The tyrants were great patrons of the four Panhellenic festivals (the Olympic Games at Olympia, the Pythian Games at Delphi, the Isthmian Games on the Isthmus, and the Nemean Games at nemea) and avidly participated in the chariot races in which the financial sponsor, as opposed to the driver, was deemed the victor. Cleisthenes of Sicyon, probably in 576, announced his daughter's marriage at Olympia after winning in the chariot race there (Hdt. VI 126-127). Cleisthenes also won in the chariot races at Delphi (Paus. X 7). Pheidon, the king or "tyrant" of Argos depending on one's point of view (Arist. Pol. 1310b), actually marched on Olympia, occupied it, and celebrated the games himself sometime in the early sixth century (Hdt. VI 127).
Moreover the tyrants commonly instituted new festivals in their own communities. Thus, Cleisthenes founded Pythian Games in Sicyon (Schol. Pindar, Nem. 9 inscr.) while Polycrates was planning to found Delian or Pythian Games on Samos when his death intervened (Suidas, s. v. Tauta soi kai Pythia kai Delia - "Pythian Games and Delian Games are all one to you"). Peisistratus of Athens instituted the Greater Panathenaean Games at Athens ([Arist.], Fr. 637 alt., Rose). The central event here was a torch relay race.
These games were first of all religious festivals in honor of a god or goddess. Besides the entertainment value of the games and the renown which a tyrant gained when he won in an event, the patronage of these festivals - as indeed the erection of temples and dedications at Olympia and Delphi (e. g., that of Cypselus: Hdt. I 14) - helped to emphasize the tyrants' piety and dutifulness towards the gods.
Figure 7.3 The temple of Zeus in Athens. (For scale, note people next to columns which are circa 55 ft high.). Source: William Neuheisel, Http://commons. wikimedia. org/ wiki/File:Temple_of_Olympian_Zeus,_Athens. jpg (accessed 14 January 2013) CC BY 2.0
Polycrates, for example, constructed a large artificial breakwater around the harbor of Samos (Hdt. l. c.; Arist. l. c.). Although the benefit here may not have been immediate, improved infrastructure long-term meant increased revenue from the trade which would pass through the “new and improved” facilities.
The economic benefit from the temples which the tyrants erected or planned to erect was indirect, but the enormous scale of the projects shows that the tyrants viewed them as worth the immediate large outlays. Some projects actually saw completion such as the archaeologically attested sixth-century temples of Athena on the Acropolis and of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis - the Peisistratids presumably had both built. Others ultimately proved too much. The temple of Zeus Olympius (see Figure 7.3) to the southwest of the Acropolis exceeded the resources of the city of Athens, and the temple, despite work on it in the early second century BC under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes I, stood uncompleted down into Roman times when the Emperor Hadrian, with the resources of the entire Roman Empire at his disposal, had it finished (Arist. Pol., 1313b; Vitruvius, VII 15; Paus. I 18). On Samos Polycrates commissioned the biggest temple in the Greek world, which even in its incomplete state was still impressive enough (Hdt. III 60; Arist. Pol. 1313b).
World History
