Fig. 62.—Bronze Foot of a Victor Statue, from Olympia. Museum of Olympia.
The monuments which represent equestrian victors will be left for another chapter.
CHAPTER V.
MONUMENTS OF HIPPODROME AND MUSICAL VICTORS.
Plates 26–27 and Figures 63–67.
In the preceding chapters we have considered the monuments of victors in various gymnic contests, in which the victor won by his own strength and skill. In the present chapter we shall be concerned chiefly with the monuments set up by victors at Olympia in chariot- and horse-races, in which the victory did not depend upon the athletic prowess of the victor, but upon the skill of his charioteer or jockey and the endurance of his horses.[1804] Though such events were not in the strict sense a part of Greek athletics, they formed a very important feature of the festival at Olympia as elsewhere.[1805] Indeed the four-horse chariot-race was the most spectacular and brilliant event at Olympia. Chariot-races, and to a less extent horse-races, were the sport only of the rich—kings, princes, and nobles.[1806] Thus victories were won in these events at Olympia in the fifth century B. C. by Hiero and Gelo, kings of Syracuse, and Arkesilas IV of Kyrene; in the fourth, by Philip II of Macedonia, and in Roman days by Tiberius, Germanicus, Nero, and many others. Alkibiades in Ol. 91 ( = 416 B. C.), i. e., in the midst of the great Peloponnesian war, entered seven chariots at Olympia and won three prizes.[1807] Sometimes a city entered a chariot or horse. Thus in Ol. 77 ( = 472 B. C.) the public chariot of Argos, and in Ol. 75 ( = 480 B. C.) the public horse of the same city, won at Olympia.[1808] Such entries show not only the expense attending these contests, but also their importance in the eyes of the Greeks.
Hippodromes, chariot-races, and horse-races were very common in Greece. A votive inscription in the museum at Sparta, dating from near the middle of the fifth century B. C., enumerates sixty victories by Damonon and his son Enymakratidas in both chariot- and horse-races at eight different meets in or near Lakonia, and Damonon was merely a local victor, unknown at Olympia.[1809] Greeks of Sicily and Magna Græcia were especially fond of such contests, as we see these constantly represented on coins of different cities there from the beginning of the fifth century B. C. on.[1810] However, only a few of the sites of these many hippodromes are now known, and only one can be positively identified, that mentioned by Pausanias on Mount Lykaios in Arkadia.[1811] The others are known from literary sources.[1812] The one at Olympia was destroyed in the course of centuries by the floods of the Alpheios, and its exact location can not be determined, though we know in general that it lay somewhere southeast of the Altis, between the river and the Stadion, and surmise that it ran somewhat parallel to the latter.[1813]