The foot-race need not detain us long. There were three prizes and three competitors; among them, in spite of his recent exertions, the veteran Odysseus. The course was of the same impromptu type described for the chariot-race, round some distant mark and back to the starting place, where the ground was wet and slippery with the blood of the oxen slaughtered for sacrifice. It was a great race. Ajax, the son of Oeleus, led, while Odysseus followed closely in his track amid the cheers of the Achaeans. As they neared the finish Odysseus prayed to Athene, who “made his limbs feel light, both feet and hands”—a delightful description of the spurt; but not content with such legitimate aid, she caused Ajax, just as they reached the prize, to slip in the victim’s blood. But in Homer there is no ill-feeling at such incidents; the defeated rivals merely comment good-humouredly on the interference of the goddess, just as the modern sportsman, not always so good-humouredly, on his opponent’s luck. “Friends, ye will bear me witness when I say that even herein the immortals favour elder men.” What the moderns ascribe to luck, the Achaeans, like all the ancients, ascribed to the direct action of the gods: it is a later age that makes fortune a goddess. Of the four remaining events, three at least—the single combat between Ajax and Diomede, throwing the solos, and the contest with the bow—are admitted even by the most conservative critics to be a late interpolation; the fourth event—throwing the spear—is usually assigned to the earlier account of the games, though one of the arguments adduced, that spear-throwing formed part of the Homeric pentathlon, seems singularly weak! There is no suggestion in Homer of any such thing as the pentathlon, a competition consisting of five events in which the same competitors competed, and to talk of the Homeric pentathlon merely because Nestor happens to mention five events in the games at Buprasium is quite unhistorical and most misleading. It would be more to the point to urge that spear-throwing, throwing the solos or diskos, and archery go together, because these same three events are mentioned together in the 2nd _Iliad_.[11] But this is no place for the details of Homeric criticism. For our present purpose we can learn nothing from the passage about Homeric spear-throwing, for the simple reason that the competition never came off, Achilles out of courtesy to his leader assigning the first prize to Agamemnon without a contest. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Scene from Clazomenae Sarcophagus in British Museum.]