The Ancient Olympics – 7

I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games.

Continuing The Ancient Olympics,
our selection from George Grote. The selection is presented in eight easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in The Ancient Olympics.

Time: 585 BC
Place: Delphi

I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Cirrhæan plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the autumn or first half of every third Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible Agonothets or administrators and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel — the rapidly attained celebrity of the games being such as to render any further recompense superfluous. The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes himself, once the leader in the conquest of Cirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as competitors and the games long maintained a dignity second only to the Olympic, over which indeed they had some advantages; first, that they were not abused for the purpose of promoting petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering state, as the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleans on more than one occasion; next, that they comprised music and poetry as well as bodily display. From the circumstances attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demosthenes — “the common Agon of the Greeks.”

The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be the most venerated solemnities in Greece. Yet the Nemea and Isthmia acquired a celebrity not much inferior; the Olympic prize counting for the highest of all. Both the Nemea and Isthmia were distinguished from the other two festivals by occurring not once in four years but once in two years; the former in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the latter in the first and third years. To both is assigned, according to Greek custom, an origin connected with the interesting persons and circumstances of legendary antiquity; but our historical knowledge of both begins with the sixth century B.C. The first historical Nemead is presented as belonging to Olympiad B.C. 52 or 53 (572-568), a few years subsequent to the Sacred War above mentioned and to the origin of the Pythia. The festival was celebrated in honor of the Nemean Zeus, in the valley of Nemea between Philus and Cleonæ. The Cleonæans themselves were originally its presidents, until, some period after B.C. 460, the Argians deprived them of that honor and assumed the honors of administration to themselves. The Nemean games had their Hellanodicæ to superintend, to keep order and to distribute the prizes, as well as the Olympic.

Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first historical information is a little earlier, for it has already been stated that Solon conferred a premium upon every Athenian citizen who gained a prize at that festival as well as at the Olympian — in or after B.C. 594. It was celebrated by the Corinthians at their isthmus, in honor of Poseidon and if we may draw any inference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have identified it with the antiquities of their own state.

We thus perceive that the interval between B.C. 600-560, exhibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia and Nemea — the first expansion of all the three from local into pan-Hellenic festivals. To the Olympic games, for some time the only great centre of union among all the widely dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred Agones of the like public, open, national character; constituting visible marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism and insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, a safe and inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic states. These four, all in or near Peloponnesus and one of which occurred in each year, formed the period or cycle of sacred games and those who had gained prizes at all the four received the enviable designation of Periodonices. The honors paid to Olympic victors, on their return to their native city, were prodigious even in the sixth century B.C. and became even more extravagant afterward. We may remark that in the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most illustrious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was wanting. All the three more recent Agones included crowns for exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, chariots and horses.

It was not only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these four great festivals, that the gradual increase of Hellenic family feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of Grecian history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and accessible, attracting guests as well as competitors from beyond the border. The comparative dignity of the city, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, were measured by the numbers, admiration and envy, of the frequenting visitors.

Continued.

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