With the latter account agrees the inscription on the Crotonian’s statue:
“Phaÿllos leaped full five and fifty feet,
The discus flung one hundred wanting five.”[[664]]
Homer briefly describes leaping among the sports of the Phæacians:
“Amphialos sprang forward with a bound,
Superior in the leap a length of ground.”[[665]]
To this succeeded pitching the quoit, which in the Homeric age would appear to have been practised with large stones or rude masses of iron. On ordinary occasions it has been conjectured that one discus only was used. But Odysseus, desirous of exhibiting his strength to the Phæacians, converts into a quoit the first block of stone within his reach.[[666]]
“Then striding forward with a furious bound
He wrenched a rocky fragment from the ground,
By far more ponderous and more large by far