Both the Olympic and Pythian games were held every four years. The Nemean and Isthmian came every two years. In all four the prize was similar: the wreath of wild olive at Olympia; of mountain bay at Delphi; of parsley or of native pine at Nemea; of parsley at Corinth. We are, indeed, justified in emphasizing, until the period of decadence, the absence of professionalism. The athlete, after undergoing the severest training, contested, with no degradation of gate-money, merely to win the honour of a simple wreath. But we need not shut our eyes to the fact that the honour did not fade with the wreath. It belonged to the athlete’s native place and to all his fellow-citizens. Thinking of the evanescent glory of the Isthmian parsley and with the long race in the stadium of Eternity in mind, the apostle Paul might indeed point the contrast for his hearers between a “corruptible crown” and “one that fadeth not away;” yet for the shorter race-course of life the emoluments of honour and preferment were secure. And, in addition to all these honours, an Olympian victor had a post-mortem value. He might be worshipped as a divinity and his statue might heal diseases, like the bones of a mediæval saint. Thus Lucian’s Momus, the god of critics, reminds Zeus that their own prestige is endangered by these new faith-cures: “Actually,” he says, “the statues of the athlete Polydamas at Olympia and of Theagenes at Thasus are curing fever-stricken patients.”
The athlete’s ambition might issue in a selfish “opportunism,” or it might be of the nobler kind to which Pindar, thinking perhaps of the altar dedicated in the Altis to the god “Opportunity” (καιρός), would lift the contestant’s ideal in his second Olympian:—
“Winning the contest setteth free the essayer from its care and pain, and wealth embroidered o’er with virtues bringeth opportunity for this and that, inspiring mood that broodeth deeply upon earnest themes.”
There was a sacred truce from hostilities amongst all Greeks for a month, to allow time for distant competitors and visitors to go and come in safety. The games were held in summer at the time of a full moon, whether in July or August is uncertain. The September full moon, in fact, has been suggested as the date in the even Olympiads. At this later moon the heat might be almost as great as at the summer solstice, but it may be that the earlier date, with the longer day, was in vogue as long as the contests were all held upon one day. At any rate, the longest midsummer day was too short for the increasing number of events, and after 472 B. C. we hear of five days. The order of the contests is uncertain. At first, it would appear, the foot-races had been the only event. Later it seems probable that the foot-races, the long race, the short race, and the double course, came upon one day; on a second day, the wrestling, boxing, and pancratium. The chariot-races and the pentathlum came on one and the same day. The pentathlum was justly popular as calculated to secure an all-round development of the human form. It included leaping, the foot-race, discus-throwing, javelin-throwing, and wrestling. The Spartans, who were never charged with being effeminate, were said to favour it while discountenancing the more brutal pancratium. We certainly are not much attracted by the license of the latter, evidently considered legitimate, as we read of two athletes habitually winning this event by bending back their antagonists’ fingers. One of them, Sostratus, was surnamed “Finger-bender.” But the judges presided with absolute authority and enforced severe penalties against violations of the rules.
Women were prohibited under pain of death from even crossing the river and entering the sacred precinct during the time of the games. Pausanias records one violation. Kallipateira, or Pherenike (“Victoria”), the daughter of Diagoras, the Rhodian victor immortalized by Pindar, anxious to see her son compete, disguised herself as a trainer. In her exultation at her son’s success she betrayed her sex. The penalty attached was to be hurled from the Typæum rock on a mountain south of the Alpheus. In deference to the victories won by her father, her brothers, and her son, she was pardoned, but thereafter the trainers were compelled to enter naked like the athletes themselves.
The priestess of Demeter, however, was present ex officio, and Pausanias expressly states that virgins also were admitted as spectators. This statement is usually rejected, but it may have been true for certain times under the influence of Sparta, whose customs threw the sanction of public sentiment around the athletic contests of their maidens, the future mothers of their fighting men.
Although the modern reader is apt to think of the chariot-races in connection with Sicilian tyrants, they were, as we have seen from Sophocles, an integral part of Greek life. Herodotus, in the midst of his account of the battle of Marathon, calmly suspends hostilities while he tells how Cimon, father of Miltiades, won three successive Olympic victories with the same mares and, as fitting climax, adds that the mares were buried on the stately avenue of Athenian tombs, facing the grave of Cimon himself. If Herodotus really read this at Olympia the incident would not have seemed to his audience an intrusive digression.
In addition to the four-horse and two-horse chariot-races there was the race with mules—no mean animals in Greece and the Orient. Pindar repeatedly celebrates them in his Olympian odes. There was also the single race-horse ridden by a jockey. One horse from Syracuse, Pherenicus (“Victor”), was celebrated in song both by Pindar and Bacchylides. Pindar tells how he “ran the course, his body by the goad unurged” and brought victory to Hieron. Bacchylides, reminding us that the horse-races opened the events of the day, exclaims:—
“The Dawn, who touches earth with gold, saw Pherenicus, wind-swift sorrel steed, victorious beside Alpheus eddying wide, and saw him, too, victorious at Pytho the divine. And I lay hand on earth and swear: Not yet has dust-cloud raised by horses in the lead e’er touched him in the race-course as he hastened to the goal.
“Now sing of Zeus, the Kronos son, Olympian ruler of the gods and of unwearièd Alpheus. Sing of mighty Pelops and of Pisa too, where famèd Pherenicus won with hurrying feet the victory and came back to the ramparts firm of Syracuse and brought to Hieron the (olive) leaf of fortune fair.”