In the distant past, the games were part of religious rites dedicated to gods on snow-clad Mt. Olympus to substitute peace for war and a truce during the festivities.
— Richard Stout, Christian Science Monitor, January 14,1980
Aside from its all-too-common confusion between Mount Olympos and Olympia— which puts nude athletes shivering on those snow-clad slopes—the sentiment expressed above is one most of us would like to believe. To a large extent it was even true. We may doubt that the games were originally planned as a substitute for war, but they certainly developed into a positive political force in the Panhellenic world during the time of the festivals. Nonetheless, one of the ironies of the ancient Olympics is still with us today. The games brought all the Greeks together (to the exclusion of all non-Greeks, to be sure) and, in some sense, promoted international (that is, inter-polis) communication and understanding, albeit on a much more restricted level than today. By bringing together citizens of different city-states at a religious festival focused on athletics, the political rivalries that divided them could be ignored for a few days. At the same time, by their insistence that competitors be certified as legitimate representatives of a particular city-state, and in the proclamation of both each competitor’s affiliation at the start of the events and the victor’s city-state at the end, the games promoted competition and rivalry between the city-states.
This competition is still expressed today: athletes have to be certified representatives of their countries, and these affiliations are proclaimed at each event. And the lists ranking countries by the number of medals won had their counterpart in ancient Greece as well. Many cases are known of an athlete being hired to represent another city, to the dismay of his original hometown. One of the first recorded is that of Asty-los, a double Olympic victor (in the stadion and diaulos) in three successive Olympiads (488, 484, and 480; Pausanias 6.13.1; A 224), who also won the hoplitodromos in 476
(POxy 11.222; A 129). Astylos first competed as a citizen of his native Kroton, but he subsequently ran for Syracuse. After his switch, citizens in Kroton pulled down his statue and turned his house into a prison.
Syracuse was notorious for trying to lure star athletes onto its national team. Antipater, winner of the boxing for boys in 388, resisted the temptation of a bribe to become a Syracusan (Pausanias 6.2.6; A 225), but Dikon did not (Pausanias 6.3.11; A 226), as we know from the three statues of him at Olympia, one for each of his victories there. The first victory was in the boys’ stadion in 392, and the statue identified him as Dikon, son of Kallibrotos, from Kaulonia. But the two subsequent victor’s statues listed him as being from Syracuse. The first of this latter group surely was erected after his victory in 388, an Olympiad that, as we saw in Chapter 6, was particularly scandal ridden. The practice was not confined to Syracuse; in the Olympiad of 384 the dolichos was won by Sotades of Crete (Pausanias 6.18.6; A 227). At the following Olympiad, however, Sotades took a bribe and announced that he was from Ephesos. It is not surprising that the Cretans exiled him.
An athlete might change his citizenship for reasons other than bribery, but these were also political. Ergoteles of Knossos had been exiled because of internal civic strife; he moved to Himera, in Sicily (Pausanias 6.4.11; A 228). When he won the dolichos twice at Olympia (472 and 464), he was identified as being from Himera, which was also listed as his hometown on his victory statue.
The case of Kroton, a Greek city in southern Italy, is noteworthy. The absolute dominance of athletes from Kroton in the gymnikos agon during the sixth and early fifth centuries has long been a source of wonder to students of ancient athletics. Between 588 and 488 there were twenty-six victors in the stadion race at Olympia. Since these victors gave their names to their Olympiad, we know who they all were and where they came from. And eleven of those twenty-six runners came from Kroton. Kroton’s next closest rivals are Elis and Kerkyra, which each provided two victors in the stadion during this period.
From this same period we know the names of the victors at Olympia in seventy-one different events of the gymnikos agon; twenty of them are Krotoniates. That a single polls could produce some 28 percent of the Olympic victors is phenomenal — and let us not forget that one of Kroton’s most famous athletes, Phayllos, skipped the Olympics to fight against the Persians. Since he never won at Olympia, I did not count him in these statistics. Further, the most famous medical trainer of the same period, Demokedes, was also from Kroton. As an ancient proverb had it, “He who finishes last of the Krotoniates is first among the rest of the Greeks” (Strabo 6.1.12).
It is no wonder that modern scholars have labeled Kroton a “jock factory,” but the source of this Olympic dominance is not clear. Was it something in the water? Was Kroton buying athletes? Were its training methods so far advanced over those of other states? We have seen the violent reaction of the people of Kroton when one of
Their own, Astylos, was hired away by Syracuse. In the next chapter I shall advance my own theory for this dominance, but whatever its source, its result was that Kroton’s fame and influence were spread far and wide, and it is reasonable to assume that Kro-toniates found this result desirable and devised policies to bring it about. Athletics were clearly a tool of ancient political aggrandizement — just as they are today.
As we have seen, the city-states felt that victories in the games were so important that they gave the victor a free meal every day for the rest of his life for each victory he won. They also granted winners a front-row seat (proedria) at local games and frequently offered tax exemptions as well as exemptions from other services to the polis. This state of affairs already existed by around 525 B. C., as we learn from Xenophanes’ criticism of it (fragment 2; A 229);
Even if a man should win a victory in the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in the footraces or the pentathlon or the pale or the painful pyx or in the dreadful struggle which men call the pankmtion, even if he should become a most glorious symbol for his fellow citizens, and win proedria at the games and his meals at public expense as well as some especially valuable gift from the state, even if he should win in the horse races, and even if he should accomplish all of these things and not just one of them, he still would not be as valuable as I am. For my wisdom is a better thing than the strength of men or horses. The current custom of honoring strength more than wisdom is neither proper nor just. For the city-state is not made a bit more lawabiding for having a good boxer or a pentathlete or a wrestler or a fast runner, even though running may be the most honored event in the games of man. There is little joy for a state when an athlete wins at Olympia, for he does not fill the state’s coffers.
Xenophanes was swimming upstream with his criticisms, for there are many indications that the state thought that it was made a great deal better for having an Olympic victor, even if its coffers were not filled thereby. In fact, coins were frequently used to advertise victories at Olympia and other games. Philip of Macedon displayed his synods victory at Delphi on a gold issue, and his Olympic victory in the keles (supposedly reported to him on the same day as the birth of his son, Alexander) on a long-lived silver issue (fig. 283). This silver coin was so popular that it continued to be issued in Macedonia many years after Philip’s death. Elis, which administered the Olympics, also used the games as a promotional tool, issuing coins with the cult statue of Olympian Zeus on one side. And a nicely minted series from Kos with a diskobolos and a tripod cauldron advertised local games dedicated to Apollo (fig, 284).
If the games were ever a means of promoting international understanding and peace, we would expect to find that relationships between the sanctuaries where the
Fig. 283 Silver tetradrachm of Philip II of Macedon referring to his victory in the keles in 356 B. c.
(note the palm branch in the jockey’s hand), minted 315-295 B. c.atAmphipolis. Athens, Numismatic Museum, inv. no, 1383 (photo: © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts).
Fig. 284 Tridrachma of Kos showing a diskobolos with tripod cauldron, 480-450 b. c. Athens, Numismatic Museum, inv, no. 1903/4 K0h (photo: © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts).
Games were held was tranquil, and usually they were. Indeed, Olympia and Delphi seem to have had a mutual support system. Recall that the winner in the flute playing at the Pythian Games became the honorary auletes for the jumping event of the pentathlon at the next Olympic Games. And when Kallippos of Athens was caught bribing his competitors at the Olympic Games in 332 B. c. Delphi refused all Athenians access to the Pythian Oracle until his fine was paid to Olympia (Pausanias 5.21.5; A 236).
Nonetheless, there are signs of stress between some of the sanctuaries. We are told that the crown of victory at Isthmia was changed from pine to wild celery because of Isthmia’s jealous rivalry with Herakles, which must be a reference to Nemea and the Nemean Games (Plutarch, Moralia 675D - 6/6F; A 235). The most serious and long-lived rivalry, however, was between Olympia and Isthmia, and it involved the “curse ofMoline” (Pausanias 5.2.1-2; A 232).
The story begins with a warbetween Herakles and Augeas of Elis. With the help of the sons of Aktor, Augeas was routing the forces of Herakles, when it was time to announce the sacred truce (sponde) for the Isthmian Games. The sons of Aktor went as theoroi (delegates who announced the truce) to the games, but they were ambushed and killed by Herakles in the territory of Kleonai, which administered the Nemean Games on behalf of Argos. Moline, the sister of the youths (in some traditions, the mother) demanded justice from the Argives since Herakles was living in their territory at Tiryns. The Argives refused. The Eleans next tried to persuade the Corinthians to exclude the Argives from the Isthmian truce. After the Corinthians also refused, Moline put a curse on her countrymen, swearing that they would never compete at the Isthmian Games. Convoluted as this story is, with many layers of possible significance, the one sure element is that Elean athletes did not, in fact, compete at Isthmia. We know, for example, that Hysmon the pentathlete won at Olympia and at Nemea around 384, and another pentathlete, Timon, won at all the games around 200 (Pausanias 6.3.9 and 6.16.2; A 233 and A 234, respectively). Neither ever won at Isthmia, however, because neither ever competed there.
Indeed, an Elean was excluded, by birth, from the ranks of the periodonikai (circuit winners), and there must have been a continuing resentment of the Isthmian Games by Elis. Modern scholars have felt so sorry for the Elean athletes that they have created a new category: the three-quarter periodonikes. The absence of Elean athletes from the Isthmian Games must have made a noticeable gap in the competition, and an undercurrent of political interest is probably to be recognized in it.
There could also be rivalries between city-states and the festivals. At least, this is one way to interpret the Olympics of the Macedonians, set up at the base of Mount Olympos but modeled on the games at Olympia. More explicit is the case of Sybaris, which tried to eclipse the Olympics around 512 b. c. (Athenaeus 12.521F: A 237). The city-state offered huge cash prizes for games it put on at the same time as the Olympics in an attempt to lure the best athletes. (It didn’t work.)
More typical are the numerous instances of political friction that found expression at the stephanitic centers of supposed international understanding. Not surprisingly, many of these concerned the city-state that administered the games. For example, in 420 B. C., the Olympic truce was broken by the Lakedaimonians (Spartans), at least according to the Eleans. The Eleans assessed a fine against the Lakedaimonians as demanded by Olympic law, but when the latter refused to pay, “they were excluded from the sanctuary, the sacrifice, and the contests, and sacrificed by themselves at home” (Thucydides 5.49 and Pausanias 6.2.2: A 238). However, Lichas the son of Arke-silaos “was flogged by the rhabdouchoi because when his team of horses won but was announced as belonging to the people of Boiotia since he had no right to compete, he had run up and tied [a tainia (victory ribbon) on] the charioteer to make clear that the chariot was his. Thus everyone was in a great state of fear, and it seemed that something was going to happen. But the Lakedaimonians kept their peace and the celebration was completed.”
The Olympics of 420 were thus preserved, but bitterness lingered among the Lakedaimonians, and in 399/8 (not an Olympic year) they invaded the Aids (Xenophon, Hellenika 3.2.21-22). The Eleans defended themselves hy climbing onto the tops of the temples and other tall buildings. One Elean soldier died up there, and his corpse was discovered 550 years later in the rafters of the Temple of Hera, where it had been preserved safe from heat and cold alike. The corpse was then buried with its weapons outside the Altis (Pausanias 5.20.5; A 239). After this battle, Lichas set up a statue of himself as winner of the 420 tethrippon, but the official Elean records continued to list the polis of Thebes as the winner.
It cannot be a coincidence that shortly before the Olympics of 420 Elis had concluded a treaty with Athens, Argos, and Mantinea against the Spartans. Hence the Elean excommunication of the Lakedaimonians was surely influenced by the hostilities that had been openly declared between the two city-states as part of the ongoing Athenian-Spartan conflict. And the Olympiads preceding the games of 420 show another aspect of this rivalry. In 448 Spartans began a domination in the tethrippon competitions that lasted for the next eight Olympiads. The single non-Spartan winner came in 436, when Megakles of Athens took the victory. As we have seen, the tethrippon always had a special function in the games as a way to display wealth and power. The stadion victor might give his name to the Olympiad, but the tethrippon victor acquired a particular aura that reflected on his hometown. The score in 420, then (Spartans 7, Athenians 1), must have galled the Athenians. It was at the next Olympiad, in 416, that Alkibiades entered his seven chariots, finally breaking the stranglehold of the Lakedaimonians.
Alkibiades, and probably many other Greeks, saw his victory as a sign of Athens’s continued power and a forecast of an Athenian victory in the Peloponnesian War. So it is that the Athenian Alkibiades can claim, according to Thucydides (6.16.2),
My deeds, which make me the object of public outcry, actually bring glory not only to my ancestors and myself but also to my country, and this glory is mixed with practical advantage as well. The Greeks who had been hoping that our city was exhausted by the war came to think of our power as even greater than it is because of my magnificent embassy at Olympia. I entered seven tethrippa, a number never before entered by a private citizen, and I came in first, second, and fourth.
Politics and political violence were not unique to Olympia. The Nemean Games were removed from Nemea after a destruction that can be dated to about 415 B. c. The violence is documented by a widespread layer of architectural debris mixed with ash and carbon, discolored stone blocks, and vitrified roof tiles, all indicating that a fire was a central feature. Another feature, even more central, were the dozens of bronze arrowheads and iron spear points indicating that the destruction had human origins. Through archaeology we have retrieved evidence of violence that is recorded in none of our extant ancient authors, but written sources do tell us that the military maneuvering of the Spartans in campaigns against Argos in 419/8 and 415/4 included forays through Nemea (Thucydides 5.58-60 and 6.95). Either of these could have been the occasion of the destruction, which did not necessarily take place during the games, although it played an important role in their history.
More clearly described in the written sources and documented in the archaeology are the disastrous events of 390 at Isthmia. The Argives had pushed their frontiers
Until they included Corinth within the city limits of Argos, and they and their Corinthian sympathizers had gone to Isthmia to celebrate the Isthmian Games. The Spartan king Agesilaos suddenly appeared on the scene with his army augmented by the Corinthians who had refused to accept the Argives. The Argive sympathizers left in fright, and the Corinthian exiles conducted the sacrifices to Poseidon and then put on the games. As soon as they left, the Argive sympathizers returned and celebrated the Isthmian Games all over again. “And in that year some athletes lost twice and others were twice proclaimed victors____During the night four days later it became clear
That the Temple of Poseidon was burning, but no one saw who started the fire” (Xenophon, Hellenika 4.5.1-2.4; A 240).
Perhaps even more egregious was the armed battle in the Altis during the Olympic Games of 364 (Xenophon, Hellenika 7.4.28; A 241). The Arkadians and their allies had captured Olympia the previous year, and when it became time for the games, they prepared to celebrate them. During the pentathlon the Eleans, who were not known as particularly warlike or militarily gifted, suddenly invaded the sanctuary and pushed the Arkadians back across the Altis until they had suffered so many losses that they retired. The Arkadians continued the games, but the Eleans refused to acknowledge the result and referred to those games as an Anolympiad (NonOlympiad). The Arkadians subsequently relinquished control of Olympia, but the deaths suffered during the games remained part of the history of the site.
More than a century later, in 235, another violation of the truce occurred, this time in association with the Nemean Games. The Nemean Games had been moved to Argos in 271, but a political leader and an enemy of Argos, Aratos of Sikyon, decided that he would run games at Nemea as an alternative to the games at Argos (Plutarch, Aratos 28.3 -4; A 242). Aratos controlled the territory north of Argos, and he captured and sold into slavery any athlete he caught traveling through that territory to compete in the Nemean Games at Argos rather than at the Nemean Games at Nemea. This was reckoned a great sacrilege against the truce, and we have to feel sorry for the athletes who were caught in the middle of the political conflict between Aratos and Argos.
In addition to such episodes of politically inspired violence at the sanctuaries, the athletic festival centers were also used to celebrate military victories by one city-state over another. There are many examples; perhaps the following will suffice. In 457 the Spartans defeated the Athenians and their allies at the Battle of Tanagra. This victory was celebrated by the dedication of a shield at the top of the pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The shield was mounted on a base bearing the following inscription:
The Temple has a golden shield from Tanagra,
The Lakedaimonians and their allies dedicated it;
A “gift” from Argives and Athenians and lonians
A tithe from victory in war. [Pausanias 5.10.4; A 243]
It seems unlikely that much international understanding or peace was inspired in the defeated “contributors” who passed beneath this inscription on their way to see the cult statue of Zeus.
At Delphi the Athenians, in their turn, built a stoa from the booty they gained in a battle, probably in 429. The dedications within the stoa included the prows of ships and shields, which were listed as victory dedications from Elis, Lakedaimonia, Sikyon, Megara, Pellene in Achaia, Ambrakia, Leukas, and Corinth (Pausanias 10.11.6; A 244). Were the citizens of those cities filled with warm and tender thoughts about the Athenians as they walked up the Sacred Way at Delphi to the Temple of Apollo?
Of all the cities and people who used the athletic festival centers for political purposes, none was more successful than Philip II of Macedon. His activities began on an innocuous note when he celebrated his Olympic victory in the keles on his coins. Philip’s status as an Olympic victor was enhanced by two subsequent victories in the tethrippon. Yet another equestrian victory, this time in the synoris, was celebrated on a gold series (see fig. 15 5). Although it is not certain whether this victory was at Olympia or at Delphi, the propaganda value is clear. Philip was a major player at— and with — the games.
Philip was also a protector of Olympic tradition and law, as we see in the case of Phrynon of Athens. Phrynon was on his way to the Olympic Games in 348 when he was seized by Philip’s troops during the Sacred Month and robbed of all his possessions. When remonstrances were made to Philip, he “received them in a kindly and friendly way and returned to Phrynon everything that his soldiers had robbed and more in addition from his own pocket, and apologized that his soldiers had not known that it was the Sacred Month” (Demosthenes, De falsa legatione, Hypoth. 335; A 89).
The next step in Philip’s campaign to use the athletic centers was gaining de facto control of Delphi. On behalf of the Amphiktyonic Council, Philip defeated the city-state of Phokis, which had taken over the Sanctuary of Apollo. The council “chose” Philip because in his takeover of the lands of Thessaly he had come to control half its members. Now, after his military victory, the Olympic victor was given Phokis’s seat on the council, solidifying his power. He presided over the Pythian Games of 346, and it was probably at that time that his statue was erected at Delphi. Subsequently, his henchmen ran Delphi on his behalf. One of the most prominent of these was Daochos of Pharsalos, a descendant of Olympic victors, as he proudly proclaimed in statue dedications (see figs. 182 -183). Another of Philip’s friends, Epichares of Sikyon, supplied wood for the reconstruction of the Temple of Apollo (FD IlD 36.6.8; Demosthenes, Corona [18] 295). Not surprisingly, Demosthenes complained that the Pythia was Philippizing (Plutarch, Demosthenes 20.1).
The ultimate value of Philip’s maneuvering came in 339, when the Amphiktyonic Council, which controlled Delphi (but was controlled by Philip), invited Philip to lead the Fourth Sacred War. Philip’s victory the following year in the Battle of
Fig. 285 Reconstruction of the Philippeion in the northwestern corner of the Altis at Olympia with the gate to the gymnasion at the left and the western end of the Temple of Hera at the right. Drawing from F. Adler et ah, Die Baudenkmalervon Olympia (Berlin, 1896), pi. 131.
Chaironeia was directly attributable to his political control of the athletic festival centers. Philip had also won the allegiance of Elis by 343, and Olympia was already in his column. It is natural that Philip would immediately celebrate his victory over the other Greeks at Chaironeia by constructing a monument at Olympia (fig. 285). This elaborately decorated circular building stood by the entrance at the northwestern corner of the Altis between the Prytaneion, the Temple of Hera, and the Shrine of Pelops. Every visitor to the site passed by it and every victor emerging from his banquet in the Prytaneion saw it immediately. Its location could hardly have been more prominent if it were on top of the Great Altar of Zeus. Inside were chryselephantine statues of Philip’s father and mother, his wife, and his son. The kind of statement made by the Philippeion was not new at Olympia, but its size, location, and ornamentation set it as far above the other victory monuments as the Battle of Chaironeia set the Macedonians above the other Greeks.
Philip, who recognized the value of the stephanitic athletic festival centers as a means of advancement, also saw their continued importance as a way to consolidate power. He established a league, with himself as leader, which was to meet in rotation at the four sites at the time of the stephanitic games. In each of the sites excavation has documented large new building programs, as well as the return of the Nemean Games to the site for which they were named. Now, with the power of the individual city-states broken, the stephanitic games could truly he used to promote international understanding. References to politically inspired violence at the sites after the time of Philip’s son, Alexander, are reduced to mere whispers as the games increase in enter-
Tainment value for the spectators, and the percentage of true participants dwindles. The athlete on the track, always a surrogate for his hometown, becomes a surrogate for his hometown’s soldiers as well.
It should not surprise us that politics, and even occasional violence, played a part at the games. What is more surprising is that the episodes were so infrequent, and that the games went on nonetheless. The Olympic Games of ancient Greece lasted for more than a millennium, and they were never canceled. In 480, with the Persians on the doorstep, the games went on. In 364 two city-states fought a battle within the Al-tis itself, and the Eleans refused to recognize the results of the competitions, but the games went on; we even know the names of several of the victors. In 80 Elis and Olympia were both broke and couldn’t afford to stage the games for the men’s events, but the boys were invited, and the games went on; the victor in the boys’ stadion gave his name to that Olympiad. Nero forced the delay of the Olympics that should have occurred in a. d. 65 to 67, and the program was drastically changed to suit his vanity, but the games went on.
The modern Olympics are just over a century old. In that time one was almost destroyed by murder (Munich, 1972), and three by major boycotts (Montreal, 1976; Moscow, 1980: and Los Angeles, 1984), all for political motives. And the games of 1916, 1940, and 1944 did not go on at all because of the political situation. Perhaps we do need to study ancient practices more closely, after all.
World History
