Greek artists frequently represented the Amazons of legend in a dress similar to that of the Persians of their own day, and from such paintings on vases in the collection we find illustrations of various articles of dress and of weapons mentioned by Xenophon. On a polychrome lekythos in Case M in the Fourth Room is an Amazon shooting with a sling. Two spears are stuck in the ground beside her. An oinochoë in Case K in the Fifth Room shows three Amazons in their long trousers and tight-fitting sleeves covered with a pattern. One of them carries a battle-axe and two hold shields of plaited wicker-work, probably of the same sort as those which furnished fuel to cook the Greek soldiers’ breakfast on the morning after the battle of Cunaxa (Anabasis II, 1, 6) ([fig. 111]). Two large kraters in the Fourth Room decorated with combats of Greeks and Amazons show costumes and arms of the same type and a war chariot of the kind used by the Greeks.
FIG. 112. LAMP. VICTORY WITH A TROPHY
An interesting custom was that of setting up a trophy after a victory; a tree-trunk to which a cross-piece had been fastened was arrayed in armor taken from the battle-field, and remained standing there until destroyed by time or taken by the enemy. A terracotta lamp from Cyprus in Case 5 is decorated with a symbolic device representing Victory holding a trophy at an altar between two Lares militares, the protecting deities of the Roman state ([fig. 112]).
IX
ATHLETICS
CASES 3 AND 4
The strength, agility, and symmetry of the body were valued in the highest degree by the Greeks, and with them physical training occupied a much larger place than has been the case among other peoples. Athletics were closely connected with religion, since contests were held as a part of the funeral and memorial rites of heroes, and likewise of the worship of the gods. They also had an important practical end; Greek armies were always levies of citizens, and since there was no considerable length of time during which the Greek states were at peace before the period of Roman domination, the safety of the state depended to a great extent upon the training of its citizens. Gymnastic games and exercises were continued throughout the greater part of a man’s life, contributing to good health and physical development no less than to recreation.
This interest in athletics can be traced back to very early times in the Boxer Vase from Crete dated in the sixteenth century B.C. (a reproduction of this vase is in Case J in the First Room) and the scenes of bull-leaping and the ivory leapers from Knossos (reproductions on the south wall of the First Room and in Case H 2). The Homeric poems contain many references to athletics, as the funeral games of Patroklos in the Twenty-third Book of the Iliad, the games among the Phaeacians in which Odysseus took part (Odyssey VII), and Odysseus’ encounter with the beggar (Odyssey XVIII, vv. 15ff.); but at this time sports were unorganized and no rules had as yet been devised for them. The seventh century was especially the period of organization during which the great festivals became fixed in time and in the number and kind of contests, and by 570 B.C. the four great Panhellenic festivals—the Olympian, the Pythian, the Isthmian, and the Nemean—were established.