One of the most popular and celebrated of all the matches held at these games was chariot-racing, with four horses. The following description of one of these races is taken from a tragedy of SOPHOCLES—the Electra—translated by Bulwer. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, had gained five victories on the first day of the trial; and on the second, of which the account is here given, he starts with nine competitors—an Achæan, a Spartan, two Libyans, an Ætolian, a Magnesian; an Æ'ni-an, an Athenian, and a Bœotian —and meets his death in the moment of triumph.
The Chariot-race, and the Death of Orestes.
They took their stand where the appointed judges
Had cast their lots and ranged the rival cars.
Rang out the brazen trump! Away they bound!
Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins;
As with a body the large space is filled
With the huge clangor of the rattling cars;
High whirl aloft the dust-clouds; blent together
Each presses each, and the lash rings, and loud
Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath,
Along their manes, and down the circling wheels,
Scatter the flaking foam.
Orestes still,
Aye, as he swept around the perilous pillar
Last in the course, wheeled in the rushing axle,
The left rein curbed—that on the outer hand
Flung loose. So on erect the chariots rolled!
Sudden the Ænian's fierce and headlong steeds
Broke from the bit, and, as the seventh time now
The course was circled, on the Libyan car
Dashed their wild fronts: then order changed to ruin;
Car dashed on car; the wide Crissæ'an plain
Was, sea-like, strewn with wrecks: the Athenian saw,
Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge,
Unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space,
Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm.
Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last,
Had kept back his coursers for the close;
Now one sole rival left—on, on he flew,
And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge
Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds.
He nears—he reaches—they are side by side;
Now one—now th' other—by a length the victor.
The courses all are past, the wheels erect—
All safe—when, as the hurrying coursers round
The fatal pillar dashed, the wretched boy
Slackened the left rein. On the column's edge
Crashed the frail axle—headlong from the car,
Caught and all mesh'd within the reins, he fell;
And! masterless, the mad steeds raged along!
Loud from that mighty multitude arose
A shriek—a shout! But yesterday such deeds—
To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth,
Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him, those
Wild horses, till, all gory, from the wheels
Released—and no man, not his nearest friends,
Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes.
They laid the body on the funeral pyre,
And, while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear,
In a small, brazen, melancholy urn,
That handful of cold ashes to which all
The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk.
Within they bore him—in his father's land
To find that heritage, a tomb.
The Pythian games are said to have been established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi over the serpent Py'thon, on setting out to erect his temple. This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, and which some early benefactor of the race overcame by draining the marshes; or, perhaps, as the English writer, Dodwell, suggests, the true explanation of the allegorical fiction is that the serpent was the river Cephis'sus, which, after the deluge had overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and was at length reduced, by the rays of the sun-god, within its due limits. The poet OVID gives the following relation of the fable:
Apollo's Conflict with Python.
From hence the surface of the ground, with mud
And slime besmeared (the refuse of the flood),
Received the rays of heaven, and sucking in
The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin.
Some were of several sorts produced before;
But, of new monsters, earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python, too, the wondering world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight,
So monstrous was his bulk; so large a space
Did his vast body and long train embrace;
Whom Phoebus, basking on a bank, espied.
Ere now the god his arrows had not tried
But on the trembling deer or mountain-goat:
At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.
Though every shaft took place, he spent the store
Of his full quiver; and 'twas long before
The expiring serpent wallowed in his gore.
Then, to preserve the fame of such a deed,
For Python slain he Pythian games decreed,
Where noble youths for mastership should strive—
To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive.
The prize was fame; in witness of renown,
An oaken garland did the victor crown.
The laurel was not yet for triumphs born,
But every green, alike by Phoebus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn.
—Metamorphoses. Trans. by DRYDEN.