There were many differences between the four stephanitic games, but none was so marked as inclusion of the mousikos agon, which was never part of the Olympic Games, nor originally of the Nemean Games, but integral to the Pythian and the Isthmian Games. This explains why there are theaters at Delphi and Isthmia (built specifically for the competitions) but none at Olympia or Nemea. In fact the mousikos agon was not added to the Nemean Games until after they transferred to Argos, where there is a theater.
We can best study these musical competitions through examining the program
Before a judge (right). Nike approaches from the left. Red-figure pelike by the Cassel Painter, 450-440 B. c. Leiden, RijksmuseumvoorOudheden, inv. no. RO ii 60.
Seated judge while Nike approaches with a victory ribbon. Note the plektron in the player’s right hand. Red-figure pelike by the Cassel Painter, 440 -430 B. c. Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 1469 (photo; © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts).
Fig. 160 A singer and an aulos player perform on a platform Fig. 161A kithara player performs on a platform in front of a
Of the Pythian Games at Delphi. I must caution, however, that our information about the competition and the musicians who took part is much more limited than for either the gymnikos agon or the hippikos agon. Pausanias (10.9.2; A 60b) expresses the ancient prejudice that accounts for this relative dearth of information: “Most men take no account of the competitors in the musical contests, and I think that they are not worth much trouble.”
The most venerated of the musical competitions at Delphi was the kithara (lyre) singing, in which a musician sang while accompanying himself on the kithara, although it is not always possible to tell from a vase painting whether a contestant is singing to kithara accompaniment or simply playing his instrument. Only when the head of the musician is thrown back in an obvious attitude of singing while he holds a kithara can we be sure what he is doing (fig. 158). We do know that the piece most often performed by the competitors was (not surprisingly) the Pythian Hymn to Apollo, for kithara singing was especially associated with that god.
From the first Pythiad, in 586, the kithara singing was joined by the playing of the aulos, or flute. This was a double pipe (hence the name of the diaulos race) with holes pierced along the sides. We have fragments of auloi made of bone. The performer would blow through reeds, however, so the instrument was clearly more like a modern oboe than a modern flute (fig. 159). The performer held a pipe in each hand, while a strap around his head helped keep the pipes properly positioned in his mouth.
The winner of the aulos competition at the Pythian Games received an extra reward; he would play the flute to accompany the pentathlon at the Olympic Games. Indeed, Pythokritos of Sikyon, who won the aulos at Delphi six times (574-554) not
Only played at Olympia six times, he was honored there with a relief statue showing him holding his flutes. It was sufficiently strange to have a musician honored at Olympia that Pausanias (6.14.9; made specific mention ofthe monument to this
Auletes. Pythokritos is a rare example of a victor in the mousikos agon whose name is still known; Sakadas of Argos, the victor at the first Pythiad, is another.
The first Pythiad also included aulos singing, in which a singer was accompanied by a flute player. To judge from vase paintings, the singer typically was much younger than the aulos player (fig. 160). Although aulos singing became an important competition at the other games, portrayed in art and mentioned in literature, it was only contested once at Delphi. At the second Pythiad, in 582, “they then abolished the aulos singing, whose sound they considered inauspicious, for the notes of the aulos itself were most brooding and the words sung with the aulos were funereal” (Pausanias 10.7.5; A 75). The final event of the mousikos agon at the Pythian Games was kithara playing, which was added in 558 (fig. 161).
All these events took place in the theater at Delphi, and the contestants performed on a platform, as we see in the vase paintings. The platform must have been specially constructed; in the preparations for the Pythian Games of 246 b. c., we learn that a certain Melission was paid one of the larger contract prices for the construction of a pedestal in the Pythian theater (CID 2.139; A 81). The competitors seem to have performed the same piece in each event, and the winner was selected by a panel of judges, who might be susceptible to influence from the audience and, of course, their own prejudices. If there is a single reason for the long-term predominance of the Olympic Games, it is that the subjectivity inherent in the mousikos agon was not present at Olympia, as it was in the Pythian, the Isthmian, and, ultimately, the Nemean Games.
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