Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 9

CHAPTER XI.

ELIS-OLYMPIA AND ITS GAMES-THE VALLEY OF THE ALPHEUS-MOUNT ERYMANTHUS-PATRAS.

The thousands of visitors, whose ships thronged the bay of Katakolo every four years in the great old times, cannot have been fairly impressed with the beauty of the country at first sight. Most other approaches to the coast of Greece are far more striking. For although, on a clear day, the mountains of Arcadia are plainly visible, and form a fine background to the view, from the great bar of Erymanthus on the north, round to the top of Lykaeon far south-west, the foreground has not, and never had, either the historic interest or the beauty of the many bays and harbors in other parts of Greece. Yet I am far from a.s.serting that it is actually wanting even in this respect. As we saw the bay in a quiet summer sunset, with placid water reflecting a sleeping cloud and a few idle sails in its amber glow, with a wide circle of low hills and tufted sh.o.r.e bathed in a golden haze, which spread its curtain of light athwart all the distance, so that the great snowy comb of Erymanthus alone seemed suspended by some mystery in the higher blue-the view was not indeed very Greek, but still it was beautiful, and no unsuitable dress wherein the land might clothe itself to welcome the traveller, and foretell him its sunny silence and its golden mystery.

The carriage-way along the coast pa.s.ses by sand-hills, and sandy fields of vines, which were being tilled when we saw them by kindly but squalid peasants, some of whom lived in wretched huts of skins, enclosed with a rough fence. But these were probably only temporary dwellings, for the thrift and diligence of the southern Greek seems hardly compatible with real penury. Mendicancy, except in the case of little children who do it for the nonce, seems unknown in the Morea.

A dusty ride of two hours, relieved now and then for a moment by the intense perfume from the orange blossoms of gardens fenced with mighty aloes, brought us to the noisy and stirring town of Pyrgos.(115) We found this town, one of the most thriving in Greece, quite as noisy as Naples in proportion to its size, full of dogs barking, donkeys braying, and various shopkeepers screaming out their wares-especially frequent where young shrill-voiced boys were so employed. Nowhere does the ultra-democratic temper of new Greek social life show itself more manifestly than in these disturbed streets. Not only does every member of human society, however young or ill-disposed, let his voice be heard without reserve, but it seems to be considered an infraction upon liberty to silence yelping dogs, braying donkeys, or any other animal which chooses to disturb its neighbors.

The whole town, like most others in Greece, even in the Arcadian highlands, is full of half-built and just finished houses, showing a rapid increase of prosperity, or perhaps a return of the population from country life into the towns which have always been so congenial to the race. But if the latter be the fact, there yet seems no slackening in the agriculture of the country, which in the Morea is strikingly diligent and laborious, reaching up steep hillsides, and creeping along precipices, winning from ungrateful nature every inch of n.i.g.g.ard soil.(116) This is indeed the contrast of northern and southern Greece. In Botia the rich plains of Thebes and Orchomenos are lying fallow, while all the rugged mountains of Arcadia are yielding wine and oil. The Greeks will tell you that it is the result of the security established by their Government in those parts of Greece which are not accessible from the Turkish frontier.

They a.s.sert that if their present frontier were not at Thermopylae but at Tempe, or even farther north, the rich plains of northern Greece would not lie idle through fear of the bandits, which every disturbance excites about the boundaries of ill-guarded kingdoms.

The carriage road from Pyrgos up to Olympia was just finished, and it is now possible to drive all the way from the sea, but we preferred the old method of travelling on horseback to the terrors of a newly-constructed Greek thoroughfare. There is, moreover, in wandering on unpaved thoroughfares, along meadows, through groves and thickets, and across mountains, a charm which no dusty carriage road can ever afford. We soon came upon the banks of the Alpheus, which we followed as our main index, though at times we were high above it, and at times in the meadows at the water-side; at times again mounting some wooded ridge which had barred the way of the stream, and forced it to take a wide circuit from our course, or again crossing the deep cuttings made by rivulets which come down from northern Elis to swell the river from mile to mile.

Our path must have been almost the same as was followed by the crowds which came from the west to visit the Olympic games in cla.s.sical days: they must have ascended along the windings of the river, and as they came upon each new amphitheatre of hills, and each new tributary stream, they may have felt the impatience which we felt that this was not the sacred _Altis_, and that this was not the famous confluence of the Kladeus. But the season in which they travelled-the beginning of July-can never have shown them the valley in its true beauty. Instead of a glaring dry bed of gravel, and meadows parched with heat, we found the Alpheus a broad and rapid river, which we crossed on horseback with difficulty; we found the meadows green with sprouting corn and bright with flowers, and all along the slopes the trees were bursting into bud and blossom, and filling the air with the rich scent of spring. Huge shrubs of arbutus and of mastich closed around the paths, while over them the Judas tree and the wild pear covered themselves with purple and with white, and on every bank great scarlet anemones opened their wistful eyes in the morning sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Banks of the Kladeus]

When we came to the real Olympia the prospect was truly disenchanting.

However interesting excavations may be, they are always exceedingly ugly.

Instead of gra.s.s and flowers, and pure water, we found the cla.s.sic spot defaced with great mounds of earth, and trodden bare of gra.s.s. We found the Kladeus flowing a turbid drain into the larger river. We found hundreds of workmen, and wheel-barrows, and planks, and trenches, instead of solitude and the song of birds. Thus it was that we found the famous temple of Zeus.

This temple was in many respects one of the most celebrated in Greece, especially on account of the great image of Zeus, which Phidias himself wrought for it in gold and ivory, and of which Pausanias has left us a very wonderful description (V. II, _sqq._). It was carried away to Constantinople, and of course its precious material precluded all chance of its surviving through centuries of ignorance and bigotry. The temple itself, to judge from its appearance, was somewhat older than the days of Phidias, for it is of that thickset and ma.s.sive type which we only find in the earlier Doric temples, and which rather reminds us of Paestum than of Athenian remains. It was built by a local architect, Libon, and of a very coa.r.s.e limestone from the neighborhood, which was covered with stucco, and painted chiefly white, to judge from the fragments which remain. But it seems as if the Eleans had done all they could to add splendor to the building, whenever their funds permitted. The tiles of the roof were not of burnt clay, but of Pentelican marble, the well-known and beautiful invention of the Naxian Byzes. Moreover, Phidias and a number of his fellow-workers or subordinates at Athens, as well as other artists, had been invited to Olympia, to adorn the temple, and to them we owe the pediments, probably also the metopes, and many of the statues, with which all the sacred enclosure around the edifice was literally thronged.

Subsequent generations added to this splendor: a gilded figure of Victory, with a gold shield, was set upon the apex of the gable; gilded pitchers at the extremities; gilded shields were fastened all along the architraves by Mummius, from the spoils of Corinth, and the great statue of Zeus within still remained, the wonder and the awe of the ancient world.

But with the fall of paganism and the formal extinction of the Olympic games (394 A. D.) the glories of the temple fell into decay. The great statue in the shrine was carried away to Byzantium; many of the votive bronzes and marbles which stood about the sacred grove were transported to Italy; and at last a terrible earthquake, apparently in the fifth century, levelled the whole temple almost with the ground. The action of this extraordinary earthquake is still plainly to be traced in the now uncovered ruins. It upheaved the temple from the centre, throwing the pillars of all the four sides outward, where most of them lie with their drums separated, but still complete in all parts, and only requiring mechanical power to set them up again. Some preliminary shakes had caused pieces of the pediment sculptures to fall out of their place, for they were found at the foot of the temple steps; but the main shock threw the remainder to a great distance, and I saw the work of Alkamenes being unearthed more than twenty-five yards from its proper site.

In spite of this convulsion, the floor of the temple, with its marble work, and its still more beautiful mosaic, is still there, and it seemed doubtful to the Germans whether there is even a crack now to be found in it. About the ruins there gathered some little population, for many fragments were found built into walls of poor and late construction; but this work of destruction was fortunately arrested by a sudden overflow of the Alpheus, caused by the bursting of one of the mountain lakes about Pheneus. The river then covered all the little plain of Olympia with a deep layer of fine sand and of mud. A thicket of arbutus and mastich sprang from this fertile soil, and so covered all traces of antiquity, that when Chandler visited the place 100 years ago, nothing but a part of the cella wall was over ground, and this was since removed by neighboring builders. But the site being certain, it only required the enterprise of modern research to lay bare the old level so fortunately hidden by the interposition of nature. The traveller who now visits Olympia can see the whole plan and contour of the great temple, with all its prostrate pillars lying around it. He can stand on the very spot where once was placed the unrivalled image-the masterpiece of Phidias's art. He can see the old mosaic in colored pebbles, with its exquisite design, which later taste-probably Roman-thought well to cover with a marble pavement. But far above all, he can find in adjoining sheds(117) not only the remains of the famous _Nike_ of Paeonius, which stood on a pedestal close to the east front, but the greater part of the splendid pediment sculptures, which will henceforth rank among the most important relics of Greek art. These n.o.ble compositions have been restored with tolerable completeness, and now stand next to the pediments of the Parthenon in conception and in general design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Statue of Nike, by Paeonius]

For even if the restoration were never accomplished, there is enough in the fragments of the figures already recovered to show the genius of both sculptors, but particularly of Alkamenes, the author of the western pediment. This perfectly agrees with the note of Pausanias, who adds, in mentioning this very work, that Alkamenes was considered in his day an artist second only to Phidias.

It was objected to me by learned men on the spot, that the eastern pediment, being the proper front of the temple, must have been the more important, and that Paeonius, as we know from an inscription, boasts that he obtained the executing of it by compet.i.tion, thus proving that he was, at least in this case, preferred to his rivals. But the decided superiority of Alkamenes's design leads me to suppose that the boast of Paeonius only applies to the eastern pediment, and that probably the western had been already a.s.signed to Alkamenes. Nor do I agree with the view that the eastern pediment must have been artistically the most important. In several Greek temples-_e. g._, the Parthenon, the temple at Ba.s.sae, and in this-the great majority of visitors must have approached it from the rear, which should accordingly have been quite the prominent side for artistic decoration. Let me add that far more action was permitted in the groups on this side, while over the entrance the figures were staid and in repose, as if to harmonize with the awe and silence of the entering worshippers. Be these things as they may, the work of Alkamenes is certainly superior to that which remains to us of Paeonius in the eastern pediment, and in his figure of winged Victory, which was, I think, greatly overpraised by the critics who saw it soon after its discovery.(118)

The composition of the groups in the pediments and friezes has been described by Pausanias (V. 10, ---- 610) in a pa.s.sage of great interest, which has given rise to much controversy. The general impression of Drs.

Hirschfeld and Weil, when I was at Olympia, was against the accuracy of Pausanias, whom they considered to have blindly set down whatever the local cicerones told him. That of Dr. Purgold was in his favor. The traveller says, however, that the eastern pediment, in which, as already remarked, it was not usual to represent violent action, depicted the preparation of the chariot race between Pelops and nomaus. In the centre was Zeus, whose torso has been recovered, and at the narrow ends of the field were figures of the Alpheus and Kladeus, to the right and left of the spectator respectively. These figures are partly recovered-graceful young men lying forward on the ground, and raising their heads to witness the contest.

It is worth pausing for a moment upon this disposition, which was so usual as to be almost conventional in the pediments sculptured during the best epochs of Greek art. In the centre, where the field was very high, and admitted a colossal figure, it was usual to place the G.o.d whose providence guided the events around him, and this G.o.d was represented calm and without excitement. Then came the mythical event grouped on both sides; but at the ends, where the field narrowed to an angle, it was usual to represent the calmness or impa.s.siveness of external nature. This was done in Greek sculpture not by trees and hills, but by the G.o.ds who symbolized them. So thoroughly was nature personified in Greek art, that its picturesqueness was altogether postponed to its living conscious sympathy with man, and thus to a Greek the proper representation of the rivers of Olympia was no landscape, but the graceful forms of the river G.o.ds-intelligent and human, yet calm spectators, as nature is wont to be.

The very same idea is carried out more characteristically in the pediment of Alkamenes, where, in spite of the violent conflict of Centaurs and Lapithae, the central and extreme figures, as I shall presently notice, are perfectly unmoved witnesses of lawless violence.

The arrangement of the rest of the eastern pediment was evidently quite symmetrical. On Zeus's right hand was nomaus, his wife Sterope, his charioteer Myrtilus sitting before the four horses, and two grooms; on his left, Pelops, Hippodamia, and a like number of horses and attendants. A good many pieces of these figures have been found, sufficient to tempt several art-critics to make conjectural restorations of the pediment, one of which is now set up, I believe, in the museum at Berlin.

The western pediment, of which more, and more striking, fragments are recovered, is more difficult to restore, because Pausanias is unfortunately not nearly so precise in describing it, and because, moreover, he is suspected of a serious blunder about the central figure.

Contrary to the precedent just mentioned, he says that this central figure is Pirithous, whose wife is just being carried off by the Centaurs, and ought therefore to be in violent excitement. But there had been found, just before we arrived at Olympia, a colossal head, of the n.o.blest conception, which seems certainly to belong to the pediment sculptures, and which must be the head of this central figure. It is perfectly calm and divine in expression, and almost forces upon the spectator the conclusion to which all the best judges lean, that it must be an Apollo, and that this was the central figure, while Pirithous was more actively engaged. There was on each side of this figure a Centaur carrying off, the one a maiden (I suppose the bride) and the other a boy, and Kaeneus and Theseus at each side, coming to the rescue.

But on the other figures Pausanias is silent; and there were certainly two beautiful mountain or river nymphs at the extremities-lying figures, with a peculiar head-dress of a thick bandage wrapped all round the hair-which are among the most perfect of the figures recovered. It seems also certain that Pirithous must have been somewhere on the pediment; and this would suggest another figure to correspond to him at the other side, for these groups were always symmetrical. In this case Pausanias has omitted four figures at least in his description, and seems to have besides mistaken the largest and most important of all. The Germans cite in proof of these strictures his pa.s.sing remark on the Metopes, representing the labors of Herakles, on one of which was (he says) Herakles about to relieve Atlas, whereas this slab, which has been found, really represents Herakles carrying the globe, and one of the Hesperidae a.s.sisting him, while Atlas is bringing to him the apple.

This criticism will seem to most ordinary people too minute, and I am rather disposed to think well of Pausanias as an intelligent traveller, though he, of course, made some mistakes.

But since the above words were written sufficient time has elapsed not only to bring the excavations to an end, but to study more carefully the recovered fragments, and offer a calmer judgment as to their merits. On the whole, the strong feeling of the best critics has been one of disappointment. The design of both pediments still seems to me masterly, especially that of Alkamenes, but there can be no doubt that the execution is far below that of the Parthenon marbles. There are some positive faults-inability to reproduce drapery (while the nude parts are very true to nature), and great want of care in other details. It must be urged in answer that the pediments were meant to be seen about forty feet from the ground, and that the painting of the figures must have brought out the features of the drapery neglected in the carving. However true this may be, we can answer at once that the workmen of Phidias did not produce this kind of work. The first quality of the Attic school was that conscientiousness in detail which meets us in every great age of art.

So serious have these difficulties appeared to some, that they have actually suspected Pausanias of being misled, and having falsely attributed the work of obscure local artists to Alkamenes, and perhaps also falsely to Paeonius. They say that nothing is more common with vulgar cicerones than to attribute to a great master any old work of uncertain origin. Others, who will not proceed to such extremes, hold that only the general design was made by the two sculptors, and its execution handed over to local artists. This may probably have been the case. But I am disposed to infer from the overpraised _Nike_, which certainly is the work of Paeonius, that he was not an artist of the quality of the great Attic school.(119) The whole external work of the temple seems to represent a stage of art rather earlier and ruder than the school of Phidias. This is eminently the case with the Metopes, which can hardly be later in date than 460 B. C., or pre-Phidian in time.

Very different is the impression produced by the greatest and most priceless gem of all the treasures at Olympia-the Hermes of Praxiteles, which was actually found on the very spot where it was seen and described by Pausanias, fallen among the ruins of the temple which originally protected it. This exquisite figure, much smaller than life-size, represents the G.o.d Hermes holding the infant Dionysus on one arm, and showing the child some object now lost. The right arm and the legs from below the knees are gone; the right foot with its sandal, an exquisite piece of work with traces of gold and red, has been recovered. It is remarkable that the back of the statue is unfinished, and the child treated rather as a doll than a human infant; the main figure, however, now widely known through copies, is the most perfect remnant of Greek art.

The temple in which the statue was found, the venerable Heraeon, is the most interesting of all the Olympian buildings in its plan, and has solved for us many problems in Greek architecture. The acute researches of Dr.

Dorpfeld have shown that the walls were not of stone, but of sun-dried bricks, and that the surrounding pillars had gradually replaced older wooden pillars, one of which was still there when Pausanias saw the building. The successive stone pillars and their capitals were of the same order, Doric, but varied in measurements and profile according to the taste of the day. So then this ancient building showed, like our English cathedrals, the work of successive centuries in its restoration. The roof and architrave were evidently of wood, for all trace of these members has vanished; but we learn from remains of the old "treasuries" described by Pausanias that in very old times wood and mud bricks were faced with colored terra cotta, moulded to the required form, and that this ornament was still used after stone had replaced bricks and mud as the material of the walls and architrave. These curious details, and many others, have been the main result of the architectural inquiries made by the Germans into the archaic buildings at Olympia; but it would be tedious to the reader of this book were I to turn aside to discuss technical details. He will find them all put with great clearness, and indeed with elegance, in Botticher's _Olympia_. The complete results of the excavations are now to be found in the official work issued by the German Government on the explorations.

Unfortunately, there only remains one very realistic head of a boxer from a large cla.s.s of monuments at Olympia, that of the portrait statues of victors at the games, of which one was even attributed to Phidias, and several to Alkamenes, in Pausanias's time. All these were votive statues, set up by victors at the games, or victors in war, and in the early times were not portraits strictly speaking, but ideal figures. Later on they became more realistic, and were made in the likeness of the offerer, a privilege said at one time only to have been accorded to those who had won thrice at Olympia.

The commemoration of gymnastic victories by these statues seems to have completely supplanted the older fashion of triumphal odes, which in Pindar's day were so prized, and so dearly bought from lyric poets. When these odes first came to be composed, sculpture was still struggling with the difficulties of human expression, and there was no one who would not feel the great artistic superiority of Pindar's verse to the cold stiffness of the archaic reliefs of the same epoch, which attempt portraiture. The portrait of Aristion by Aristokles, the similar relief by Anxenor the Naxian, and the relief of the discus thrower, are sufficient examples of what sculptured portraits were in comparison with the rich music of Simonides and Pindar. But while lyric poetry pa.s.sed into the higher service of tragedy, or degenerated into the extravagance of the later dithyramb, sculpture grew into such exquisite perfection, and was of its very nature so enduring and manifest, that the Olympic victor choose it as the surest avenue to immortal fame. And so it was up to Pausanias's day, when every traveller could study the records of the games at Olympia, or even admire the most perfect of the statues in the palaces of Roman Emperors, whither they were transferred.

But the day came when the poets were avenged upon the sculptors. Olympia sank under general decay and sudden catastrophe. Earthquakes and barbarians ravaged its treasury, and while Pindar was being preserved in ma.n.u.script, until his resurrection in the days of printing, the invasion of the Kladeus saved the scanty remains in the _Altis_ from destruction only by covering them with oblivion. Now, in the day of its resurrection, pedestal after pedestal with its votive inscription has been unearthed, but, except the _Nike_ of Paeonius, no actual votive statue had been recovered when I saw the excavations, after two years of labor.

The river Alpheus, which has done such excellent work in its inundations, does not confine itself to concealing antiquities, but sometimes discovers them. Its rapid course eats away the alluvial bank which the waters have deposited ages ago, and thus encroaches upon old tombs, from which various relics are washed down in its turbid stream. The famous helmet dedicated by Hiero, son of Deinomenes, was discovered in the river in this way; and there is also in the Ministry of Public Instruction a large circular band of bronze, _riveted_ together where the ends meet, with very archaic zigzag and linear patterns, which was found in the same way some twenty years ago, and which seems to me of great interest, as exhibiting a kind of workmanship akin to the decorations in the Schliemann treasure of Mycenae. There is also a rude red earthen pot in the Turkish house on the Acropolis at Athens, which is decorated with the same kind of lines. It is very important to point out these resemblances to travellers, for there is such endless detail in Greek antiquities, and so little has yet been cla.s.sified, that every observation may be of use to future students, even though it may merely serve as a hint for closer research.

The Stadium and Hippodrome, which lie farther away from the river, and right under the conical hill called Kronion, have not yet, I believe, been completely investigated; but they may no doubt offer us some new and interesting evidences on the management of the famous Olympian games.

These games were not at all what most people imagine them to be. I will, therefore, delay the reader with some details concerning this most interesting side of old Greek life.

The establishment of games at Olympia was a.s.signed by the poets to mythical ages, and not only is there a book of the Iliad devoted to funeral games, but in Pindar's eleventh Olympic Ode this particular establishment is made coeval with the labors of Herakles. Whether such evidence is indeed conclusive may fairly be doubted. The twenty-third book of the Iliad, which shows traces of being a later portion of the poem, describes contests widely differing from those at Olympia, and the mythical founders enumerated by Pausanias (v. 7) are so various and inconsistent that we can see how obscure the question appeared to Greek archaeologists, even did we not find at the end of the enumeration the following significant hint:-"But after Oxylus-for Oxylus, too, established the contest-after his reign it fell out of use till the Olympiad of Iphitus," that is to say, till the first Ol., which is dated 776 B. C., Oxylus being the companion of the Herakleidae, who obtained Elis for his portion. Pausanias adds that when Iphitus renewed the contest, men had forgotten the old arrangements, and only _gradually came to remember them_, and whenever they recollected any special compet.i.tion they added it to the games. This is the excellent man's theory to account for the gradual addition of long races, of wrestling, discus throwing, boxing, and chariot racing, to the original sprint race of about 200 yards, which was at first the only known compet.i.tion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kronion Hill, Olympia]

The facts seem to me rather to point to the late growth of games in Greece, which may possibly have begun as a local feast at Olympia in the eighth century, but which only rose to importance during the reign of the despots throughout Greece, when the aristocrats were prevented from murdering one another, and compelled to adopt more peaceful pursuits.(120) It was in the end of the seventh and opening of the sixth centuries that the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games show by their successive establishments the rapid spread of the fashion, and a vast number of local contests diffused through every district in Greece the taste and the training for such compet.i.tions.(121) These games lasted all through cla.s.sical Greek history-the Olympian even down to later times, for they were not abolished till nearly 1200 years (Ol. 294) had elapsed since their alleged foundation. But the day of their real greatness was gone long before. Cicero indignantly repudiates the report that he had gone to see such games, just as a pious earl, within our memory, repudiated the report that he had attended the prize-fight between Sayers and Heenan. The good generals of earlier centuries, such as Alexander the Great and Philopmen, set their faces against athletics as bad training for soldiers. Nay, even earlier, the Spartans, though they could contend with success in the _pentathlon_, when they choose, did not countenance the fiercer compet.i.tions, as engendering bad feeling between rivals, and, what was worse, compelling a man to declare himself vanquished, and feel disgraced. The Athenians also, as soon as the sophists reformed education, began to rate intellectual wrestling as far superior to any bodily exercise. Thus the supremacy of Athens and Sparta over the other Greek cities in the fifth century marked, in my opinion, the real turning-point in the Greek estimate of athletics, and the fact that the great odes of Pindar sing the glories of no Spartan, and only twice, very briefly, those of Athenians, seems to indicate that even then men began to think of more serious rivalries and more exciting spectacles than the festive meetings at Olympia. In the very next generation the poets had drifted away from them, and Euripides despises rather than admires them. The historians take little notice of them.

Two circ.u.mstances only tended strongly to keep them up. In the first place, musical compet.i.tions (which had always been a part of the Pythian) and poetical rivalries were added to the sports, which were also made the occasion of mercantile business, of social meetings, and not seldom of political agitation. The wise responses of the Delphic oracle were not a little indebted to the information gathered from all parts of the h.e.l.lenic world at the games, some important celebration of which, whether at Nemea, the Isthmus, or the greater meetings, occurred every year.

Secondly, if the art of poetry soon devoted itself to the higher objects of tragedy, and created for itself the conflict which it celebrated, the art of sculpture became so closely connected with athletics as to give them an aesthetic importance of the highest kind all through Greek history.

The ancient habit of setting up ideal statues of victors, which were made special likenesses if the subject was specially distinguished, supplied the Greeks with a series of historical monuments and a series of physical types not elsewhere to be matched, and thus perhaps the most interesting part of Pausanias's invaluable guide-book to Greece is his collection of notes (lib. vi., 120) on various statues set up in this way at Olympia, of which he mentions about two hundred, though he only professes to make a selection, and though several of the finest had already been carried off by Roman emperors.

These things kept alive the athletic meetings in Greece, and even preserved for them some celebrity. The sacred truce proclaimed during the national games was of inestimable convenience in times of long and bitter hostilities, and doubtless enabled friends to meet who had else been separated for life.(122) But the Panathenaic festivals were better exponents of fourth century taste in Greece. There music and the drama predominated. Professional displays became equally admired as a pastime and despised as a profession; and I have no doubt that the athlete who spent his life going about from one contest to another in search of gymnastic triumphs was held in like contempt by Brasidas and by Cleon, by Xenophon and by Agesilaus.

In the days of Solon things had been very different. He appointed a reward of 500 drachmas, then a very large sum, for victors at Olympia, 100 for those at the Isthmus, and for the others in proportion. Pindar sings as if, to the aristocrats of aegina, or the tyrants of Sicily, no higher earthly prizes were attainable. But we must not transfer these evidences-the habit or the echo of the sixth century B. C.-to the days of political and educated Greece, when public opinion altered very considerably on the advantage and value of physical compet.i.tion. This being once understood, I will proceed to a short a.n.a.lysis of the sports, and will attempt to criticise the methods adopted by the old Greeks to obtain the highest physical condition, the nature of the compet.i.tions they established, and the results which they appear to have attained.

The Greeks of Europe seem always to have been aware that physical exercise was of the greatest importance for health, and consequently for mental vigor, and the earliest notices we have of education include careful bodily training. Apart from the games of children, which were much the same as ours, there was not only _orchestic_ or rhythmical dancing in graceful figures, in which girls took part, and which corresponded to what are now vulgarly called _callisthenics_, but also gymnastics, in which boys were trained to those exercises which they afterward practised as men. In addition to the _palaestras_, which were kept for the benefit of boys as a matter of private speculation in Athens, and probably in other towns, regular _gymnasia_ were established by the civic authorities, and put under strict supervision as state inst.i.tutions to prevent either idleness or immorality.(123) In these gymnasia, where young men came in the afternoon, stripped, oiled themselves, and then got a coat of dust or fine sand over the skin, running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, and throwing with the dart were commonly practised.

This sort of physical training I conceive to have grown up with the growth of towns, and with the abandonment of hunting and marauding, owing to the increase of culture. Among the aristocrats of epical days, as well as among the Spartans, who lived a village life, surrounded by forest and mountain, I presume field sports must have been quite the leading amus.e.m.e.nt; nor ought compet.i.tions in a gymnasium to be compared for one moment to this far higher and more varied recreation. The contrast still subsists among us, and our fox-hunting, salmon-fishing, grouse-shooting country gentleman has the same inestimable advantage over the city athlete, whose special training for a particular event has a necessary tendency to lower him into a professional. There is even a danger of some fine exercises, which seemed common ground for both, such as boating and cricket, being vulgarized by the invasion of this professional spirit, which implies such attention to the body as to exclude higher pursuits, and which rewards by special victories, and by public applause rather than by the intrinsic pleasure of sport for its own sake. Thus the Spartans not only objected to boxing and the pankration, in which the defeated compet.i.tor might have to ask for mercy; they even for general purposes preferred field-sports, for which they had ample opportunities, to any special compet.i.tions in the strength of particular muscles. But in such places as Athens and its neighborhood, where close cultivation had caused all wild country and all game to disappear, it was necessary to supply the place of country sport by the training of the gymnasium. This sort of exercise naturally led to contests, so that for our purpose we need not separate _gymnastic_ and _agonistic_, but may use the details preserved about the latter to tell us how the Greeks practised the former.

There is no doubt that the pursuit of high muscular condition was early a.s.sociated with that of health, and that hygiene and physical training were soon discovered to be closely allied. Thus Herodicus, a trainer, who was also an invalid, was said to have discovered from his own case the method of treating disease by careful diet and regimen, and to have thus contributed to the advancement of Greek medicine. Pausanias also mentions (vi. 3, 9) the case of a certain Hysmon, an Elean, who, when a boy, had rheumatism in his limbs, and on this account practised for the pentathlon, that he might become a healthy and sound man. His training made him not only sound, but a celebrated victor.

It would be very interesting to know in detail what rules the Greeks prescribed for this purpose. Pausanias tells us (vi. 7, 9) that a certain Dromeus, who won ten victories in long races at various games (about Ol.

74, 485 B. C.), was the first who thought of eating meat in his training, for that up to that time the diet of athletes had been cheese from wicker baskets (_?? t?? ta?????_).(124) It must be remembered that meat diet was not common among the Greeks, who, like most southern people, lived rather upon fish, fruit, and vegetables, so that the meat dinners of Botia were censured as heavy and rather disgusting. However, the discovery of Dromeus was adopted by Greek athletes ever after, and we hear of their compulsory meals of large quant.i.ties of meat, and their consequent sleepiness and sluggishness in ordinary life, in such a way as to make us believe that the Greeks had missed the real secret of training, and actually thought that the more strong nutriment a man could take, the stronger he would become. The quant.i.ty eaten by athletes is universally spoken of as far exceeding the quant.i.ty eaten by ordinary men, not to speak of its heavier quality.

The suspicion that, in consequence, Greek athletic performances were not in speed greater than, if even equal to, our own, is however hard to verify, as we are without any information as to the time in which their running feats were performed. They had no watches, or nice measures of short moments of time, and always ran races merely to see who would win, not to see in how short a time a given distance could be done.

Nevertheless, as the course was over soft sand, and as the vases picture them rushing along in spread-eagle fashion, with their arms like the sails of a windmill-in order to aid the motion of their bodies, as the Germans explain (after Philostratos)-nay, as we even hear of their having started shouting, if we can believe such a thing, their time performances in running must have been decidedly poor.(125)