MONUMENTS OF HIPPODROME AND MUSICAL VICTORS.
PLATES 26-27 AND FIGURES 63-67.
In the preceding chapters we have considered the monuments of victors
in various gymnic contests, in which the victor won by his own strength
and skill. In the present chapter we shall be concerned chiefly with
the monuments set up by victors at Olympia in chariot- and horse-races,
in which the victory did not depend upon the athletic prowess of
the victor, but upon the skill of his charioteer or jockey and the
endurance of his horses.[1804] Though such events were not in the
strict sense a part of Greek athletics, they formed a very important
feature of the festival at Olympia as elsewhere.[1805] Indeed the
four-horse chariot-race was the most spectacular and brilliant event
at Olympia. Chariot-races, and to a less extent horse-races, were the
sport only of the rich—kings, princes, and nobles.[1806] Thus victories
were won in these events at Olympia in the fifth century B. C. by Hiero
and Gelo, kings of Syracuse, and Arkesilas IV of Kyrene; in the fourth,
by Philip II of Macedonia, and in Roman days by Tiberius, Germanicus,
Nero, and many others. Alkibiades in Ol. 91 (= 416 B. C.), _i. e._, in
the midst of the great Peloponnesian war, entered seven chariots at
Olympia and won three prizes.[1807] Sometimes a city entered a chariot
or horse. Thus in Ol. 77 (= 472 _B. C._) the public chariot of Argos,
and in Ol. 75 (= 480 B. C.) the public horse of the same city, won at
Olympia.[1808] Such entries show not only the expense attending these
contests, but also their importance in the eyes of the Greeks.
Hippodromes, chariot-races, and horse-races were very common in Greece.
A votive inscription in the museum at Sparta, dating from near the
middle of the fifth century B. C., enumerates sixty victories by
Damonon and his son Enymakratidas in both chariot- and horse-races
at eight different meets in or near Lakonia, and Damonon was merely
a local victor, unknown at Olympia.[1809] Greeks of Sicily and
Magna Græcia were especially fond of such contests, as we see these
constantly represented on coins of different cities there from the
beginning of the fifth century B. C. on.[1810] However, only a few of
the sites of these many hippodromes are now known, and only one can be
positively identified, that mentioned by Pausanias on Mount Lykaios
in Arkadia.[1811] The others are known from literary sources.[1812]
The one at Olympia was destroyed in the course of centuries by the
floods of the Alpheios, and its exact location can not be determined,
though we know in general that it lay somewhere southeast of the Altis,
between the river and the Stadion, and surmise that it ran somewhat
parallel to the latter.[1813]
Its measurements, however, are known to us from a Greek metrological
parchment manuscript in the old Seraglio, Constantinople, which dates
from the eleventh century A. D.[1814] According to it the length of the
course, _i. e._, from the starting-point to turning-post and return,
was about 8 stades (1538 meters, 16 centimeters) or nearly 1 mile. One
of the two sides—which Pausanias says were of unequal length[1815]—was
3 stades and 1 plethron long. The breadth of the course at the
starting-point was 1 stade and 4 plethra. We are told, however, that
only a portion of the entire course, six stades, or about two-thirds of
a mile, was traversed in the various races.
The oldest literary account of a Greek chariot-race is found in Homer
in the description of the games of Patroklos—the longest and finest