[28] P., V, 8. 1, says Klymenos came from Crete fifty years after Deukalion’s flood and held games at Olympia; cf. VI, 21.6. Aristotle assigns the whole political and educational system of Sparta to a Cretan origin: Politics, II, 10f., 1271b., f.
[29] See R. Paribeni, Rendiconti della R. Accad. dei Lincei, XII, 1903, fasic. 70, p. 17; F. Halbherr, ibid., XIV, 1905, pp. 365 f., fig. 1; Burrows, op. cit., Pl. 1; Mosso, op. cit., p. 212. fig. 93; Hall, Aegean Archæology, Pl. XVI (from cast in Museum of Candia, whence our plate); cf. id., Anc. Hist. Near East, Pl. IV., 5. A copy is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York: see Hbk. of Classical Collection, p. 16, fig. 8.
[30] Detail of zone, Mosso, p. 213, fig. 94. The acrobat wears just such striped boots and bracelets as the man and women on the fresco from Knossos. The man binding the legs of the bull on the Vapheio cup wears similar apparel. Similar scenes of gymnasts vaulting over a bull’s back are seen on the seal of a bracelet found at Knossos in 1902: B. S. A., VIII, 1901–2, p. 18, fig. 43; Mosso, p. 214, fig. 95a; also on the intaglio of a ring in Athens: Mosso, p. 215, fig. 95b. Scenes of gymnasts with bulls at rest are common on seal impressions: e. g., on one from Mycenæ in Athens, Mosso, p. 217, fig. 97; on the one in Candia already mentioned, ibid., fig. 98; cf. Bosanquet, Excavations at Praisos, B. S. A., VIII, p. 252, who believes the bull has been surprised by a hunter.
[31] Iliad, XXII, 308 f.
[32] XXIII, 673.
[33] B. S. A., VII, 1900–1, fig. 31, pp. 95 and 96; copied by Gardiner, p. 10, fig. 1.
[34] We should bear in mind that the civilization pictured in the Homeric poems antedates 1000 B. C.
[35] The Iliad,2 1900, II, p. 468.
[36] Od., VIII, 158 f. (translated by Butcher and Lang).
[37] Gardiner, p. 15, points out that there is no mention of a chariot-race in the Odyssey, merely because Ithaca was not a land “that pastureth horses,” nor had it “wide courses or meadowland.” The plains of Thessaly and Argos, the homes of Achilles and Agamemnon respectively, were, however, famed for their horses, and the plain of Troy was large enough for the chariot-race. The only other chariot-races mentioned in the Iliad are held in Elis: XI, 696 f.; XXIII, 630 f.