the expense of setting up such a monument, the cost was often borne for him by his native city. ‘In the courts of Olympia,’ as Walter Pater says, ‘a whole population in marble and bronze gathered quickly,—a world of portraits out of which, as the purged and perfected essence, the ideal soul, of them, emerged the Diadumenus and the Discobolus.’ Pausanias gives us a list of some of the great sculptors whose works were still standing there in his time—Hagelaidas, Pythagoras, Kalamis, Myron, Polycleitus, Lysippus, and possibly Pheidias—and these nude figures established a canon of bodily perfection which had no little influence in actual life.
Poets also vied with sculptors in glorifying the Olympic victor. Simonides of Keos and Bacchylides sang his praise, and in the Epinikian Odes of Pindar we have the greatest of all memorials to the athletic spirit—‘Verse that is all of gold and wine and flowers, and is itself avowedly a flower, or “liquid nectar,” or “the sweet fruit of his soul, to men that are winners in the games.” “As when from a wealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad within with the dew of the vine, maketh gift to a youth”: the keynote of Pindar’s verse is there.’ With a choral music unsurpassed in any language, with wealth of legend and myth, with accumulation of epithet and metaphor, Pindar bears his witness to the pride of physical perfection. And with all the grandeur of his odes it is significant that he lacks conspicuously both the Spartan virtue of simplicity and the Athenian desire for economy of effort.
‘His soul rejoiced in splendour—splendour of stately palace halls where the columns were of marble and the entablature of wrought gold; splendour of temples of the gods, where the sculptor’s waxing art had brought the very deities to dwell with man; splendour of the white-pillared cities that glittered across the Ægean and Sicilian seas; splendour of the holy Panhellenic games, of whirlwind chariots and the fiery grace of thoroughbreds, of the naked shapely limbs of the athlete, man and boy.’[B]
Splendour was the ideal alike of the Achæan chieftain, the Corinthian tyrant, and the Olympic judge. But the stern lesson of the Persian Wars led the Greek people in the fifth century to higher things, and the true spirit of athletics passed from the magnificent precinct of Olympian Zeus to the simple exercising grounds which every town possessed. Olympia and its prizes fell into the hands of professionals; but gymnastics remained an essential part of national education.
2
Gymnastics and Military Training
THE various athletic exercises, which are here for convenience classed together under the word ‘gymnastics,’ fall into three main classes, depending respectively on strength of body, of leg, and of arm. To the first class belong boxing and wrestling, to the second running and jumping, to the third throwing the diskos and the javelin. The last five of these six sports—boxing being excluded—formed the Pentathlon, a combined competition of five events arranged to suit the all-round military athlete, for whom Greek athletic training at its best was especially designed. In such a competition the foot-race probably came first and the wrestling last; the three middle events—the field events, as we should call them, jumping, throwing the javelin, and hurling the diskos—being those that were particularly identified with the five-sport system which aimed at producing, not a specialized athlete, but a man who combined strength with agility and skill. Victory in the Pentathlon depended, not on success in all events, but on a system of marks; victory in three of the competitions was sufficient in itself, but if no competitor won three times, and two competitors tied with two victories each, it is highly probable that account was taken of second and third places.
Of the separate exercises, wrestling perhaps was the favourite. It was the oldest of all sports, and to the Greeks one of the most important. To them it was both a science and an art. Theseus, its inventor, was, according to the myth, taught the rules by Athena herself. Victory alone was not sufficient; the winner must win gracefully and according to the precepts of the schools. It was from wrestling that the palæstra took its name, and the Greek language is full of metaphors and expressions borrowed from the technical phraseology of the ring. The contests between Heracles and Antæus, and between Atalanta and Peleus, are two of the best known and most frequently depicted episodes of the heroic saga, and wrestling was one of the sports in which women were allowed by some States—by Sparta and Chios, for example—to take part, competing even against men. Instruction was given in the school; there were separate rules for men and boys, and the different movements, grips, and throws were taught on a system of progressive difficulty; textbooks were used, and fragments of such a manual have recently been found on an Egyptian papyrus. There were two principal styles, the upright wrestling, in which the object was to throw one’s opponent to the ground, three falls being necessary for victory, and the ground wrestling, in which the struggle was continued even after a fall until one of the combatants yielded. The first style, however, was the only one regarded as strictly legitimate, the second being merely part of the pankration. The attitude of a Greek before coming to grips was very similar to that of modern wrestlers, and is beautifully illustrated in the pair of boy statues from Naples which may be seen in the Embankment gardens. Standing square to one another, they endeavoured to get a hold from the front or the side. The defence was often a grip on the opponent’s wrist, which might lead to the offensive if his elbow could also be seized and the throw we call ‘the flying mare’ be then executed. Of front body-holds, the most effective was gained by catching the waist with both hands and then lifting the opponent off his feet, such a hold as Heracles used against Antæus. Of side-throws the best known was ‘the heave,’ usually ascribed to Theseus, where one hand was passed round the opponent’s back and the other hand slipped underneath him. Another favourite hold was by the neck—a strong neck was essential for a wrestler—and when this was secured a sudden turn of the body would lead to the throw that we call a ‘cross-buttock.’ In all wrestling tripping played an important part, and there are a very large number of technical terms in Greek for the different trips that are
THE WRESTLERS (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)