Problems in Greek historyMahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland)
History
Problems in Greek history
Mahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland)
Greece -- Historiography; Greece -- History
'ever since there is a continuous record of the Olympiads ([Greek: ex
hou to syneches tais mnêmais epi tais Ol. esti]); prizes for running
were first established, and the Eleian Corœbus won.'
Pausanias proceeds in this passage to give an account of the successive
additions of other competitions to the sprint race, 'according as they
remembered them,' that is, according as they recollected or found out
that they had been practised in mythical days. In the 14th Ol. the
[Greek: diaulos], or double course, was instituted, and Hypenus the
Pisæan won, and next after him Acanthus. In the 18th they remembered the
pentathlon and the wrestling match, in which Lampis and Eurybatus
respectively won, both Lacedæmonians. In the 23rd came boxing, and
Onomastus of Smyrna, which then already counted as Ionian, won. In the
25th the first chariot race was won by the Theban Pagondas. In the 33rd
came the pancration, and the monument of the first victor, Lygdamis, was
at Syracuse. . . . . The boys' contests were based on no old tradition,
but the Eleians established them of their own good pleasure. The boys'
wrestling match was accordingly instituted in the 37th Ol.
I need not here pursue the account further, but will return to this
passage in connection with the other arrangements of the feast.
We find that other authorities, such as Polemo, quoted by the Scholiast
on Pindar (Ol. v.), agree with Pausanias as to some of these details.
Strabo quotes from Ephorus the double foundation, by Oxylus and again by
Iphitus. So does Phlegon, a freedman of Hadrian, who wrote a work on the
Olympian festival, and gave a list of victors, probably from the same
source as Eusebius' list. Phlegon notes indeed the difficulty of making
Lycurgus and Iphitus contemporary with Corœbus in 776 B.C., and fixes
the date of Iphitus twenty-eight Olympiads earlier (at 887 B.C.). But he
introduces an Iphitus again in the 6th registered Ol., inquiring about
the crowning of victors, and states that Daïcles of Messene was first
crowned with wild olive at the 7th contest. The only other point of
interest in Phlegon's fragments is the full catalogue of the 177th Ol.
(frag. 12 in Müller's _Frag. Hist._ iv. 606), which gives the winners in
seventeen events; some of them thrice successful in the competitions.
We may therefore take it for granted that the account of Pausanias,
which now passes current in all the German and English works on Greek
athletics, was, in the main, that established or adopted by Timæus or by
Aristotle, the latter of whom is often alleged to have first given the
Olympiads their prominent position as the basis of Greek chronology. But
whether he adopted the list as genuine from the beginning or not, his
isolated remark about the quoit with Lycurgus' name is not sufficient
to inform us[222:1]. Indeed we have only negative evidence concerning
his opinion and no direct information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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