Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic ArtHyde, Walter Woodburn
History
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Hyde, Walter Woodburn
Olympics; Sculpture, Greek; Sports -- Greece
These six events comprised the ἀγὼν ἱππικός at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea,
Corinth, Athens, and elsewhere, as opposed to the ἀγὼν γυμνικός.[1823]
The distinction between horses and colts was apparently a matter
which was decided by the Hellanodikai at Olympia. Thus, Pausanias
recounts how the Spartan victor Lykidas entered a pair of colts for
the chariot-race, and that one of them was rejected by the judges; he
thereupon entered both for the race with full-grown horses and won
it.[1824] Though such a story does not fit the date of Lykidas, who won
before the colt-race was introduced at Olympia, it shows the method
of selection.[1825] The race in which the chariot was drawn by four
full-grown horses (ἵππων τελείων δρόμος) was introduced, as we have
seen, in Ol. 25. The contestants drove twelve times round the course,
a distance of seventy-two stades or over eight miles.[1826] Pausanias
mentions the monuments of eighteen such victors at Olympia for nineteen
victories. The race in which the chariot was drawn by four colts (πώλων
ἅρμα) was introduced in Ol. 99 (= 384 B. C.),[1827] and extended eight
times round the course, or about 5.5 miles.[1828] Pausanias mentions
the monuments of only two such victors at Olympia.[1829] The race in
which the chariot was drawn by pairs of full-grown horses (συνωρίς)
was introduced in Ol. 93 (408 B. C.) and extended eight times round
the course.[1830] Pausanias mentions but one victor in this event at
Olympia[1831] and an Olympic victress who had a statue erected to her
in Sparta for such a victory.[1832] This was probably the original
chariot-race at Olympia revived in Ol. 93, since the two-horse chariot
was the historical descendant of the Homeric war-chariot.[1833]
Panathenaic vases show that this race existed at Athens in the sixth
century B. C., side by side with the four-horse chariot-race and
horseback-race. The earliest of these vases, the so-called Burgon
vase in the British Museum,[1834] was a prize there for this event.
The race in which the chariot was drawn by a pair of colts (συνωρὶς
πώλων) was introduced at Olympia in the third century B. C., in Ol.
129 (= 264 B. C.),[1835] and extended three times around the course.
Pausanias mentions no monument erected to a victor in this race. The
horse-race (ἵππος κέλης) was instituted in Ol. 33 (= 648 B. C.)[1836],
and the foal-race (πῶλος κέλης) nearly four centuries later, in Ol.
131 (256 B. C.).[1837] Neither of these races was known to Homer, for
κελετίζειν in the Iliad,[1838] as we saw in Chapter I, refers only to
the acrobatic feat of vaulting from the back of one horse to that of
another. Pausanias mentions monuments erected to eight victors (for
nine victories) in the regular horse-race at Olympia. We conclude from
a passage of his work[1839] that the riding-race consisted of one lap
only or six stades, about two-thirds of a mile. A mule chariot-race
(ἀπήνη) was introduced in Ol. 70 (= 500 B. C.), and a trotting-race
with mares (κάλπη) in Ol. 71 (= 496 B.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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