The lengthened detail of the Twenty-third Iliad is of itself enough to prove their importance, as an institution founded in the national habits and manners. We must not, however, rely upon the absence of any similar celebrations, or even allusions to them, among the Trojans; since their condition, in the circumstances of the war, will of itself account for it. But we may observe how closely it belonged to the character of the greatest heroes to excel in every feat of gymnastic strength, as well as in the exercises of actual warfare. The kings and leading chiefs all act in the Games, with the qualified exception of Agamemnon, whose dignity could not allow him to be actually judged by his inferiors, but yet who appears as a nominal candidate, and receives the compliment of a prize, though spared the contest for it; and with the exception also of Achilles, who could not contend for his own prizes. Again, it is a piece of evidence in favour of the Hellic character of public Games, that, though there were three Athenian leaders alive during the action of the Twenty-third Book, none of them took any part. They were Menestheus, Pheidas, and Bias. Again, the speech of Ulysses to Euryalus, the saucy Phæacian[569], with the acts which followed it, strengthen the general testimony of the Iliad upon the point. So does the prosecution of these exercises, to the best of their power, even by the Phæacians, the kindred of the gods.
So much for the general idea of Games in Homer; but, to draw the distinction with any force between what is Hellic and what is Pelasgic, we must refer to those passages which afford glimpses of the earlier state of Greece, and see what light they afford us.
According to the Homeric text, Elis and Corinth were the portions of the Peloponnesus, where the early notes of the presence of the Hellenic races are most evident. Now of these Elis had the greatest and oldest Greek Games, while the Isthmian festival at Corinth was held to stand next to them.
The invention of these gymnastic exercises was ascribed in the later mythology to Mercury, who is in Homer a Hellenic, as opposed to Pelasgian, deity.
Mercurî, facunde nepos Atlantis,
Qui feros mores hominum recentum
Voce formasti catus, et decoræ
More palæstræ[570].
It has been observed, that the Hermes of Homer bears no trace of this function: but we have no proof in Homer of the formal institution of Games at all, although we have clear signs of them as a known and familiar practice; and the Mercury of the poems is even yet more Phœnician than he is Hellenic. Aristophanes[571] produces the Ἑρμῆς Ἐναγώνιος, and supplies a fresh link of connection by referring to ἀγῶνες in music, as well as in feats of corporal strength and skill. So does Pindar[572].
In truth, these Games were the exercise and pleasure of the highest orders only. For we see that, in Homer’s Twenty-third Book, not a single person takes a part in any of the eight matches that is not actually named among the ἡγεμόνες and κοίρανοι of the Catalogue, with three such exceptions as really confirm the rule. They are Antilochus, the heir apparent of Pylos, Teucer the brother of Ajax, and Epeus, (only however in the boxing match,) who appears from the Odyssey[573] to have been a person of importance, as he contrived the stratagem of the horse. Even the σόλος αὐτοχόωνος, the iron lump, part of the booty of Achilles, had formerly been used for the sport only of a king[574].
ὃν πρὶν μὲν ῥίπτασκε μέγα σθένος Ἠετίωνος.
The Greek Games presuppose leisure, and therefore the accumulation of property, or the concentrated possession of lands: but this comports much more with Hellenic than with what we know of Pelasgic society, in which we do not find the same signs as in the former, of an aristocracy occupying the middle place between the people at large, and the royal house. Let us now examine another part of the Homeric evidence.
In the Eleventh Iliad, Nestor’s legend acquaints us that, at the time of the war between Pylians and Elians, Neleus the king appropriated a part of the Pylian spoil, in respect of a ‘debt’ owed him in Elis, the nature of which he explains[575]: