Greek Spectacles and Games a supplementary sourcebook on Greek sports Siobhán McElduff Table of Contents

Greek Spectacles and Games

A supplementary sourcebook on Greek sports
Siobhán McElduff

Table of Contents:
(Note each entry is for the reading for the class listed on the syllabus):
Timeline
Greek Sports I: Athletic Events
Greek Sports II: Equestrian Events
Greek Sports III: Athletes and their Reputations
Olympic Games (covers both classes on the Olympics: please also reader the section marked ‘the Heraia and Women and Athletic
Beyond the Olympics: the Circuit of Games
Timeline for Greek athletics (with some other dates for context)
776 BCE: First recorded Olympic Games are held at Olympia, a holy site dedicated to the worship of the god Zeus. Sole event is the stadion, a sprint race.

724 BCE: Diaulos added to Olympics games

720 BCE Dolichos (long distance race) added to the Olympics; Orsippus first nude runner in stadion?

708 BCE pentathlon and wresting added to the Olympics

688 BCE boxing added to the Olympics

680 BCE four horse chariot race added to the Olympics

648 BCE pankration and horse racing added to the Olympics

632 BCE stadion and wrestling for boys added to the Olympics

628 BCE pentathlon for boys added to the Olympics; dropped immediately

616 BCE boxing for boys added to the Olympics

586 BCE First Pythian Games held in Delphi (or possible relaunch). Events are singing to the lyre, playing the aulos (flute), singing to the aulos (dropped at once as too depressing); stadion, diaulos, dolichos, pentathlon, boxing, wrestling, horse-racing, stadion for boys (along with boxing, dolichos, diaulos for boys)

582 BCE: four horse chariot race added to the Pythian Games

580 BCE First Isthmian Games held

573 BCE First Nemean Games; hence start of the periodos, the circuit of crown games.

560s BCE Panatheniac Games first celebrated

558 BCE: lyre playing added to the Pythian Games

540–516 Milo of Croton wins wrestling six times at the 60th and 62nd–66th Olympic Games.

520 BCE Hoplitodromos added to the Olympics

500 BCE: Apene (cart race for mules) added to the Olympics.

498 BCE: Hoplitodromos added to the Pythian Games

496 BCE Kalpe added to the Olympics

492-490 BCE: 1^st Persian War and invasion of Greece; Battle of Marathon won by the Greeks led by the Athenians

480 BCE: 2^nd Persian War and invasion of Greece; victory of the Athenians and their allies at the naval battle of Salamis

444 BCE: Apene and kalpe dropped from the Olympics

431-404 BCE: Peloponnesian War between Athens and her allies against Sparta and hers; Sparta wins

416 BCE: the Athenian aristocrat Alcibiades enters 7 chariot teams in the four horse chariot at the Olympic Games

408 BCE two horse chariot race added to the Olympics

398 BCE: two horse chariot race added to the Pythian Games

396 BCE: Contests for heralds and trumpeters added to the Olympics. Cynisca of Sparta becomes the first woman to win at the Olympic Games in the four horse chariot race

392 BCE: Cynisca wins again in the four horse chariot race

356 BCE: Philip II of Macedon wins the four horse chariot race at the Olympics

336 BCE: Death of Philip II of Macedon; Alexander (not yet the Great) ascends the throne of Macedonia

334 BCE: Alexander the Great invades Persia

323 BCE: death of Alexander the Great

279 BCE: The Ptolemaia Games, modelled after the Olympics, are first celebrated in Alexandria. These are the first so-called ‘Iso-Olympic Games’, games modelled on the Olympics.

264 BCE: four horse chariot race for foals added to the Olympics

256 BCE: horse race for foals added to the Olympics

c. 250s BCE: Nemean Games are moved from their original site to the city of Argos

200 BCE: pankration for boys added to Olympics

197 BCE: Romans defeat the Macedonians in the Second Macedonian War

196 BCE: Titus Quinctius Flaminius, victor over the Macedonians, declares Greece free at the Isthmian Games

168 BCE: Romans defeat the Macedonians at the battle of Pydna; Greece divided into four sections

149 BCE: Greece becomes a Roman province

146 BCE: Corinth burned to the ground by the Romans; control of the Isthmian Games moves to Sicyon from now crispy Corinth

c. 40 BCE: Control of the Isthmian Games is transferred back to Corinth (now a Roman colony)

4 BCE Tiberius wins the 4 horse chariot race at Olympia

65 CE Nero participates in the Olympic Games and the circuit of crown games (Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian); games are held out of sequence.

393 CE: Final Olympic Games are held in Olympia. Theodosius I bans all pagan festivals, including the Olympics, the next year.
Greek Sports I
a. Nudity and equipment
Greek men competed naked, although they had not always done so, a fact which they were aware of. In Homer’s epic poem Iliad (c. 8^th century CE) the athletes at the funeral games for Patroclus wore clothes (. At some point in the 7^th century, however, clothing was abandoned and eventually not only did the Greeks train and compete naked in all spores (with the exception of some equestrian events and races where wearing equipment was part of the race), but nudity in athletics became a marker of Greek identity: barbarians might wear clothes, but Greeks stripped in the gymnasium.
The first victor in the stadion, the premier foot race at the Olympic Games to run naked was a matter of contention. Some argued for Orsippos:
Near Koroibos¹ is the grave of Orsippos. When the athletes, following an ancient custom, wore loin-clothes at the games, he won the Olympic stadion while naked. They also say that later, when Orsippos was a general he cut off land from neighbouring people. I think that he deliberately dropped his loin-cloth at Olympia, realizing that a naked man can run easier than a man with a loin-cloth.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.44.1

Here’s the funeral inscription that Pausanias saw at Megara recording this feat:

For the clever Orsippos of Megara they have erected me here,

a beautiful monument, obeying the word of Delphi.²
He liberated the farthest boundaries of his fatherland,
because the enemy had cut off large parts of land.
He was the first of the Greeks to win the victory crown at Olympia
naked since before everyone competed in loin-cloths in the stadion

IG VII 52

Others argued that the Spartans came up with the idea of exercising and competing naked:

The Spartans were the first who stripped naked and rubbed themselves over with olive oil for their athletic exercises. But this was not the ancient custom; athletes formerly, even when they were competing at Olympia, wore loin-cloths, a practice which lasted until quite lately, and still prevails among barbarians, especially those of Asia, where the combatants at boxing and wrestling matches wear loin-cloths.

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesians

The Romans, of course, did not exercise naked,³ a fact which Dionysius of Halicarnassus attributes to them retaining ancient Greek customs:

Before beginning the games the principal magistrates conducted a procession in honour of the gods from the Capitol through the Forum to the Circus Maximus. Those who led the procession were, first, the Romans' sons who were nearing adulthood and were old enough to take a part in this ceremony, who rode on horseback if their fathers were entitled by their fortunes to be equestrians, while the others, who were destined to serve in the infantry, went on foot, the former in squadrons and troops, and the latter in divisions and companies, as if they were going to school; this was done in order that strangers might see the number and beauty of the youths of the Republic who were approaching adulthood. These were followed by charioteers, some of whom drove four horse chariots, some two, while others rode unyoked horses. After them came the contestants in both the light and the heavy games, their whole bodies naked except for their loins. This custom continued even to my time at Rome, as it was originally practised by the Greeks; but it is now abolished in Greece, the Spartans having put an end to it. The first man who undertook to strip and ran naked at Olympia, at the fifteenth Olympiad, was Acanthus the Spartan. Before that time, it seems, all the Greeks had been ashamed to appear entirely naked in the games, as Homer, the most credible and the most ancient of all witnesses, shows when he represents the heroes as wearing clothes around their loins. At any rate, when he is describing the wrestling-match of Ajax and Odysseus at the funeral of Patroclus, he says: “and then the two with their loins well covered stepped forth into the ring.”

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 7.72.2-3.
The Greeks used relatively little equipment in their athletics. Below I’ve listed some of the standard equipment you would find Greek athletes using in a gymnasium.
aryballos: vase for holding your olive oil for oiling up before exercising

caestus: a hard version of the himantes (see illustration in boxing section)

discus: originally made of stone; later made of bronze or iron. No standard weight

halteres: weights for the long jump

hairnets: used for preventing your hair getting tangled up especially if you were throwing the javelin, where the throwing strap might get caught in your hair

himantes: leather strips (c.4 metres in length) wrapped around hands and wrists for protection. These were made of ox-hide; pigskin was forbidden because it left wounds that would not close easily and were too painful.

javelins: for the javelin throw. c. 2 metres long with a throwing strap

konis: a type of dust that you used after you had cleaned up after exercising

olive oil: this was rubbed on your body before exercising

strigil: a tool with which to scrape off oil, sweat, and dust after exercising (oil scrapings from famous athletes fetched high prices). Usually bronze, but could be iron or even precious metal
Athletics and Greek Identity

Athletics were central to Greek identity, and were one activity that they felt separated them from the barbarians (all non-Greeks were barbarians to the ancient Greeks) around them. In the following fictional dialogue set in the 7^th century BCE, between the Athenian lawmaker Solon and a Scythian called Anacharsis, the satirist Lucian (who was himself Syrian in origin) uses athletics to compare Greek and non-Greek culture. Of course, what Solon does not say is that there were distinct monetary and personal advantages to winning at games like the Olympics: they might only give you a crown but many cities gave bonuses to athletes who won at major games, and some got to dine for free for life in the city’s dining halls. Winning at a major set of games could also make your political career for life:
An.⁴ Why do your young men behave like this, Solon? Some of them grappling and tripping each other, some throttling, struggling, mixing it up in the dust just like a crowd of pigs wallowing. And yet when they first strip naked (I noticed that) they oil and scrape each other quite amicably. But I do not know what comes over them after that: they lower their heads and begin to push, and crash their foreheads together like a pair of rams battling. Look - that one has lifted the other right off his legs and dropped him on the ground; then he jumps on top of him and will not let him get his head up, but presses it down into the dust; and to finish him off he twines his legs tight round his belly, thrusts his elbow hard against his throat, and throttles the wretched victim, who meanwhile is patting his shoulder; that will be a form of supplication; he is asking not to be quite choked to death. Regardless of their fresh oil, they get all filthy, smother themselves in mud and sweat till they might as well not have been anointed, and present, to me at least, the most ludicrous resemblance to eels slipping through a man’s hands. Then here in the open court are others doing just the same, except that, instead of the clay, they have for floor a depression filled with deep sand, with which they sprinkle one another, scraping up the dust on purpose, like chickens; I suppose they want their interfacings to be tighter; the sand is to neutralize the slipperiness of the oil, and by drying it up to give a firmer grip. And here are others, sanded too, but on their legs, kicking and punching each other. We shall surely see this poor fellow spit out his teeth in a minute; his mouth is all full of blood and sand; he has had a blow on the jaw from the other’s fist, you see. Why does not the official there separate them and put an end to it? I guess that he is an official from his purple; but no, he encourages them, and praises the puncher. Wherever you look, every one is busy - rising on his toes, jumping up and kicking the air, or something. Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their heads.

So. It is quite natural it should strike you that way, as it is new to you and absolutely not the way Scythians behave. Similarly you have no doubt many ways of behaving and customs that would seem extraordinary enough to us Greeks, if we saw them as you see ours. But be reassured; these proceedings are not madness; it is no spirit of violence that sets them hitting each other, wallowing in clay, and sprinkling dust. The thing has its use, and its delight too, resulting in admirable physical condition. If you make some stay, as I imagine you will, in Greece, you are bound to be either a clay-bob or a dust-bob before long; you will be so taken with the pleasure and profit of the pursuit.

An. Hands off, please. No, I wish you all joy of your pleasures and your profits; but if any of you treats me like that, he will find out that we do not wear scimitars for ornament. But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say they are doing?

So. The place is called a gymnasium, and is dedicated to Lycian Apollo. You see his statue there - the one leaning on the pillar, with a bow in the left hand. The right arm bent over the head indicates that the god is resting after some great exertion. Of the exercises here, that in the clay is called wrestling; the youths in the dust are also called wrestlers, and those who strike each other standing are engaged in what we call the pankration. But we have other gymnasia for boxing, discus-throwing, and high-jumping; and in all these we hold contests, the winner in which is honoured above all his contemporaries, and receives prizes.

An. What do they win?

So. At Olympia a wreath of wild olive, at the Isthmus one of pine, at Nemea of parsley, at the Pythian games some of the god’s sacred apples,⁵ and at our Panathenaea⁶ oil pressed from the temple olives. What are you laughing at, Anacharsis? Are the prizes too small?

An. Oh dear no; your prize-list is most imposing; the givers may well plume themselves on their generosity, and the competitors be incredibly keen on winning. Who would not go through this amount of preparatory toil, and take his chance of a choking or a dislocation, for apples or parsley? It is obviously impossible for any one who has a fancy to a supply of apples, or a wreath of parsley or pine, to get them without a mud plaster on his face, or a kick in the stomach from his competitor.

So. My dear sir, it is not the things’ intrinsic value that we look at. They are the symbols of victory, labels of the winners; it is the fame attaching to them that is worth any price to their holders; that is why the man whose quest for honour leads through toil is content to take his kicks. No toil, no honour; he who covets that must start with enduring hardship; when he has done that, he may begin to look for the pleasure and profit his labours are to bring.

An. Which pleasure and profit consists in their being seen in their wreaths by every one, and congratulated on their victory by those who before commiserated their pain; their happiness lies in their exchange of apples and parsley for toil.

So. Ah, you certainly do not understand our ways yet. You will change your opinions before long, when you go to the great festivals and see the crowds gathering to look on, the stands filling up, the competitors receiving their ovations, and the victor being idolized.

An. Why, Solon, that is just where the humiliation comes in; they are treated like this not in something like privacy, but with all these spectators to watch the affronts they endure — who, I am to believe, consider them happy when they see them dripping with blood or being throttled; for such are the happy concomitants of victory. In my country, if a man strikes a citizen, knocks him down, or tears his clothes, our elders punish him severely, even though there were only one or two witnesses, not like your vast Olympic or Isthmian gatherings. However, though I cannot help pitying the competitors, I am still more astonished at the spectators; you tell me the chief people from all over Greece attend; how can they leave their serious concerns and waste time on such things? How they can like it passes my comprehension — to look on at people being struck and knocked about, dashed to the ground and pounded by one another.

So. If the Olympic, Isthmian, or Panatheniac games were on now, those lessons might have been enough to convince you that our keenness is not thrown away. I cannot make you understand the delights of them by description; you should be there sitting in the middle of the spectators, looking at the men’s courage and physical beauty, their marvellous condition, effective skill and invincible strength, their enterprise, their emulation, their unconquerable spirit, and their unwearied pursuit of victory. Oh, I know very well, you would never have been tired of talking about your favourites, backing them with voice and hand.

An. I dare say, laughing and celebrating too. All the fine things in your list, your courage and conditions, your beauties and enterprises, I see you wasting for no great purpose; your country is not in danger, your land not being ravaged, your friends or relations not being dragged away.⁷ The more ridiculous that such patterns of perfection as you make them out should endure the misery all for nothing, and spoil their beauty and their fine figures with sand and black eyes, just for the triumphant possession of an apple or a sprig of wild olive. Oh, how I love to think of those prizes! By the way, do all who enter get them?

So. No, indeed. There is only one winner.

Lucian, Anacharsis 1-14

Because of the centrality of athletics to Greek identity, gymnasia were social centres in Greek towns, and served as places where men could forge relationships, both sexual and non-sexual. They were often places where art was displayed and those in richer cities had beautiful paintings and mosaics – in fact, one of the first places the Greek travel writer Pausanias went in a city was its gymnasium. Some came just to look at and lust for the athletes; we have a number of ‘kalos’ cups, cups which will say something like ‘so and so is kalos’, handsome or lovely. We have about 200 names listed on these cups: one we have is that of Leagros, a famously beautiful man who also went on to become a general for the Athenians.⁸ The cup was found in Capua, in Southern Italy, which testifies to the wide appeal of the body beautiful. However, despite the fact that gymnasia were places to meet and woo other men (or perhaps because of it) there were restrictions on entering many gymnasia when youths and children were exercising there. This prosecution speech from 346 BCE refers to these laws in Athens; we also know they were in place around the Greek world:

In the first place, consider the case of the teachers. Although the very livelihood of these men, to whom we must entrust our own children, depends on their good character, while the opposite conduct on their part would mean poverty, yet it is plain that the lawgiver distrusts them; for he expressly states, first, what time of day the free-born boy is to go to the school-room; next, how many other boys may go there with him, and when he is to go home. He forbids the teacher to open the school-room, or the gymnastic trainer the wrestling school, before sunrise, and he commands them to close the doors before sunset; for he is extremely suspicious of their being alone with a boy or in the dark with him. He says what children can be admitted as pupils and their age at admission. He provides for a public official who shall superintend them, and for the oversight of slave-attendants of school-boys. He regulates the festivals of the Muses in the school-rooms and of Hermes in the wrestling-schools. Finally, he regulates the companionships that the boys may form at school, and their cyclic dances. He states, namely, that the choregus, a man who is going to spend his own money for your entertainment,⁹ shall be a man of more than forty years of age when he performs this service, in order that he may have reached the most temperate time of life before he comes into contact with your children. These laws, then, shall be read to you, to prove that the lawgiver believed that it is the boy who has been well brought up that will be a useful citizen when he becomes a man. But when a boy's natural disposition is subjected at the very outset to vicious training, the product of such wrong nurture will be, as he believed, a citizen like this man Timarchus. Read these laws to the jury.

The Law: The teachers of the boys shall open the school-rooms not earlier than sunrise, and they shall close them before sunset. No person who is older than the boys shall be permitted to enter the room while they are there, unless he be a son of the teacher, a brother, or a daughter's husband. If any one enters in violation of this prohibition, he shall be executed. The superintendents of the gymnasia shall under no conditions allow any one who has reached the age of manhood to enter the contests of Hermes together with the boys.¹⁰ A gymnasiarch who does permit this and fails to keep such a person out of the gymnasium, shall be liable to the penalties prescribed for the seduction of free-born youth. Every choregus who is appointed by the people shall be more than forty years of age.

Aeschines, Against Timarchos 9-12.

The Roman architect Vitruvius describes how a Greek gymnasium should be laid out (see figure 2 for how this looks):

Next, although the building of palaestrae¹¹ is not usual in Italy, I think it best to explain the traditional way and to show how they are constructed by the Greeks. The square or oblong peristyle in a palaestra should be so formed that the circuit of it makes a walk of two stadia, a distance which the Greeks call the diaulos. Let three of its colonnades be single, but let the fourth, which is on the south side, be double, so that when there is bad weather accompanied by wind, the drops of rain may not be able to reach the interior. In the three colonnades construct roomy recesses with seats in them, where philosophers, rhetoricians, and others who delight in learning may sit and talk. In the double colonnade let the rooms be arranged in this way: the young men's hall in the middle; this is a very spacious recess (the exedra) with seats in it, and it should be one third longer than it is broad. At the right, the equipment room; then next, the dust room; beyond the dust room, at the corner of the colonnade, the cold washing room, which the Greeks call the loutron. At the left of the young men's hall is the anointing room; then, next to the anointing room, the cold bath room, and beyond that a passage into the furnace room at the corner of the colonnade. Next, but inside and on a line with the cold bath room, put the vaulted sweating bath, its length twice its breadth, and having at the ends on one side a Laconicum, proportioned in the same manner as above described, and opposite the Laconicum the warm washing room. Inside a palaestra, the peristyle ought to be laid out as described above. But on the outside, let three colonnades be arranged, one as you leave the peristyle and two at the right and left, with running-tracks in them. The one which faces the north should be a double colonnade of very ample width, while the other should be single, and so constructed that on the sides next the walls and the side along the columns it may have edges, serving as paths, of not less than ten feet, with the space between them sunken, so that steps are necessary in going down from the edges a foot and a half to the plane, which plane should be not less than twelve feet wide. Thus people walking round on the edges will not be interfered with by those are oiled up and exercising. This kind of colonnade is called among the Greeks xystos, because athletes during the winter season exercise in covered running tracks. Next to this xystos and to the double colonnade should be laid out uncovered walks which the Greeks call paradromides and Romans xysta, into which, in fair weather during the winter, the athletes come out from the xystos for exercise. The xysta ought to be so constructed that there may be trees planted between the two colonnades, or groves of plane trees, with walks laid out in them among the trees and resting places there, made of opus signinum.¹² Behind the xystos a stadium, so designed that great numbers of people may have plenty of room to look on at the contests between the athletes.

Vitruvius, On Architecture Book 5