The Race in Armor
At this moment a party of four hale and hearty men still in the young prime are about to compete in the “double race.” They come forward all rubbed with the glistening oil, and crouch at the starting point behind the red cord held by two attendants. The gymnasiarch stands watchfully by, swinging his cane to smite painfully whoever, in over eagerness, breaks away before the signal. All is ready; at his nod the rope falls. The four fly away together, pressing their elbows close to their sides, and going over the soft sands with long rhythmic leaps, rather than with the usual rapid running motion. A fierce race it is, amid much exhortation from friends and shouting. At length, as so often—when speeding back towards the stretched cord,—the rearmost runner suddenly gathers amazing speed, and, flying with prodigious leaps ahead of his rivals, is easily the victor. His friends are at once about him, and we hear the busy tongues advising, “You must surely race at the Pythia; the Olympia; etc.”
This simple race over, a second quickly follows: five heavy, powerful men this time, but they are to run in full hoplite’s armor—the ponderous shield, helmet, cuirass, and greaves. This is the exacting “Armor Race” (Hoplitodromos), and safe only for experienced soldiers or professional athletes.[*] Indeed, the Greeks take all their foot races seriously, and there are plenty of instances when the victor has sped up to the goal, and then dropped dead before the applauding stadium. There are no stop watches in the Academy; we do not know the records of the present or of more famous runners; yet one may be certain that the “time” made, considering the very soft sand, has been exceedingly fast.
[*] It was training in races like these which enabled the Athenians at Marathon to “charge the Persians on the run” (Miltiades’ orders), all armored though they were, and so get quickly through the terrible zone of the Persian arrow fire.
153. The Pentathlon: the Honors paid to Great Athletes.—We have now seen average specimens of all the usual athletic sports of the Greeks. Any good authority will tell us, however, that a truly capable athlete will not try to specialize so much in any one kind of contest that he cannot do justice to the others. As an all around well-trained man he will try to excel in the Pentathlon, the “five contests.” Herein he will successfully join in running, javelin casting, quoit throwing, leaping, and wrestling.[*] As the contest proceeds the weaker athletes will be eliminated; only the two fittest will be left for the final trial of strength and skill. Fortunate indeed is “he who overcometh” in the Pentathlon. It is the crown of athletic victories, involving, as it does, no scanty prowess both of body and mind. The victor in the Pentathlon at one of the great Pan-Hellenic games (Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, or Nemean) or even in the local Attic contest at the Panathenæa is a marked man around Athens or any other Greek city. Poets celebrate him; youths dog his heels and try to imitate him; his kinsfolk take on airs; very likely he is rewarded as a public benefactor by the government. But there is abundant honor for one who has triumphed in ANY of the great contests; and even as we go out we see people pointing to a bent old man and saying, “Yes; he won the quoit hurling at the Nema when Ithycles was archon.”[+]
[*] The exact order of these contests, and the rules of elimination as the games proceeded, are uncertain—perhaps they varied with time and place.
[+] This would make it 398 B.C. The Athenians dated their years by the name of their “first Archon” (Archon eponymos).
…The Academy is already thinning. The beautiful youths and their admiring “lovers” have gone homeward. The last race has been run. We must hasten if we would not be late to some select symposium. The birds are more melodious than ever around Colonus; the red and golden glow upon the Acropolis is beginning to fade; the night is sowing the stars; and through the light air of a glorious evening we speed back to the city.
Chapter XVIII.
Athenian Cookery and the Symposium.
154. Greek Meal Times.—The streets are becoming empty. The Agora has been deserted for hours. As the warm balmy night closes over the city the house doors are shut fast, to open only for the returning master or his guests, bidden to dinner. Soon the ways will be almost silent, to be disturbed, after a proper interval, by the dinner guests returning homeward. Save for these, the streets will seem those of a city of the dead: patrolled at rare intervals by the Scythian archers, and also ranged now and then by cutpurses watching for an unwary stroller, or miscreant roisterers trolling lewd songs, and pounding on honest men’s doors as they wander from tavern to tavern in search of the lowest possible pleasures.