How long the recollection of this famous Olympic festival remained in the Athenian public mind, is attested partly by the Oratio de Bigis of Isokratês, composed in defence of the son of Alkibiadês at least twenty-five years afterwards, perhaps more. Isokratês repeats the loose assertion of Euripidês, πρῶτος, δεύτερος, and τρίτος (Or. xvi, p. 353, sect. 40). The spurious Oration called that of Andokidês against Alkibiadês also preserves many of the current tales, some of which I have admitted into the text, because I think them probable in themselves, and because that oration itself may reasonably be believed to be a composition of the middle of the fourth century B.C. That oration puts all the proceedings of Alkibiadês in a very invidious temper and with palpable exaggeration. The story of Alkibiadês having robbed an Athenian named Diomêdês of a fine chariot, appears to be a sort of variation on the story about Tisias, which figures in the oration of Isokratês; see Andokid. cont. Alkib. sect. 26: possibly Alkibiadês may have left one of the teams not paid for. The aid lent to Alkibiadês by the Chians, Ephesians, etc., as described in that oration, is likely to be substantially true, and may easily be explained. Compare Athenæ. i, p. 3.
Our information about the arrangements of the chariot-racing at Olympia is very imperfect. We do not distinctly know how the seven chariots of Alkibiadês ran,—in how many races,—for all the seven could not, in my judgment, have run in one and the same race. There must have been many other chariots to run, belonging to other competitors: and it seems difficult to believe that ever a greater number than ten can have run in the same race, since the course involved going twelve times round the goal (Pindar, Ol. iii, 33; vi, 75). Ten competing chariots run in the race described by Sophoklês (Electr. 708), and if we could venture to construe strictly the expression of the poet,—δέκατον ἐκπληρῶν ὄχον,—it would seem that ten was the extreme number permitted to run. Even so great a number as ten was replete with danger to the persons engaged, as may be seen by reading the description in Sophoklês (compare Demosth. Ἐρωτ. Λογ. p. 1410), who refers indeed to a Pythian and not an Olympic solemnity: but the main circumstances must have been common to both; and we know that the twelve turns (δωδεκάγναμπτον δωδεκάδρομον) were common to both (Pindar, Pyth. v, 31).
Alkibiadês was not the only person who gained a chariot victory at this 90th Olympiad, 420 B.C. Lichas the Lacedæmonian also gained one (Thucyd. v, 50), though the chariot was obliged to be entered in another name, since the Lacedæmonians were interdicted from attendance.
Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, vol. iii, ch. xxiv, p. 316) says: “We are not aware that the Olympiad, in which these chariot-victories of Alkibiadês were gained, can be distinctly fixed. But it was probably Olymp. 89, B.C. 424.”
In my judgment, both Olymp. 88 (B.C. 428) and Olymp. 89 (B.C. 424) are excluded from the possible supposition, by the fact that the general war was raging at both periods. To suppose that in the midst of the summer of these two fighting years, there was an Olympic truce for a month, allowing Athens and her allies to send thither their solemn legations, their chariots for competition, and their numerous individual visitors, appears to me contrary to all probability. The Olympic month of B.C. 424, would occur just about the time when Brasidas was at the Isthmus levying troops for his intended expedition to Thrace, and when he rescued Megara from the Athenian attack. This would not be a very quiet time for the peaceable Athenian visitors, with the costly display of gold and silver plate and the ostentatious theôry, to pass by, on its way to Olympia. During the time when the Spartans occupied Dekeleia, the solemn processions of communicants at the Eleusinian mysteries could never march along the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis. Xen. Hell. i, 4, 20.
Moreover, we see that the very first article both of the Truce for one year and of the Peace of Nikias, expressly stipulate for liberty to all to attend the common temples and festivals. The first of the two relates to Delphi expressly: the second is general, and embraces Olympia as well as Delphi. If the Athenians had visited Olympia in 428 or 424 B.C. without impediment, these stipulations in the treaties would have no purpose nor meaning. But the fact of their standing in the front of the treaty, proves that they were looked upon as of much interest and importance.
I have placed the Olympic festival wherein Alkibiadês contended with his seven chariots, in 420 B.C., in the peace, but immediately after the war. No other festival appears to me at all suitable.
Dr. Thirlwall farther assumes, as a matter of course, that there was only one chariot-race at this Olympic festival, that all the seven chariots of Alkibiadês ran in this one race, and that in the festival of 420 B.C., Lichas gained the prize: thus implying that Alkibiadês could not have gained the prize at the same festival.
I am not aware that there is any evidence to prove either of these three propositions. To me they all appear improbable and unfounded.
We know from Pausanias (vi, 13, 2) that even in the case of the stadiodromi, or runners who contended in the stadium, all were not brought out in one race. They were distributed into sets, or batches, of what number we know not. Each set ran its own heat, and the victors in each then competed with each other in a fresh heat; so that the victor who gained the grand final prize was sure to have won two heats.