The DAT EESTABLiSHEDby ancient scholars for the beginning of the Olympic Games was (in our system) 776 b. c. They arrived at this year by fixing a sequential list of victors at Olympia, after which they counted backward in quadrennial units. The strict historical validity of the 776 date has been the subject of intense debate in modern times; our concern here is more with its general accuracy for the emergence of Greek athletics as a whole. When did the customs described in the previous chapter evolve? Where were they generated?
Scholars have sought the origins of Greek athletics in the older cultures of Mesopotamia and especially Egypt because of the influential contacts between Egypt and Greece that were already present in the Bronze Age. It is clear that the initial inspiration for large-scale sculpture and monumental architecture came to Greece from Egypt in the period around 600, but we look in vain for indisputable evidence of such borrowings in the area of athletics. The art of Mesopotamia and of Egypt certainly shows evidence of sporting activities, but the sense that these are competitions among equals is missing, nor do the events parallel many of the competitions in the Greek program. Most obvious, the men in these depictions of what may be sporting events are clothed. Consequently, Greek athletics have been understood as a peculiarly and uniquely Greek institution.
We may next look for the origins of Greek athletics in Bronze Age Greece. The brilliant Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of the second millennium B. c. are clearly the ancestors of Greek culture of the following millennium, and the Myce-naeans wrote and spoke an early form of the Greek language. Further, the myths of classical Greece are set in the labyrinths of Minoan Crete and the familial bloodbaths of Mycenae. The Greeks themselves looked back to those civilizations as the source of their own. Were athletics part of those roots? Their presence in the Homeric poems suggest that they were.
Fig. 22 A bull-leaper clinging to the bull’s horn. Terra-cotta figurine, Middle Minoan I (2000-1800 B. c.), Herakleion, Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 5052.
Fig. 21 Bull-leaping. Gold signet ring, 1550-1500 B. c. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. ae 2237.
This is not the place to discuss the Homeric Question, starting with whether Homer even existed and including the issue of how he (or she or they) learned about the centuries-earlier events described in the poems. More important is the fact that the prominent place of the funeral games of Patroklos in book 23 of the Iliad (A 1) suggests that Homer and his audience could believe that their athletic practices came down to them from the Mycenaean world. So, too, the informal competitions of the Phaeacians portrayed in the Odyssey (8.97-253; A 2) reveal a well-developed athletic program. Taken together, the Homeric poems share with the later Olympics competitions in footracing, wrestling, boxing, chariot racing, and the pentathlon events of the javelin, diskos, and long jump. There are, to be sure, non-Olympic events as well. The Iliad, as befits its military setting, has competitions in archery and an armed duel (hoplo-machia), while the Phaeacians compete in dancing and singing. The centerpiece of Odysseus’s return to Ithaka is an archery competition. Despite these differences, the similarities of the Olympic and Homeric programs are striking.
Archaeology, however, tells a very different story. Minoan culture was clearly much concerned with bull-fighting (also called bull-leaping). This event was portrayed in many different media: wall paintings, carvings on gold rings (fig. 21), terracotta figurines (fig. 22). The popularity of the sport is evident, but it is equally evident that it was performed by trained, clothed specialists (at least when it was done correctly; compare figures 21 and 22). It has no relevance to the athletics of classical Greece. In the same vein as bull-leaping, with an equal lack of relevance to our subject, are the depictions of acrobats and tumblers on many Minoan artifacts (fig. 23).
The major event in the funeral games of Patroklos is the chariot race. More space in the poem is devoted to this race than to all the other competitions combined. Bronze Age archaeology certainly confirms the existence of chariots, but they are shown in the context of hunting or warfare (fig. 24). The only depiction that might
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Fig. 23 Acrobats performing synchronized handstands. Chalcydony seal stone, 1550 -1500 B. c. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. 1938.955.
Fig. 24 Warrior bearing shield and spear riding in a chariot. Haematite seal stone. Late Helladic IIA (1500-1450 B. C.). Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 1770 (photo: © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts).
Possibly show chariot racing appears on a fragment of a late Bronze Age amphora (fig. 25). As restored, the scene appears to show a race, but other restorations are possible. It is not incontrovertible evidence for chariot racing in the Mycenaean world.
The Bronze Age archaeology of Greece has produced no depictions of footraces, diskos or javelin throwing, jumping, or wrestling. Possible evidence seems to exist for boxing. This consists of a restored fresco from Thera and of the so-called Boxers’ Rhyton from Haghia Triada in Minoan Crete (figs. 26, 27). The rhyton is also heavily restored, but it seems clear that the second of four horizontal bands of decoration portrays bull-leaping, as we would expect to see on an object from Minoan Crete. The third band shows helmeted figures striding forward with their left arms extended in a protective position while their right arms are drawn back to stab an opponent; the ground is strewn with fallen bodies. The bottom band shows striding figures preparing to thrust knives into the bodies of their fallen enemies. None of these have anything to do with the athletics of ancient Greece. The uppermost band, however, portrays men in attitudes that suggest boxing, and even though the evidence is not strong, we might conclude that boxing was known in the Minoan world.
Boxing notwithstanding, there are significant differences between the picture of athletics produced by archaeology and the competitions described in the Iliad and Odyssey. These can be summarized in tabular form. The Olympic events are listed with the date when each became a part of the program.
Fig. 25 Chariot race? Restored drawing from an amphora from Tiryns, Late Helladic llIC (1200-1100 B. C.). After S, Laser, Sport und Spiel: Arcliaeologia Homerica, vol. y. T (Gottingen, 1987), fig 2.
Present Evidence from
In Odyssey Bronze Age archaeology
Event Present in Present
Historical era in Iliad [date at Olympia]
Fig. 26 Possible depiction ofboxing (top band) on a steatite-carved rhyton from Haghia Triada, Late Minoan lA (ca. 1500 B. C.). Herakleion, Archaeological Museum; inv. no. 409.
It is clear that athletics in the Homeric poems coincide much more closely with the program at Olympia than with the events that can be documented archaeologically in the Bronze Age. Thus, even though the stories of the Trojan War have their basis in the realities of the Bronze Age, Homer’s picture of athletics is not accurate for that period. Indeed, when Achilles sets out prizes to honor his dead friend Patroklos, he includes for the diskos and archery competitions pig-iron, which will give the winner “a supply of iron for five years, and neither his shepherd nor his plowman will have to go to the city for iron, but will have it already at home.” In other words, we are alerted to the anachronistic use of iron for tools in a supposed Bronze Age context — another clue that the athletics of Homer are not those of the Mycenaeans.
In addition, the prizes for the chariot race include a “tripod with ears” and for the wrestling a “huge tripod to be set over the fire.” Tripod cauldrons are well known
Fig. 27 Drawing of the restored Haghia Triada rhyton. Drawing by Ruben Santos.
In vase paintings of the sixth century (see, for example, figs. 32,162,164) and are documented in the seventh on a seal matrix (fig. 28) and by the dozens of actual cauldrons found at Olympia. These bronze tripod cauldrons date to the eighth and seventh centuries, the time the Homeric poems were composed, not from the Bronze Age period five hundred or more years earlier that the poems purport to describe. They continue into the sixth century as is documented by, among other evidence, the story of Hip-pokrates, the father of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratos (see Herodotus 1.59). While at Olympia, Hippokrates had filled some tripod cauldrons with meat and water, which miraculously began to boil before a fire was set under them — an omen for him, an elucidation for us.
We must conclude that the picture of athletes in the Iliad and the Odyssey reflects the age of Homer himself, not the period of the Trojan War. To be sure, Homer’s ath-
Fig. 28 A tripod cauldron set as the prize for boxing. Seal matrix, 7th century b. c. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. 1895.130.
Letes do not compete in the nude, and they are awarded prizes for second and even last place, so the picture does not describe the Classical period. Nonetheless, we can safely see in Homer a depiction of athletics of the eighth and seventh centuries, a period of transition from the depopulated Dark Ages to the creative and productive sixth and fifth centuries.
What happened between the Golden Age of Mycenae and the Homeric period that resulted in the athletic image of the Iliad, and the ultimate development of Greek athletics? This is the clue to the origin of Greek athletics, and it lies in the Dorian invasion that followed the fall of Mycenae. We know very little about the Return of the Sons of Herakles, as the ancients called this event, and scholars have expended much energy and ingenuity trying to understand it. At the least, we can say that one result of the Dorian invasion was that the Mycenaean Greeks migrated to Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor, while the whole of the Peloponnesos was converted into a Dorian peninsula. These Dorians in general, and the Spartans and Arkadians in particular, were reckoned to be exceptionally vigorous and warlike, with a highly developed sense of competition. It is surely no coincidence that three of the four Panhellenic centers — Olympia, Nemea, and Isthmia ~ are in the Peloponnesos, and the fourth, Delphi, is in another Dorian area (see fig. 2). Athletics did not grow up among the lonians, who were originally Mycenaeans, and were never as popular in the Greek east as in the west.
Greek athletics, therefore, were born under strong Doric influence during the Geometric period. This was the time when the unbroken chain of depictions of athletics begins (fig. 29). It was also the time when a population explosion on the Greek mainland resulted in the colonization of other parts of the Mediterranean, especially
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Fig. 29 Wrestling. Amphora, Late Geometric (ca. 750 B. c.). Argus, Archaeological Museum, inv, no. G 209 (photo: author).
In Sicily and Magna Graecia. Most of those western colonies were Doric, and they were heavily represented at the Olympic Games.
At the same time athletics and colonization were developing, so was the polis. The city-state was to become the fundamental political unit of the Classical Greek world, and was essential to the development of the Panhellenic athletic festivals.
The Homeric poems give us an image, incomplete and not in full focus, of those earliest athletic competitions. We see that they are local and informal. They are not part of a recurring festival, but take place occasionally and in response to a particular stimulus. The stimulus can be a funeral, like the games of Patroklos. Funeral games represent a reaffirmation of life in the face of death, a revival that provides the underlying religious basis for all such games. But the stimulus can simply be a more general expression of life, the desire of youth to exercise its vigor that we see in the informal “pickup” games of the Phaeacians in the Odyssey. In both cases, athletics represent a relaxation, a rest from the daily routine of work or war; they are not a training for battle in any sense. Just as with the voluntary subjection to flogging and its implicit acceptance of equality before the law, this quality of ancient Greek athletics shows, and perpetuates, something of the national character.
If the Homeric poems describe at least part of the nature of competitions in the Geometric and Orientalizing periods, they also indicate that athletics had not yet evolved into the form we shall see in later times. I noted that all the competitors received prizes. These prizes are significant, for they reveal the relative social status of the competitions. We have seen that more space in the Iliad is devoted to the chariot race than to all the other competitions put together, and it is not surprising that the collective value of the prizes for the chariot race is greater than that for the other competitions. These facts stem from a fundamental aspect of chariot racing: it cost more than the other competitions and so was open only to the wealthy. As we shall see, it always retained a flavor of aristocracy, which was never very strong in the gymnikos agon and which quickly disappeared almost entirely. Indeed, it is telling that Odysseus, who is clearly one of the poorer Greek kings at Troy and must rely more upon his wits than his wealth, does not participate in the chariot race but does compete in (and win) the footrace and the wrestling. Men from any social or economic background could compete in those events.
The prizes, the athla, in the games of Patroklos can also be understood as less important in and of themselves and more a means by which Achilles honors and glorifies the memory of his fallen comrade. The prizes serve as reminders of Patroklos and will give him a kind of immortality. At the same time, the prizes are not a means of livelihood for the competitors, whose socioeconomic status does not depend upon winning games. Indeed, although the five prizes offered by Achilles for the chariot race reveal something of their perceived value in that society, they also have a symbolic value:
1st prize - “a woman faultless in her work and a tripod with ears holding twenty-two measures”:
Id prize - “a six-year-old unbroken mare carrying an unborn mule foal”;
3rd prize - “a beautiful unfired cauldron holding four measures, still new and shiny”;
4th prize - “two gold talents”;
5th prize - “a two-handled unfired bowl.”
We would probably not rank these prizes the same way Homer did. The two talents of gold, for example, by the standards of the sixth century b. c. must have weighed about 52 kilograms. Whatever the value, real or relative, the prizes are most important as a reflection of the skill and arete (virtue or excellence) of the athlete. Note the actions of Antilochos, the second-prize winner in the chariot race. Achilles proposes that Eume-los, who came to grief when his chariot crashed, be awarded the second prize as a consolation. Antilochos responds, “Give him a prize, Achilles, whatever you want, even better than mine, but I’ll fight the man who wants to take my mare away from me.” Antilochos demands the prize not because of its economic value but because it is rightfully his and represents his skill as a charioteer. After he gets the mare, he turns around and gives her to Menelaos. The prize is his to dispose of as he wishes, but the glory symbolized by the prize remains with him.
Throughout the games described in the Iliad, the general impression emerges of a society that lived outdoors, possessed vigorously good physical condition, and delighted in displaying physical abilities as an expression of arete. There are no team events (also a fundamental characteristic of later Greek athletics): the emphasis is exclusively on the individual and his competitive capabilities. We should also note the informality of these games. They are not highly organized and make use of no special equipment or uniforms. A tree stump is used for a turning post and a road filled with ruts becomes a chariot course. The footrace course is covered with animal dung, and the diskos is an amorphous lump of iron. In the games of the Phaeacians, Odysseus throws a diskos that is larger than his competitors’. There is no standardization.
And a human quality pervades these competitions as well. These competitors could be competitors anywhere, at any time. We see it in the dangerous driving of An-tilochos, who forces Menelaos off the road after “encouraging” his horses with the threat of turning them into dog meat. Likewise, the bickering of Ajax and Idomeneus over who was in the lead as the horses came out of the far turn can be heard in sports bars today: Idomeneus stood up and called to the Argives, “Friends, am I the only one who sees the horses, or do you see them too? It seems to me that other horses are leading, another charioteer ahead. The mares of Eumelos must have come to grief on the plain, for I saw them running in front around the terma [turning post], but now they are nowhere to be seen, and I have looked over the whole Trojan plain. Perhaps the reins slipped away from the charioteer, and he could not hold them around the terma, and did not make the turn. I think that he must have been thrown out there and his chariot wrecked, and his mares bolted away wildly. But do get up and see for yourselves, for I cannot make it out clearly. I think that strong Diomedes is in the lead.”
And swift Ajax, son of Oileus, spoke shamefully to him, “Idomeneus, can’t you hold your wind? The horses are still far out on the plain. You are not the youngest of us, and your eyes are no better than ours, but you must always blow on and on. There is no need for your wind since there are others here better than you. Those are the same mares in front as before, and the same Eumelos who holds the reins behind them.”
Then the lord of the Cretans angrily answered him to his face, “Ajax, although you are the best in abuse and stupidity, you are the worst of the Argives with that donkey’s brain of yours. Now put your money where your mouth is and bet me a tripod cauldron. "We’ll have Agamemnon, son of Atreus, hold the bet so that you will pay up when you find out which horses are in front.”
So he spoke, and swift Ajax jumped up again in anger to retort, and the quarrel would have gone on had Achilles not risen and said to them, “Ajax and Idomeneus, be quiet. This is not becoming, and if others were acting like you, you yourselves would be angry with them. Sit down with the others and watch for the horses. They are into the stretch and will be here soon, and then you can see for yourselves which are first and which are second.”
Note that their bet was not on the outcome of the race but on the accuracy of their eyesight. This is another characteristic of ancient Greek athletics: gambling by spectators over who will win is nowhere attested in our sources. A man might gamble on his own skill or his own arete, but not on that of another. Each man has something to say about his own performance, but he will not trust another man and has no faith in another’s arete.
Again, the human quality of athletics, its emphasis on the individual, appears in the footrace:
Ajax was in front, but Odysseus was running so close behind that his feet were hitting Ajax’s tracks before the dust could settle back into them, and his breath was hitting the back of Ajax’s neck. All the Achaians were cheering his effort to win, shouting for him to pour it on. But when they were in the stretch, Odysseus said a silent prayer to the gray-eyed Athena, “Hear me. Goddess; be kind to me, and come with extra strength for my feet.”
So he prayed, and Pallas Athena heard him, and lightened his limbs, feet and arms too. As they were making their final spring for the prize, Ajax slipped and fell (Athena tripped him) where dung was scattered on the ground from bellowing oxen, and he got the stuff in his mouth and up his nose. So Odysseus took away the mixing bowl, because he finished first, and the ox went to Ajax. He stood with his hands on the horns of the ox, spitting out dung, and said to the Argives, “Oh, shit! That goddess tripped me, that goddess who has always stood by Odysseus and cared for him like a mother.”
They all roared in laughter at him, and then came Antilochos to take the prize for last place, and grinned as he spoke to the Argives, “Friends, you all know well the truth of what I say, that still the gods continue to favor the older men. Look here, Ajax is older than I, if only by a little, but Odysseus is out of another age and truly one of the ancients. But his old age is, as they say, a lusty one. I don’t think any Achaian could match his speed, except Achilles.”
The funeral games of Patroklos celebrate life in the face of death, but more than anything else they express a basic joy of living. As the individual athlete exerts himself physically, mentally, and emotionally in the competition, a statement is made: “I am alive!”
Perhaps this is the origin of Greek athletics.
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