CHAPTER V

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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]

Its measurements, however, are known to us from a Greek metrological parchment manuscript in the old Seraglio, Constantinople, which dates from the eleventh century A. D.[1814] According to it the length of the course, _i. e._, from the starting-point to turning-post and return, was about 8 stades (1538 meters, 16 centimeters) or nearly 1 mile. One of the two sides—which Pausanias says were of unequal length[1815]—was 3 stades and 1 plethron long. The breadth of the course at the starting-point was 1 stade and 4 plethra. We are told, however, that only a portion of the entire course, six stades, or about two-thirds of a mile, was traversed in the various races.

The oldest literary account of a Greek chariot-race is found in Homer in the description of the games of Patroklos—the longest and finest episode there described.[1816] But the first trace of such a contest goes back to mythology, to the story of Pelops and Oinomaos contending for the hand of the latter’s daughter Hippodameia.[1817] This mythical race began at the village of Pisa in Elis and ended at the altar of Poseidon on the Isthmus of Corinth.[1818] The chariot-race was the chief if not the only event at the oldest funeral games in Greece, those mentioned by Pausanias as held in honor of Azan, the son of Arkas, in Arkadia.[1819] It figured largely in mythology[1820] and was represented in many works of art.[1821] At Olympia it was one of the earliest, and perhaps the earliest, of the events. Pausanias says that the four-horse chariot-race was introduced there in Ol. 25 (= 680 B. C.),[1822] but this may merely mean, as Gardiner points out, the date of exchanging the older prehistoric two-horse chariot for the one drawn by four horses. In any case the antiquity of the race at Olympia is shown by the great number of early votive offerings in the form of models of chariots and horses, which have been found there in a stratum extending below the foundations of the Heraion.

PROGRAMME OF HIPPODROME EVENTS.

By the middle of the third century B. C. the fully developed programme of equestrian events at Olympia and elsewhere consisted of six races, three for full-grown horses (τέλειοι), and three for colts (πῶλοι); for each of these two classes there were a four-horse chariot-race (ἅρμα, τέθριππον), a two-horse chariot-race (συνωρίς), and a horse-race (κέλης), thus:

ἅρματι τελείῳ, συνωρίδι τελείᾳ, κέλητι τελείῳ. ἅρματι πωλικῷ, συνωρίδι πωλικῇ, κέλητι πωλικῷ.

These six events comprised the ἀγὼν ἱππικός at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, Corinth, Athens, and elsewhere, as opposed to the ἀγὼν γυμνικός.[1823] The distinction between horses and colts was apparently a matter which was decided by the Hellanodikai at Olympia. Thus, Pausanias recounts how the Spartan victor Lykidas entered a pair of colts for the chariot-race, and that one of them was rejected by the judges; he thereupon entered both for the race with full-grown horses and won it.[1824] Though such a story does not fit the date of Lykidas, who won before the colt-race was introduced at Olympia, it shows the method of selection.[1825] The race in which the chariot was drawn by four full-grown horses (ἵππων τελείων δρόμος) was introduced, as we have seen, in Ol. 25. The contestants drove twelve times round the course, a distance of seventy-two stades or over eight miles.[1826] Pausanias mentions the monuments of eighteen such victors at Olympia for nineteen victories. The race in which the chariot was drawn by four colts (πώλων ἅρμα) was introduced in Ol. 99 (= 384 B. C.),[1827] and extended eight times round the course, or about 5.5 miles.[1828] Pausanias mentions the monuments of only two such victors at Olympia.[1829] The race in which the chariot was drawn by pairs of full-grown horses (συνωρίς) was introduced in Ol. 93 (408 B. C.) and extended eight times round the course.[1830] Pausanias mentions but one victor in this event at Olympia[1831] and an Olympic victress who had a statue erected to her in Sparta for such a victory.[1832] This was probably the original chariot-race at Olympia revived in Ol. 93, since the two-horse chariot was the historical descendant of the Homeric war-chariot.[1833] Panathenaic vases show that this race existed at Athens in the sixth century B. C., side by side with the four-horse chariot-race and horseback-race. The earliest of these vases, the so-called Burgon vase in the British Museum,[1834] was a prize there for this event. The race in which the chariot was drawn by a pair of colts (συνωρὶς πώλων) was introduced at Olympia in the third century B. C., in Ol. 129 (= 264 B. C.),[1835] and extended three times around the course. Pausanias mentions no monument erected to a victor in this race. The horse-race (ἵππος κέλης) was instituted in Ol. 33 (= 648 B. C.)[1836], and the foal-race (πῶλος κέλης) nearly four centuries later, in Ol. 131 (256 B. C.).[1837] Neither of these races was known to Homer, for κελετίζειν in the Iliad,[1838] as we saw in