Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

It is almost conclusive as to the swinging stroke that throughout antiquity a boxer was not known as a man with his nose broken, but as a man with his ears crushed. Vergil even speaks of their receiving blows on the back. Against all this there are only two pieces of evidence—one of them incredible—in favor of the straight home stroke. In the fight between Pollux and Amykos, described by Theocritus (Idyll 22), Pollux strikes his man on the left temple, καὶ ἐπέμπεσεν ὤμῳ, which may mean, “and follows up the stroke from the shoulder.” But this is doubtful. The other is the story of Pausanias (viii. 40, 3), that when Kreugas and Damoxenos boxed till evening, and neither could hit the other, they at last agreed to receive stroke about, and after Kreugas had dealt Damoxenos one on the head, the latter told him to hold up his hand,[130] and then drove his fingers right into Kreugas, beneath the ribs, and pulled out his entrails. Kreugas of course died on the spot, but was crowned as victor, on the ground that Damoxenos had broken his agreement of striking one blow in turn, by striking him with five sep[pg 337]arate fingers! But this curious decision was only one of many in which a boxing competitor was disqualified for having fought with the intention of maiming his antagonist.

Little need be added about the pankration, which combined boxing and wrestling, and permitted every sort of physical violence except biting. In this contest a mere fall did not end the affair, as might happen in wrestling, but the conflict was always continued on the ground, and often ended in one of the combatants being actually choked, or having his fingers and toes broken. One man, Arrachion, at the last gasp, broke his adversary’s toe, and made him give in, at the moment he was himself dying of strangulation. Such contests were not to the credit either of the humanity or of the good taste of the Greeks, and would not be tolerated even in the lowest of our prize rings.

I will conclude this sketch by giving some account of the general management of the prize meetings.

There was no want of excitement and of circumstance about them. In the case of the four great meetings there was even a public truce proclaimed, and the competitors and visitors were guaranteed a safe journey to visit them and to return to their homes. The umpires at the Olympic games were chosen ten months before at Elis, and seem to have numbered one for each clan, varying through Greek history from two to twelve, but finally fixed at ten. [pg 338]They were called both here and at the other great games Ἑλλανοδίκαι, judges of the Hellenes, in recognition of their national character. Three superintended the pentathlon, three the horse races, and the rest the other games. They had to reside together in a public building, and undergo strict training in all the details of their business, in which they were assisted by heralds, trumpeters, stewards, etc. Their office was looked upon as of much dignity and importance.

When the great day came, they sat in purple robes in the semicircular end of the racecourse—a piece of splendor which the modern Greeks imitate by dressing the judges of the new Olympic games in full evening dress and white kid gloves. The effect even now with neatly-clothed candidates is striking enough; what must it have been when a row of judges in purple looked on solemnly at a pair of men dressed in oil and dust—i. e., in mud—wrestling or rolling upon the ground? The crowd cheered and shouted as it now does. Pausanias mentions a number of cases where competitors were disqualified for unfairness, and in most of them the man’s city took up the quarrel, which became quite a public matter; but at the games the decision was final, nor do we hear of a case where it was afterward reversed.[131] They were also obliged to exact [pg 339]beforehand from each candidate an oath that he was of pure Hellenic parentage, that he had not taken, or would not take, any unfair advantage, and that he had spent ten months in strict training. This last rule I do not believe. It is absurd in itself, and is contradicted by such anecdotes as that of the sturdy plough-boy quoted above, and still more directly by the remark of Philostratos (Γυμν. 38), who ridicules any inquiry into the morals or training of an athlete by the judges. Its only meaning could have been to exclude random candidates, if the number was excessive, and in later times some such regulation may have subsisted, but I do not accept it for the good classical days. There is the case of a boy being rejected for looking too young and weak, and winning in the next Olympiad among the men, But in another instance the competitor disqualified (for unfairness) went mad with disappointment. Aristotle notes that it was the rarest possible occurrence for a boy champion to turn out successful among the full-grown athletes, but Pausanias seems to contradict him, a fair number of cases being cited among the selection which he makes.

There is yet one unpleasant feature to be noted, [pg 340]which has disappeared from our sports. Several allusions make it plain that the vanquished, even vanquished boys, were regarded as fit subjects for jibe and ridicule, and that they sneaked home by lanes and backways. When the most ideal account which we have of the games gives us this information, we cannot hesitate to accept it as probably a prominent feature, which is, moreover, thoroughly consistent with the character of the old Greeks as I conceive it.[132]

The general conclusion to which all these details lead us is this, that with all the care and with all the pomp expended on Greek athletic meetings, despite the exaggerated fame attained by victors, and the solid rewards both of money and of privileges accorded them by their grateful country, the results attained physically seem to have been inferior to those of English athletes. There was, moreover, an element of brutality in them, which is very shocking to modern notions: and not all the ideal splendor of Pindar’s praises, or of Pythagoras’s art, can raise the Greek pankratiast as an athlete much above the level of a modern prize-fighter. But, nevertheless, by the aid of their monumental statues, their splendid lyric poetry, and the many literary and musical contests which were combined with the gymnastic, the Greeks contrived, as usual, to raise very common things to [pg 341]a great national manifestation of culture which we cannot hope to equal.

For common they were, and very human, in the strictest sense. Dry-as-dust scholars would have us believe that the odes of Pindar give a complete picture of these games; as if all the booths about the course had not been filled with idlers, pleasure-mongers, and the scum of Greek society! Tumbling, thimble-rigging, and fortune-telling, along with love-making and trading, made Olympia a scene not unlike the Derby. When the drinking parties of young men began in the evening, there may even have been a soupçon of Donnybrook Fair about it, but that the committee of management were probably strict in their discipline. From the Isthmian games the successful athletes, with their training over, retired, as most athletes do, to the relaxation afforded by city amusements. One can imagine how amply Corinth provided for the outburst of liberty after the long and arduous subjection of physical training.

But all these things are perhaps justly forgotten, and it is ungrateful to revive them from oblivion. The dust and dross of human conflict, the blood and the gall, the pain and the revenge—all this was laid aside like the athlete’s dress, and could not hide the glory of his naked strength and his iron endurance. The idleness and vanity of human admiration have vanished with the motley crowd, and have left us [pg 342]free to study the deeper beauty of human vigor with the sculptor, and the spiritual secrets of its hereditary origin with the poet. Thus Greek gymnastic, with all its defects—perhaps even with its absurdities—has done what has never been even the dream of its modern sister; it stimulated the greatest artists and the highest intellects in society, and through them ennobled and purified public taste and public morals.

When we left Olympia, and began to ascend the course of the Alpheus, the valley narrowed to the broad bed of the stream. The way leads now along the shady slopes high over the river, now down in the sandy flats left bare in the summer season. There are curious zones of vegetation distinctly marked along the course of the valley. On the river bank, and in the little islands formed by the stream, are laurels, myrtles, and great plane-trees. On the steep and rocky slopes are thick coverts of mastich, arbutus, dwarf-holly, and other evergreens which love to clasp the rocks with their roots; and they are all knit together by great creeping plants, the wild vine, the convolvulus, and many that are new and nameless to the northern stranger. On the heights, rearing their great tops against the sky, are huge pine-trees, isolated and still tattered with the winter storms.