Athens was not the only city to host games that put an emphasis on the good citizen as soldier and man of letters. Larissa in Thessaly provides us with another example with its Eleutheria (Freedom) Games in honor of Zeus. These games were apparently not open to other Greeks; only citizens of Larissa participated. An inscription from about the time of Christ lists the events and the names of their winners (IGIX 2,531; A 124). Many of these are standard competitions of the gymnikos agon: stadion and di-aulos races, the pyx, and the pankration, for both men and boys. There were also competitions for trumpeters and heralds. Competitions in literary composition and rhetoric were held, but none in music — a significant difference with the Panathenaia. The program also contained competitions that we recognize from the civic games of the Panathenaia: a torch race for boys, the apobates, and cavalry marksmanship, as well as a cavalry charge, an infantry charge, and infantry marksmanship and archery. All these competitions had individual rather than team winners.
There are also two competitions that emphasize the special interests of Larissa, just as the trireme race emphasized the naval concentration of the Athenians. Larissa, like Thessaly as a whole, was famous for its horses. It is therefore curious that the Eleutheria did not seem to have any of the standard horse races, but it did have a torch race on horseback. Even more characteristic was the taurotheria (bull hunt), which is vividly described by various ancient authors (A 125-126) and appears on the coins of Larissa (fig. 231). A rider would chase a bull around an enclosure until the animal became tired; then the rider would guide his horse alongside the bull “so that horse and bull mixed breath and sweat together.... People at a distance could believe that the heads of the two animals grew from a single body, and they cheered... this strange hippotauric synoris” (Heliodoros 10.29; A 126). Then the rider would jump from his horse onto the neck of the bull and use his weight to force the bull’s head down until the knees buckled and the bull rolled over with its horns stuck in the ground and its hooves flailing at the air.
This sounds a lot like a rodeo competition, and it surely reflects the values of the local society in promoting the talents of their “cowboys.” But the competition appears in a context which is otherwise similar in its essentials to the games of other cities. In other words, civic athletics are more concerned with the particular needs of a particular polls than are the international competitions of the Panhellenic sites.
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