It has been suggested that the Greek jump was a hop, step, and jump, in which case the jump of 55 feet ascribed to Phaÿllus would be a very fine performance, but not perhaps impossible. Unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence in support of this suggestion. For the suggestion that the jump was a triple jump some evidence may be found in the fact that a triple jump is known in the present day in parts of Northern Greece. By itself this fact can hardly be regarded as adequate proof, and there is, I believe, good reason for discrediting all the evidence on which the supposed record rests. The evidence consists in (1) the well-known epigram on Phaÿllus, which states that he jumped 55 feet;[558] (2) various statements of scholiasts and lexicographers of late and mostly uncertain date; (3) a passage in Africanus, who states that one Chionis, an Olympic victor in Ol. 29 (_i.e._ seven or eight hundred years before the time of Africanus), jumped 52 feet. The 52 feet of Africanus is probably a simple mistake for 22 feet, which is the reading of the Armenian Latin text. The various statements of scholiasts and others can all be traced back to the epigram on Phaÿllus, and to an explanation given by some collector of proverbs on the use of the phrase “to jump beyond the pit,”[559] to denote something extraordinary or excessive, and they have no independent value apart from the epigram. The Phaÿllus of the epigram is identified by the scholiasts with Phaÿllus of Croton, who in the first half of the fifth century won two victories in the pentathlon and one in the foot-race at Delphi, but won no victory at Olympia. He fought at Salamis in a ship equipped at his own expense. Aristophanes alludes to one Phaÿllus, probably the same man, as a noted runner. He had a statue at Delphi which Pausanias saw, and Alexander the Great is said to have honoured his memory by sending a portion of his Asiatic spoils to Croton. He was evidently a popular hero, just the sort of man about whose exploits all sorts of tales arise. But though Herodotus, Aristophanes, Plutarch, and Pausanias all mention him, they know nothing of the epigram or of the jump. Moreover, according to one statement the epigram was inscribed on the basis of his statue. Parts of this basis and of the inscription have been recently found at Delphi, but, needless to say, there is no trace of the epigram. When the epigram was written we cannot say. Certainly it is not a contemporary commemorative epigram. We meet with it first in Zenobius, a collector of proverbs who lived in the time of Hadrian, and the artificiality of its style is characteristic of the epigrams of this period. But whatever its date it can hardly be regarded as serious evidence. The sporting story is notorious, and the sporting epigram is even less trustworthy than the sporting story. The pages of the _Anthology_ abound in epigrams on famous athletes such as Milo and Ladas, some of them no less incredible. Milo, we are told in one