An attempt has also been made to see a dying hoplite runner in the Parian marble archaic grave-relief in the National Museum in Athens, which has already been mentioned as an example of the archaic scheme of representing running.[1496] It represents a beardless youth running in a half-kneeling posture, even though the head is bent and turned in the opposite direction. The eyes appear to be closed—due, perhaps, to the faulty sculptor—and the two hands are touching the breast. While no shield is represented (it is contended that its presence would nearly hide the figure), still, because of the helmet and the position of the arm, which latter is obviously that of a long-distance runner, Philios, followed by Perrot-Chipiez and Bulle, explained it as the representation of a hoplite runner who is expiring at the end of his course. They date it about 520 B. C.,[1497] the date of the introduction of this race at Olympia. However, the absence of the shield, to say nothing of the greaves, seems an insuperable objection to such an hypothesis, as the shield was never omitted in this race, but was invariably its symbol. Svoronos is therefore more probably right in interpreting the relief as the monument of a military runner (δρομοκῆρυξ), even if his dating (490–480 B. C.) is somewhat too late,[1498] and if his identifying it with some particular messenger (such as the Athenian runner Pheidippides, who ran to Sparta for aid just prior to the battle of Marathon) is fanciful.
Pentathletes.
The peculiar features of the pentathlon (πένταθλον) were the three events, jumping, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. All five events are summed up in Simonides’ epigram on the pentathlete Diophon, who won at Delphi and on the Isthmus, the second line of which runs: ἅλμα, ποδωκείην, δίσκον, ἄκοντα, πάλην.[1499]
The pentathlon did not exist in Homer’s time. Pindar expressly says that it did not exist in heroic days, but that then a separate prize was given for each feat.[1500] At the games on Scheria, King Alkinoos boasts to Odysseus of the superiority of his countrymen in πύξ τε παλαισμοσύνῃ τε καὶ ἅλμασιν ἠδὲ πόδεσσιν.[1501] The pentathlon for men was introduced at Olympia at the same time as wrestling toward the end of the eighth century, in Ol. 18 ( = 708 B. C.),[1502] and the pentathlon for boys eighty years later, in Ol. 38 ( = 628 B. C.), only to be stopped soon after.[1503] Pausanias mentions fifteen victors at Olympia, who had statues erected in their honor, for seventeen victories in the pentathlon, thus giving the pentathletes sixth rank there in point of number.
The b.-f. Bacchic amphora in Rome already discussed represents four events out of the five: running, leaping, diskos-throwing, and akontion-throwing (Figs. 36 A and 36 B).[1504] On several Panathenaic vases we find one or more events, and the three characteristic ones on several, one of which we here reproduce (Fig. [44]).[1505]
The various events are common on r.-f. vases,[1506] though these may not represent the pentathlon contests, but merely gymnasium scenes, showing that such contests were important. We have already said that the pentathlon represented the whole physical training of Greek youths; consequently the pentathlete was looked upon as the typical athlete, being superior to all others in all-round development, even if surpassed by them in certain special events. It was for this reason that Polykleitos, in order to embody the principles of his athlete canon, made a statue of a javelin-thrower (the Doryphoros) as the best example of an all-round man.
Fig. 44.—Pentathletes. Scene from a Panathenaic Amphora in the
British Museum, London.