Greek athletics must have been familiar to the Romans from early times. We have seen how prominent a part the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily had taken in the festivals of Greece during the sixth and fifth centuries. The popularity of athletics among the Etruscans is proved by the numerous scenes painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs, where every variety of sport is represented. The “ludi Maximi” of Rome herself show strong traces of Greek influence. Moreover the Romans, like all vigorous nations, were fond of physical exercises—running, wrestling, throwing the diskos and the spear, and especially games of ball. But they were not fond of competitions. Consequently athletics never acquired at Rome the importance which they possessed in Greece, and their festivals, if originally similar in character to those of Greece, soon became mere spectacles in which the performers, whether actors, riders, or athletes, were professionals belonging to subject races and the lower classes, hired for the amusement of the Roman citizens. Rome recognized no peers among the neighbouring states, and free competition between independent states was therefore impossible at Rome. Moreover, the centuries of struggle during which she step by step extended and consolidated her power had left little time or inclination for less serious contests, and had developed in her citizens a strongly practical type of character that could feel no sympathy with the athletic ideal of Greece. To the Roman as to the Spartan athletics were nothing but a means to an end, and that end military efficiency. To devote to sport the time and energy necessary to secure success at Olympia, to submit for months to the tyranny of a trainer, often a man of no birth or position, and above all to exhibit oneself naked before the eyes of one’s fellow-citizens—these were things quite inconsistent with the Roman’s idea of his dignity as a citizen. Even as spectacles the Greek sports did not appeal to his taste. Brutalized by incessant war, he preferred more exciting contests, and took more pleasure in the gladiatorial shows of his Etruscan and Campanian neighbours than in musical or gymnastic competitions. It was 186 B.C. that Greek athletes and actors first appeared at the Roman games; but a more pleasing innovation must have been the importation in the same year of lions and panthers from Africa to provide more exciting sport for the spectators in the circus. When in 167 B.C. some famous Greek flute-players who were performing at a festival failed to please the Roman audience, the managers ordered them to box, a performance which caused boundless delight to the spectators.

When in the second century B.C. the Romans were first brought into closer contact with Greece, they found ample justification for their anti-athletic prejudice in the vicious and corrupt state into which athletics had fallen at that period in Greece. The competitions were in the hands of professional athletes, whose training rendered them useless as soldiers; the gymnasia, instead of producing healthy, useful citizens, had become schools of idleness and immorality; from a physical and military point of view the whole nation had degenerated. The athletic festivals were useful political factors, and as such the Romans knew how to utilize them. Some, like Aemilius Paulus, standing before the Zeus of Pheidias might feel something of the beauty and the grandeur of the Greek ideal, or, like Cato, that odd mixture of conservatism and Hellenism, might train their sons in the athletic exercises of Greece; but the mass of the nation was unaffected; for a long time no gymnasia or palaestrae rose in Rome, no Roman deigned to compete in the games of Greece.

The old Roman prejudice died hard. More than a century after the founding of the Empire, in spite of imperial Philhellenism, we find an echo of it in the reign of Nero, in the protests of the old school against the introduction in Rome of a festival on Greek lines. “The youths were degenerating under the influence of foreign tastes, passing their time in athletics, in idling, and low intrigues; what remained for them but to strip themselves naked, put on the caestus, and practise such battles instead of the arms of legitimate warfare?”^[235]

Such being the feeling of Rome towards Greek athletics, it is no matter for wonder that in spite of the growing influence of Hellenism, the festivals languished during the century which followed the fall of Corinth. In 80 B.C. Sulla transferred the whole Olympic festival, athletes and all, to Rome, leaving only the boys’ foot-race to be decided at Olympia. Perhaps his object was to transfer the festival permanently to Rome; but ere another Olympiad came round Sulla himself was dead, and his purpose was never accomplished. But the prestige of the festival suffered. We possess the list of Olympic victors for the year 72 B.C. In this Olympiad, as in the Olympiad which followed the Spartan invasion of 399 B.C., the falling off in the competition is marked by a series of local victories. Eight, possibly eleven events fell to Elis, Hecatomnus, the winner of three of the foot-races, being variously assigned to Elis and Miletus; two events fell to Sicyon, one to Cyparissia in Messenia, the remaining four events being divided between Alexandria, Mysia, Asia, and Cos. Elis carried off all the equestrian events. In the Olympic inscriptions which belong to this period it is remarkable that nearly all the victors are Eleans and nearly all their victories are gained in the horse-races.^[236] This local predominance, coupled with the depression produced by Sulla’s invasion, may account for the fact, recorded by Africanus, that the chariot-race and perhaps other equestrian events were discontinued in the year 68 B.C., not to be revived until the time of the Empire.^[237]

Meanwhile a change had come over the character of the Roman people. No longer occupied incessantly in war, the dwellers in the capital had become more and more addicted to amusements. Festival after festival was added to their calendar, and ambitious politicians vied with one another in the variety and magnificence of the entertainments which they provided in the hopes of winning the favour of the sovereign people. These entertainments, though containing athletic and equestrian competitions, were, however, purely spectacular, and it was regarded as a disgrace for a Roman citizen to take part in them personally. The character of these entertainments and their difference from the Greek festivals may be illustrated by the account given by Suetonius of those provided by Julius Caesar.^[238] Besides a variety of dramatic and musical performances, there were the games in the circus, athletic displays, and a sea-fight. In these certain Roman citizens of position actually took part. There was a gladiatorial contest between Furius Leptinus, a member of a praetorian family, and Quintus Calpenus, an ex-senator. The Pyrrhic dance was performed by noble youths from Asia and Bithynia; and one Decimus Laberius, a Roman knight, actually performed in a farce of his own composition, for which he was handsomely rewarded by Caesar, and restored to the rank which he had forfeited by his performance. At the games in the circus youths of noble birth took part in the chariot and horse-races. Two companies of boys exhibited the semi-military manoeuvres called the Trojan game. Five days were occupied in venationes, or combats with wild beasts, and there was a sham fight between two forces consisting each of 500 foot-soldiers, 30 cavalry and 20 elephants. To provide more space for this performance the metae of the circus were removed and a camp was formed at either end. A temporary stand was erected in the field of Mars, where athletic competitions took place lasting three days. Lastly, a huge artificial lake was constructed in which biremes, triremes, and quadriremes from Tyre and Egypt joined in mimic battle. All the neighbouring roads and streets were occupied by the tents of visitors, and so great was the crowd that many were crushed to death. But Caesar himself, the giver of all, cared for none of these things; and his enemies accused him of amusing himself with reading and writing when he ought to have been watching the progress of the games.^[239]

With the Empire a new era opened for Greece. As the conquests of Alexander had spread Hellenism throughout the East, so the Roman Empire gradually hellenized the whole civilized world. Though Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire, cities like Athens and Sparta preserved the outward forms of independence; the bodies which controlled her ancient festivals continued to exercise their hereditary functions, and were treated as a rule with all honour and respect. In the sphere of literature and art Greece had long been recognized as the mistress and teacher of her conqueror. Hence the feeling of subjection disappeared, and so complete was the fusion between conquered and conqueror that in the second century, while the ancient families of Elis or of Sparta bore the names of their Roman patrons, such as the Julii, or the Flavii, and were enrolled in Roman tribes, the Greek language had become the language of communication throughout all the Eastern half of the Empire, and at Rome herself was supplanting Latin as the language of literature. These results were largely due to the Philhellenism of the emperors, and nowhere is this Philhellenism more conspicuous than in connection with athletic festivals. The old festivals were celebrated with increased splendour and ceremony, new festivals were introduced in close imitation of them, sumptuous race-courses and gymnasia were provided not merely in Greece but in Italy and in Rome herself, athletic guilds were formed; and though the athletic revival was purely professional and had little effect on the people, whether of Greece or Rome, the privileges and rewards showered on the successful athletes were certainly no less substantial if less honourable than those bestowed on the victors of the fifth century B.C.

The Julii claimed admission to the festivals of Greece as the descendants and heirs of the gods who presided over those festivals. At Olympia their claim was recognized by the re-dedication to their service of the little temple of the Mother of the Gods, in which were placed the statues of Augustus and his successors. Under their patronage the festival recovered much of its ancient glory. The horse-races, which had been discontinued, were revived shortly before our era, when members of the imperial family, emulating the triumphs of the princes of Sicily and Macedon, entered as competitors for the Olympic crown. Inscriptions record the victory of the youthful Tiberius in the chariot-race, and a few years later of Germanicus Caesar in the same event. The building of the arched entrance into the stadium and other improvements possibly belong to the reign of Augustus. The remarkable continuity of Olympic administration is shown by a series of inscriptions recording the names of the various officials connected with the sanctuary.^[240] These lists begin in 30 B.C. and continue down to A.D. 265. They include every variety of official, from the seers and heralds of the sacred truce down to the cook and baker who provided the sacrificial feasts, and perhaps catered for the higher officials and for distinguished visitors. One important officer bore the title of official guide or exegetes; his duty doubtless was to explain to the crowds of visitors the historical monuments of the Altis. In the second century, owing to the increasing numbers of visitors a second guide was appointed. It was from these guides that Pausanias derived much of the information contained in his books on Elis. The higher offices seem to have formed a regular scale of honours, a cursus honorum, hereditary in the families of the Elean nobility, most of whom bear Roman names. It is curious to find one bearing the name of Flavius Heracleitus, who had the charge of the statue of Zeus, calling himself a descendant of Pheidias. The activity of the administration is shown by the revival of the practice of dedicating honorary statues of athletes and others: perhaps it is to this revival that we may ascribe the rule recorded by Pliny that portrait statues were only allowed in the case of athletes who had won three Olympic victories.^[241] It is in the inscriptions of these honorary statues that after a long interval we find mention of the council who seem to have held supreme authority over the sanctuary and whose sanction was necessary for the erection of statues in the Altis.^[242] The revival of ancient forms of administration is characteristic of Roman conservatism and love of order.

The Philhellenism of the Caesars and their Roman love of archaism are particularly manifest in the numerous festivals founded by them in various parts of the Empire. Of most of these we know little besides the names which are mentioned in inscriptions and on coins; a few deserve special notice and may be taken as typical of the rest. Augustus celebrated his victory at Actium, not only by holding Actian games at Rome but by instituting at the newly founded Nicopolis an Actian festival intended to rival or even surpass Olympia. A local festival had long been held at Actium every two years. The new festival which, besides athletic, musical, and equestrian competitions, included a regatta, was, like the Olympic festival, held every four years. The victors received crowns and bore the title Actianicae, and the Actiads were intended to form the basis of a new chronology which was to supplant that of the Olympiads. We feel in all this something of that spirit of conscious rivalry between Rome and Greece which made the Roman poet herald the Aeneid as a work greater than the Iliad. But though in imperial inscriptions the Actia rank with, or even take precedence of the Panhellenic festivals, the new games were destined never to acquire the prestige of the old.

The same spirit of conscious rivalry appears again in the proud title “?s???p?a” applied to the Augustalia at Naples. These games, founded in 1 B.C., were reorganized in A.D. 2 as a quinquennial festival with the magniloquent name “Italica Romaia Sebasta Isolympia.” The new era which began with them was reckoned by “Italids.” The terms ?s???p?a and ?s?p???a referred originally to the conditions of competition and particularly to the age of competitors. Thus the expressions Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian boys, denote boys within the age-limit for the boys’ events at these respective festivals. Under the Empire the terms have often merely an honorary significance, and such apparently is the use of the word here. A long, unfortunately much mutilated, inscription^[243] found at Olympia contains regulations for this festival, for the age of competitors, the date of entry, provision for them during the time of training, and the penalties imposed for any breach of these rules. The festival fell into two parts, the first part of which, like the old Olympia, consisted only of equestrian and athletic events. The prize, as at Olympia, was a wreath. The second part, as we learn from another inscription, resembled the Pythian and Nemean festivals in its regulations with regard to ages and prizes. It contained, besides athletic and equestrian events, musical and dramatic competitions, and some of the competitions were confined to citizens of Naples. The prizes consisted in sums of money.

Somewhat similar was the character of the Olympic and Pythian festivals which we find in Rome, Athens, Ephesus, and a number of other places. The right to bestow these titles must originally have rested with the authorities at Olympia and Delphi, but seems later to have been exercised by the emperors.^[244] Each new festival founded was the beginning of a new series of Olympiads. At Rome the great Capitolia, founded by Domitian in A.D. 86, bore the title Olympia, and Flavius Archibius, an Olympic victor in Ols. 220, 221, is also described as victor at Rome in the 3rd and following Olympiads. The judges at these festivals were sometimes called Hellanodicae,^[245] and doubtless many other features of the original festivals were reproduced. Perhaps the most interesting of all these games are those held at Daphne near Antioch. Founded originally by Antiochus Epiphanes, they obtained from the Eleans the title of Olympia in A.D. 44. Their interest lies in the fact that the model of Olympia was followed in every particular, not only in the programme and administration, but in the relations existing between Daphne and Antioch, which corresponded entirely to these between Olympia and Elis. In the fourth century a fierce dispute arose between a popular party, which wished to transfer the important part of the festival from Daphne to Antioch, and the conservative party headed by Libanius, who characterized the proposed change as sacrilege and a violation of the true Olympia. We have frequent references to the festival in the writings of St. Chrysostom, for a long time presbyter at Antioch; and it continued to be celebrated as late as the reign of Justinus in the sixth century.^[246]

Imperial patronage was not at all times an unmixed blessing for the Greeks. Caligula would have carried off to Rome the statue of Olympian Zeus had he not been prevented by the miraculous protest of the statue itself. Nero actually carried off to Rome thousands of works of art, and in his jealousy caused the statues of victors at the games to be pulled down and thrown into the sewers. Despite his pretended flattery of the Greeks and desire to win their approbation for his art, he had so little respect for religion that he caused the times of the festivals to be altered so that they might all be celebrated during his visit to Greece.^[247] At Olympia contests in tragedy and singing were introduced into the programme at his behest; a house was built for his entertainment at the south-east corner of the Altis, and almost opposite it a magnificent processional entrance was constructed, the Altis wall being at the same time extended southward so as to include the triangular strip between the old wall and the northern line of the council house. The story of his performances at the games is a piteous proof of the degradation of the festivals and of the servility of the Greeks. At Olympia he won crowns in the chariot-races, in the competitions for singing and for tragedy, and in the heralds’ competition. For the latter he entered wherever he competed in order to have the privilege of proclaiming his victories with his own voice. In the hippodrome he appeared in a chariot drawn by ten horses; thrown from his chariot, he was picked up and replaced, resumed the race, and was finally awarded the prize by the obsequious officials. Though he was said to be fond of wrestling, he had sufficient respect for Roman prejudice to abstain from exhibiting his skill in the stadium, and contented himself with playing the part of a brabeutes, sitting on the ground during the rounds, and with his own hands pulling the combatants back if they got too far away. The servile Hellanodicae were rewarded with Roman citizenship and with large sums of money, which they had to disgorge in the reign of his successor. Finally, at the end of his tour, he proclaimed himself at the Isthmian games as the restorer of the liberty of Greece. Returning to Italy with 1808 crowns which he had won, he was welcomed at Naples with all the most extravagant honours which were ever recorded to have been paid to an Olympia victor. A breach was made in the city wall through which he entered in a chariot drawn by white horses. The same farce was repeated at Antium and Albanum. He entered Rome in the chariot in which Augustus had triumphed, clothed in purple, with the Olympic crown upon his head, and holding the Pythian crown in his right hand, while before him marched a procession of courtiers carrying the crowns which he had won, and proclaiming to the populace the names and details of his triumphs. No wonder that such as remained of the old Roman stock regarded the competitions of the Greeks with amused contempt, that Seneca and other writers of the first century were unanimous in their condemnation of Greek athletics, and that the Olympic competitor became the butt of the epigrammatist. That Olympia survived even this degradation is perhaps the strongest proof of its vitality.

While the emperors were introducing Greek festivals into Italy, the influence of Rome was degrading and brutalizing the public taste of Greece. Gladiatorial shows had been introduced into the East nearly two centuries before Christ. They had long been popular with the cosmopolitan crowds of Antioch and Alexandria. In Greece they found a congenial home in the equally cosmopolitan crowd of Corinth, which, refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar, quickly regained her commercial supremacy, and eclipsed even the records of her past in wealth and luxury and vice. Athens followed and even improved upon the example set by her rival. For while at Corinth the gladiatorial shows had been held in a ravine outside the city, at Athens they were exhibited in the theatre of Dionysus.^[248]

The growing love of excitement and bloodshed is evident in boxing. The caestus had, as we have seen, become gradually more ponderous and more murderous, and boxing consequently less scientific. Every one is familiar with the description of the boxing match in the Aeneid. The brutal, unscientific fight is in perfect keeping with the ponderous character of the weapons, and even the gentle and refined Vergil can only represent a heroic fight by heaping horror upon horror, and by ascribing the heavy caestus to heroic times, he actually reverses the whole history of boxing. We should not perhaps take Vergil’s description as typical of Greek boxing even in his day, but only of the feeling at Rome, where scientific boxing was of so little account that even Augustus preferred to watch a fight between two street roughs to a match between trained boxers. But the brutality of boxing even in Greece is strikingly illustrated in a collection of epigrams written by or collected by one Lucilius in the reign of Nero. Their tone of persiflage, so different from that of the early Greek epigrammatist, is just what we should expect from such an age. Some of them are skits upon the athletes or would-be athletes of the age; a whole series are devoted to describing the disfigurement and mutilation of the boxer. Here is an old translation of one of them which may be taken as typical of them all:—

Dion Chrysostom gives us an interesting glimpse of the Isthmia during the first century, in the story he tells of Diogenes’ visit to the festival.^[250] The scene is laid in the fourth century B.C., but the details are clearly drawn from the orator’s own experience. Diogenes the Cynic happens to visit Corinth at the time of the festival. There, at the cross-roads of the world, he finds gathered together visitors from Ionia and Sicily, from Italy and Libya, from Massilia and the Borysthenes. Around the temple of Poseidon are wretched sophists shouting and abusing one another, their pupils are fighting, historians are reading meaningless compositions, poets are reciting verses, miracle-mongers are working miracles, augurs are interpreting omens, thousands of orators are wrangling, and merchants of every sort are bargaining. The crowd, regardless of all other interests, is watching the performances of the athletes, “mere slaves,” he calls them, “that run and jump and dance.” Here Diogenes sees a band of friends carrying a victor in the foot-race in triumphant procession, while the people shout and cheer and heap upon him fillets and garlands. The Cynic stops him and points out that after all he is not as swift as the hare or the deer, the most cowardly of animals. He himself has won a victory over adversaries that cannot be overcome by men “stuffed and puffed, who spend whole days in eating and snore all night like pigs,” for he has won a victory over pain and pleasure. Finally he boldly puts upon his head the celery crown, and when the indignant officials protest, asks them, “Will ye take the crown from me and give it to him who is stuffed with most meat?” The rhetoric is for the most part mere commonplace of the schools; yet we cannot doubt that the description is true of the Isthmia and of other festivals, especially of those in the rich cities of the East.

In such soil corruption throve. Philostratus, writing more than a century later, tells us that victories were publicly bought and sold; even the trainers encouraged the traffic, lending money for bribery to athletes at exorbitant rates of interest.^[251] At the Isthmia a competitor who had promised his rival 3000 drachmae to let him win, refused to pay on the ground that he had won on his merits. Recourse was had to the oath, and the defeated competitor publicly swore before the altar of Poseidon that he had been promised the money if he allowed himself to be defeated. “What,” adds Philostratus, “might not happen in Ionia or in Asia?”

At Olympia the honour of the games was still maintained. Bribery was severely punished. In Ols. 192 (12 B.C.) and 226 (A.D. 125) we read of fines exacted for corruption from which as of old Zanes were erected.^[252] In the former case it was a father who bribed his son’s opponent, and the fine was therefore exacted from the parents. In Ol. 218 (A.D. 93) one Apollonius of Alexandria was fined for coming too late and thereby disqualifying himself from competition. He pleaded that he had been detained by contrary winds. But it was proved that the plea was false, and that the real cause of his delay was that he had been “pot-hunting” in Ionia. It seems as if the authorities at Olympia even made an attempt to check the arrogant pretensions and self-advertisements of the professional fighter by abolishing the title “Successor of Heracles.” The title was won for the last time in Ol. 204 (A.D. 37) by one Nicostratus, after whose victories the Eleans made a secret decree that no one should thereafter be allowed to win in both wrestling and the pankration. The account given by Dion of the Isthmia gathers force from its contrast with the veneration which he expresses for the Olympia, and his charming picture of the youthful Melancomas.^[253] He and his father, himself an Olympic victor, seem even in that age of athletic decay to have lived up to the ideal of the best days.

A curious development of professionalism which we now meet with was the growth of athletic guilds resembling the dramatic guilds which had long existed. Victorious athletes at Rome, as in Greece, received certain privileges, including maintenance at the public cost, which privilege Maecenas advised Augustus to confine to winners at Olympia and Delphi and Rome.^[254] Augustus, we are told, maintained and increased the privileges of athletes.^[255] Guilds were one of the features of the early Empire, and it was therefore natural for athletes to form such combinations. These athletic guilds were called Xystoi from the xystos or covered colonnade which formed part of a gymnasium. The most famous of these clubs was that of the Herculanei,^[256] a club which seems originally to have been formed at Sardis. In the reign of Trajan it was dissolved and transferred to Rome. One M. Ulpius came to the emperor as their spokesman to petition for quarters at Rome, and we possess copies of two letters of Trajan granting their petition.^[257] He appoints them a house where they may keep their sacred things and records, near the baths built by his grandfather Trajan, and conveniently situated for the great Capitolia. Here they had a gymnasium and a council-chamber in which discussions could take place on all questions affecting the welfare of athletes, the holding of competitions, and the erection of honorary statues. They were a sacred guild, and within their precinct were statues of emperors and members of the guild. Their president or xystarches was also high-priest of the guild. He was often a distinguished athlete and held the office for life; and with it also the office of overseer of the imperial baths. The religious character of these guilds is a curious survival of the immemorial connexion between religion and athletics. Sometimes there were special competitions for members of certain guilds. At the Augustalia at Naples we find a series of competitions confined to members of the Augustan class, while mention is also made of a pankration for Claudian boys. These expressions seem to denote clubs or guilds bearing the name of Augustus and Claudius.^[258] The most important guild at Naples was “the holy itinerant synod of the Alexandrini.” The term pe??p???st???, which corresponds to our “nomads” or “wanderers,” indicates that they did not confine their attentions to local festivals, but went about from place to place.^[259] An Olympic inscription of the year A.D. 85 records the erection of a statue in honour of Lucius Vetulenus Laetus by the whole body of athletes gathered together “from the inhabited world” for the festival, and by the holy synod of the Xystos.^[260] This particular xystos was presumably a local Elean guild. The title xystarches is known also at Sparta, and occurs in an inscription recently discovered at Sparta by the British excavators. The inscription contains regulations for a Spartan festival, probably the Leonidaea, a festival held in honour of those who fell at Thermopylae, and confined to Spartan competitors.^[261] The xystarches is to place oil in the stadium, and discharge the usual duties of his post. As the president of the local gymnasium, he naturally took an important part in local festivals. He seems generally to have been a man of some importance, often an old athlete. His duties were probably as vague and depended as much on his personal inclination as those of the president of a modern athletic club.

A mosaic found at Tusculum (Fig. 22) gives a vivid picture of the life of these professional athletes under the Empire. A comparison of these scenes with those represented on the Panaetius kylix in Fig. 17 will illustrate better than any description the difference between the two ages.

The renaissance of Hellenism which marked the second century brought with it a revival of the Greek athletic festivals and Greek athletics, which, under the patronage of the “Greekling” Hadrian and his successors, attained an outward prosperity and splendour unparalleled since the fifth century. It was the object of these emperors, who were as much at home in Greece as in Italy, to revive the glories of the past, and restore to the mainland of Greece that pre-eminence in the Hellenic world which had been usurped by the great cities of the East. Everywhere splendid buildings testified to the lavish munificence, if not always to the good taste, of the emperors, and of wealthy subjects who emulated their example. Countless monuments and inscriptions throughout Greece bear witness to the activity of Hadrian. At Athens he built a gymnasium and library, at Corinth he provided baths, at Nemea he instituted a winter festival, while at Mantinea and Argos he founded quinquennial festivals in honour of his beloved Antinous, whose cult spread rapidly throughout the Empire. His reverence for Olympia and its ideals is shown by a series of coins bearing on one side the emperor’s head, on the other a representation of the Zeus of Pheidias.^[262] But Hadrian’s monuments sink into insignificance in comparison with the prodigal generosity of Herodes Atticus, who rebuilt in stone the stadia at Delphi and Athens, the latter in marble from Pentelicus. At Olympia he contributed to the comfort of the spectators by providing a new system of water-supply, while he left a more conspicuous if less useful monument of himself in the so-called exedra, a pompous and incongruous semicircular building erected between the Heraeum and the western end of the treasuries, at the only vacant spot commanding a view of the altar of Zeus. The exedra was dedicated to Zeus in the name of his wife Regilla, who held at Olympia the honoured position of priestess to Demeter Chamyne. Statues of Regilla and Herodes were placed by the Eleans in the exedra, which also contained the statues of Hadrian, Antoninus and other members of the imperial family, who from this place of honour seemed to look on for ever as spectators and patrons of the festival. Under such patronage the games attracted crowds from all parts of the “inhabited world,” and indeed exercised considerable influence. For the religious idea expressed in the statue of Olympian Zeus fascinated the thought of the age. But for the Greeks themselves regeneration was no longer possible. Physically, morally, politically they were too degenerate. In the Olympic records of the second century there are few names from the mother-country; most of the victors came from the cities of Egypt and the East, especially from Alexandria. The marble stadium of Herodes Atticus at Athens witnessed all the brutalities of the Roman gladiatorial shows.

The artificiality of the athletic revival is nowhere more evident than in the numerous inscriptions of this period, which in their pompous verbosity afford a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of the time when athletics were a real part of the national life. As we read them we feel ourselves in another world, a world-of professionalism, of self-advertisement, and of records, which bears no little resemblance to that in which we are living to-day. Compare, for example, the simple inscriptions at Olympia recording the victories of the Diagoridae^[263] with the first-century inscription in honour of Publius Cornelius Ariston of Ephesus, who won the boys’ pankration in Ol. 207 (A.D. 49), or better still with the second-century inscriptions found in Italy enumerating the exploits of Titus Flavius Artemidorus of Adana of Cilicia, or of Marcus Aurelius Asclepiades of Alexandria. The very names are significant of the change that has taken place. “Diagoras (son) of Damagetus a Rhodian” such is the simple formula of early days. The only description of the contest vouchsafed is the name of the festival and the event, with the single word ?????te? added occasionally to denote a “walk over.” Occasionally a simple couplet is added. But the pedestal of Ariston’s statue^[264] had inscribed on it, besides the usual formula, a poem of twenty-four lines describing his powers and his fame, how in a field of seven he won all his heats without having the advantage of a bye, and how his glory was proclaimed not only throughout all Hellas but throughout Asia.

A few examples of these inscriptions will best illustrate the character of the age. They begin with a fulsome list of the victor’s honorary titles. That on Asclepiades^[265] informs us that he and his father both held for life the office of “high-priest of the whole xystos and overseer of the imperial baths,” that he was “chief of the temple guardians of Great Serapis, a citizen of Alexandria, Hermopolis, and Puteoli, and councillor of Neapolis, Elis, Athens, and many other cities.” Then follows a glowing description of his unbeaten record as “a pankratiast, a periodonikes invincible, immovable,^[266] unrivalled.” “I neither challenged any nor did any one in my time dare to challenge me, nor did I divide the crown with any, nor did I decline a contest or enter any protest,^[267] nor did I abandon any contest, nor take part in a contest to please royalty, nor did I gain a victory in any new-fangled games, but in all the contests for which I ever entered my name I was crowned in the actual ring and was approved in all the preliminary trials.” This emphatic insistence on the cleanness of his record is clearly an answer to those malicious attacks of which he complains at the end of the inscription, and which caused him to abandon athletics.

He proceeds to enumerate his victories in a manner which reminds one of nothing so much as those photographs which we see often in illustrated papers representing some professional athlete with his whole body covered with medals, belts and scarves which he has won, or standing triumphant in the midst of his cups and trophies. “I contended,” he says, “among three nations in Italy, in Hellas, and in Asia, and in all the contests mentioned below I was victorious in the pankration,—in the Olympia at Pisa in Ol. 240, in the Pythia at Delphi twice, at the Isthmia twice, in the Nemea twice, at the contest for the shield of Hera at Argos, in the Capitolia at Rome twice, in the Eusebea at Puteoli twice, in the Sebasta at Neapolis twice, five times at Athens in various games, five times at Smyrna, three times at the Augustea at Pergamum, three times at Ephesus, at Epidaurus in the Asclepiea, at Rhodes in the Haliea, at Sardis in the Chrysanthina, besides numerous games for money prizes (Teate?ta?), including the Heraclea in Lacedaemon, the games at Mantinea and others.” In this list Olympia and Adriania are mentioned at Athens, Smyrna, and Ephesus. At Ephesus one of his victories was won at the Balbillea founded by the celebrated astrologer Balbillus in the reign of Vespasian. It is interesting to compare this list of victories with the victories won by Diagoras of Rhodes or Epharmostus of Locrian Opous which are enumerated in the odes of Pindar.^[268] With the exception of Rhodes, all their recorded victories were won in festivals of the mother-country, at the four Panhellenic festivals, at Argos, Athens, Pellene, Aegina, Megara, and at various places in Arcadia and Boeotia. The difference may be summed up in the word ???????? which occurs frequently in late inscriptions. The games are no longer Hellenic, they are Oecumenical, and with this change their whole character is altered. Even at Olympia, most Hellenic of all festivals, athletes and spectators alike are gathered no longer from Hellas only but from “the inhabited world.”^[269]

In the enumeration of his exploits Asclepiades constantly records that “on various occasions” he brought his opponents to a standstill (st?sa?), sometimes without further comment, but usually with the words “from the start, after the first lot, after the second lot.” The phrase seems to imply that on these occasions his opponents all withdrew from the competition after the first or second heat, or even before any contest. Such incidents may have been misinterpreted by his enemies, who maliciously accused him of bribing or intimidating his rivals. At all events, he tells us that after six years he retired from athletics at the age of twenty-five, owing “to the dangers and jealousy which beset him.” After an interval of some years he was induced to reappear at the Olympic games of his native Alexandria, where he won the pankration in the sixth Alexandrine Olympiad.^[270]

It was an age of record-breaking. We see it in the expenditure on magnificent buildings and entertainments, in which each new public benefactor aimed at surpassing the work of his predecessors, and it is no wonder that the same spirit affected athletics. The inscription set up by the itinerant synod of the Alexandrines in honour of Flavius Archibius,^[271] and recording his long list of victories, is punctuated by the incessant refrain, “first of mankind.” For example, in the Pythian festival he won the pankration at one Pythiad, the pankration and wrestling in the next, the pankration again in the next, “first of mankind.” Similarly, Marcus Tullius of Apamea in Bithynia describes himself as “the first boxer from all time”^[272] to win a certain series of victories. Such phrases are of constant occurrence. A passage in Pliny’s Natural History^[273] suggests that at Rome records were kept in long-distance running, and that running against time was a popular amusement. After describing various feats of strength, he notes how records in distance-running had been frequently broken. The record of Pheidippides, he says, long held the field until Philonides, and Anystis in Alexander’s time ran from Sicyon to Elis and back, a distance of 1300 stades, in a single day. “In the circus,” he adds, “we know that some athletes have run 160 miles in a day; and recently in the Consulship of Fonteius and Vipsanius, a youth of eight (surely a mistake for eighteen) ran 75 miles between mid-day and sunset.” The accuracy of Pliny’s statements on athletics is not beyond question, but the passage is good evidence as to the practice of the times.

The second century was an age of antiquarianism. Conscious of their own inferiority, men thought to make up for their want of originality by studying and reproducing the forms of the past, regardless of the fact that these forms had lost their meaning. The writings of this period abound in allusions to the great athletes of earlier times. Lucian of Samosata sets forth at length the old athletic ideal in his dialogue entitled “Anacharsis,” in which he makes Solon defend Greek athletics against the criticism of the barbarian. The gist of his argument is that athletics make a man a better and more useful citizen, and fit him to serve his city in peace and war. But alas! the cosmopolitan Greek of his day had no longer any city to defend, and the appeal to civic patriotism can have carried little weight with men who claimed the citizenship of half-a-dozen cities at the same time. Philostratus, an equally enthusiastic admirer of the old athletes, seeks to find a cure for the athletic degeneracy of his own time by a return to the simpler and more rational methods of training of the past. But his appeal likewise fell on deaf ears. Athletics had become the monopoly of professional trainers and quacks, who regarded them merely as a source of selfish profit.

Olympia, above all, appealed to the antiquarian spirit of the age. It is chiefly to the traveller and antiquarian Pausanias, who visited Elis in 173 A.D., that we owe our knowledge of the festival. The mass of details which he gathered from the official guides of Olympia is sure evidence of the interest which the festival aroused. Phlegon of Tralles, like Aristotle in Macedonian times, revised and edited the Olympic register, making it the chronological basis of his history from 776 B.C. to 137 A.D. One C. Asinius Quadratus carried his zeal for Olympia to such lengths as to place the founding of Rome in the year of the first Olympiad, for which act of flattery he received from the Eleans a monument, “because he had honoured Olympia both in word and deed.”^[274] Others, not content with a chronology that dated back only to Coroebus, invented a new Olympic era 800 years earlier. On an inscribed diskos dedicated by Publius Asclepiades, a pentathlete of Corinth, the date is given according to the two chronologies, Ol. 255 and Ol. 456! and also by the name of the Alytarch for the year, “Flavius Scribonianus, kinsman of senators and consulars.” Archaism took a more practical shape in the minute observance of ceremonies and customs. In the inscription of Claudius Rufus, mentioned in a previous chapter, he is commended especially for having diligently practised in the sight of the Hellanodicae, “in accordance with the ancestral custom of the games.” Our knowledge of the usages of the festival is chiefly derived from authors of this period. We have already seen how these usages were reproduced in the new festivals.

No state preserved so large a measure of independence under Roman rule as Sparta. In A.D. 214, when Caracalla appeared in Greece as a second Alexander to lead a new war against the East, he appealed to Sparta for assistance; and Sparta, as a free federate state, sent two regiments of volunteers bearing the time-honoured names of the Laconian regiment, and the regiment of Pitane, as her contribution to what an inscription styles “the most fortunate alliance against the Persians.” The excavations conducted by the British School of Athens have shed a flood of light upon the history and condition of Sparta at this period.^[275] We see her as a flourishing provincial town with her Roman fortifications, theatre, baths, and suburban villas. But though changed in outward appearance, Sparta clung only the more tenaciously to the traditions and customs which she derived from Lycurgus. The love of archaism characteristic of this period showed itself in an exaggerated revival of the Lycurgean discipline. Sparta, for centuries, had taken little part in the athletic history of Greece. The one object of her physical education was to produce endurance, and the supreme test of this endurance was the so-called “Contest of Endurance” by means of successive scourgings which took place upon the altar of Artemis. The altar itself has been discovered standing on the site of earlier altars, where from time immemorial this ancient ceremony had taken place. The interest attaching to the contest in Roman times is shown by the numerous references in contemporary writers; and still more by the fact that towards the close of the second century A.D., a large theatre, surrounding the altar, was built for the convenience of spectators. An inscription discovered in the Artemisium records the victory of a boy in this contest. Greek writers represent the contest as a humane substitute for human sacrifice; but Professor Bosanquet^[276] has shown that there is good reason for thinking that Greek tradition mistook the meaning of the ceremony, which originated in an ancient ritual practice of whipping away boys who tried to steal cheeses from the altar; and that the “Contest of Endurance” was a brutal exaggeration of the old practice, due to the late and artificial revival of the Lycurgean discipline. It certainly justifies, in part, the contemptuous tone in which Philostratus speaks of Spartan athletics.

If Sparta took little part in the great competitions, she had her own games and her own competitions. One of these, the Leonidaea, was celebrated in honour of those who fell at Thermopylae. Two inscriptions have been discovered containing regulations for this festival which it appears must have been reorganized about the time of Nerva.^[277] It was a yearly festival, and only Spartans were allowed to compete. This is perhaps the reason why the programme contained the pankration, an event for which no Spartan might enter at other festivals. The most interesting inscriptions are those referring to certain games in which teams of Spartan boys competed. The late Mr. Kenneth Freeman, in his book, The Schools of Hellas, maintained that the prototype of the English public school system was to be found in the Spartan system of education. Certainly the Spartan games resemble our English games more closely than any other games of which we know in the ancient world. The game of Platanistas was played on an island surrounded by a ditch, between two teams of boys who, entering the ground by bridges at either end, strove by fighting, hitting, kicking, and biting, to drive their opponents into the water. But for the absence of the ball, this game bears considerable resemblance to the primitive football scrimmage before any of the existing rules were introduced, and, as we shall see, ball games were of considerable importance at Sparta. The game of Platanistas, like the scourging, may have had its origin in some ritual practice denoted by the sacrifice of a boar, but in the time of Pausanias it was certainly played in the form described.

A series of inscriptions, all with one exception dating from the time of the Antonines, commemorate victories won by teams of ball-players at some yearly competition.^[278] The name sfa??e?? was given to Spartan youths in their first year of manhood. The competitions took place in the Dromos under the direction of the Bideoi, a board of five officials responsible for the management of the Platanistas and other ephebic games. The teams represented the local districts of Sparta called the Obes, and it seems probable that the expenses connected with the team were provided by a local obe official, the d?aet??, who is mentioned in the inscriptions. Each team was under a captain called the p??s??, but the number of members in a team cannot be decided owing to the mutilation of the inscriptions. It seems not to have been less than fifteen. The competition was arranged on the tournament system, for several inscriptions record the fact that the winning team had not drawn a bye. Unfortunately, we have no clue to the manner of playing the game.

A yet more numerous group of inscriptions found in the Artemisium, and belonging mostly to the same period, consists of dedications to Artemis in honour of victories won by teams of young boys in certain musical and athletic competitions.^[279] The competitors seem to be mostly about the age of ten, the age denoted by the term ?????e???, and each team was under a captain, ?a???, chosen perhaps for family reasons, who held the title for life. There seem, however, to have been similar competitions for older boys, for one of the inscriptions commemorates a ?a??? whose team was successful in a boys’ competition and also in a competition for youths of twenty (e??e?e?). Two musical contests are mentioned, called, respectively, ??a and ?e??a, the precise nature of which cannot be determined. The third competition bears the name ?a????at????, which seems to describe some rough game resembling the hunting of wild beasts, perhaps some such game as prisoner’s base. The victor was crowned with bay and received as a prize a sickle which was affixed to the inscribed tablet and dedicated to Artemis. The presence of musical competitions suggests that the narrowness of Spartan education has been perhaps exaggerated by Greek historians. Much of our knowledge of Sparta is derived from the accounts of her enemies.

In spite of all these outward signs of athletic life, the writers of this period leave us in no doubt as to the real character of the athletic revival. We are no longer forced to draw what inferences we can from the doubtful evidence of casual allusions; we possess in the works of Plutarch, Galen, and Philostratus definite treatises on physical culture and gymnastic. Different as is the point of view of these authors, they agree in condemning the athletics of their day, and prove beyond possibility of doubt how far from realization was the old ideal set forth by Lucian and Dion of Prusa. That old ideal, in which the culture of body and of mind went hand in hand, was inseparable from the ideal of free citizenship that existed when every citizen was both soldier and politician, and when to develop mind and body to the full extent of which each was capable was a duty that the citizen owed to the state. All this had long been changed; war was now the business of paid professional soldiers, politics of the imperial government. The individual, thrown back on self, had no other interest but personal profit and enjoyment. Speculative and mystical philosophy and religion taught men to despise the body, and as a consequence the training of the body no longer maintained its importance in education. Gymnastic, deprived of its proper province in education, found itself confined to the training of professional athletes, who developed the body but neglected the mind. But as life became more sedentary and less active the claims of the body reasserted themselves: hunting was impossible except for the few, games were of little importance in most places, hence there arose a need for artificial exercise, and the need was supplied by the medical gymnastic which aimed at producing health. The Romans, though they despised athletics, realized the importance of exercise for maintaining health. The bath and massage were essential parts of this gymnastic, and the exercises prescribed included walking, gentle running, jumping up and down, the use of halteres as dumb-bells, throwing the diskos and the javelin. Health-culture has its use for men who lead a sedentary, artificial life, but it is not athletics; neither is physical training or gymnastics, to use the word in its restricted modern sense—invaluable as such training is in education of the young, especially in thickly populated cities. But health-culture and gymnastics lack the moral value which friendly rivalry gave once to Greek athletics and gives to-day to the games of our public schools. Professional athletics equally lack this moral value; for when livelihood depends on success, rivalry ceases to be friendly, and the door is opened for corruption. Both health-culture and professionalism are poles removed from the true Greek ideal of athletics.

Plutarch’s opinion about the athletics of his day is evident from many passages in his Lives, to which reference has already been made. His tract on the Preservation of Health, intended as it is chiefly for the ordinary, middle-aged, business man, hardly concerns us here except so far as it continually condemns by implication the artificial and unhealthy training to which athletes were subjected. Galen and Philostratus are so little known to the ordinary reader, and their works are so important, that some account of them is indispensable.

Born at Pergamum in A.D. 130, Galen studied philosophy and medicine at Alexandria, Smyrna, and Corinth. At Alexandria he was appointed physician to the school of gladiators. At the age of thirty-four he came to Rome, where he became the friend and physician of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but after a few years he returned to his native land. His wide experience of men and countries, his knowledge of medicine and anatomy, his breadth of mind and fearless love of truth make his judgment of special value. He wrote numerous works on Health, but the two which are of most importance to us here are his essay on “Exercise with the Small Ball,” a masterly statement of the true principles of exercise, and his “Exhortation to the Arts,” an attack on professional athletics.

The best of all exercises, he says in his treatise on Ball-play, are those which combine bodily exertion with mental recreation, such as hunting and ball-play. But ball-play has this advantage over hunting that its cheapness puts it within reach of the very poorest, while even the busiest man can find time for it. Moreover, it can be practised with any degree of violence or moderation, at all times and in all conditions. It exercises every part of the body, legs, hands, and eyesight alike, and at the same time gives pleasure to the mind. In contrast with athletic exercises, which make men slow or produce one-sided development, ball-play produces strength and activity, and therefore trains all those qualities which are most valuable for a soldier. Finally, it is free from dangers, and does not expose the player to all those accidents which too often leave the wrestler, “like the Homeric Litai, either halt, or distorted, or altogether bereft of some limb.” The practice of games of ball is of particular interest in view of the importance which they possessed at Sparta. These games must have varied in character almost as much as those with which we are familiar to-day, and no better defence of such games has ever been written, though we may doubt whether Galen would have approved of the extent to which they are carried in the present day.

The ostensible object of the “Exhortation” is to urge men to devote themselves to some art or profession which will last them all their life; but the real subject of the discourse is whether athletics deserves the title of an art or profession. t???? is defined as having for its aim “the improvement of life,” and therefore there can be no art in tumbling or walking the tight-rope. Does the athlete’s life benefit the athlete himself or the state? To this question Galen replies emphatically, “No.” “The mind is higher than the body, for the mind we share with the gods, the body with the animals. In the blessings of the mind athletes have no share. Beneath their mass of flesh and blood their souls are stifled as in a sea of mud. Nor do they enjoy the best blessings even of the body. Neglecting the old rule of health, which prescribes moderation in all things, they spend their lives in over-exercising, over-eating, over-sleeping, like pigs. Hence they seldom live to old age, and if they do, they are crippled and liable to all sorts of disease. They have not health nor have they beauty. Even those that are naturally well-proportioned become fat and bloated; their faces are often shapeless and unsightly, owing to the wounds received in boxing or the pankration. They lose their eyes and their teeth, and their limbs are strained. Even their vaunted strength is useless. They can dig and plough, but they cannot fight. They cannot endure heat and cold, nor, like Heracles, wear one garment summer and winter, go unshod and sleep on the open ground: in all this they are weaker than new-born babes.” Such is the picture which Galen draws of the professional athletes of his day, most of whom, as we have seen, were boxers and wrestlers; and we can judge of the truth of the picture from the mosaics in the baths of Caracalla, where we see represented, in all their brutality and coarseness, the portraits of those professional prize-fighters and athletes whom the degraded and unathletic mob and court of Rome delighted to honour (Fig. 23).^[280] There they stand with their clumsy, ill-proportioned bodies, their scarred and mutilated faces, their small and brainless heads rendered yet more hideous by the top-knot (cirrus) in which their scanty hair is tied. It is the last stage in the decline of athletics, which had begun centuries earlier in the exaggerated honours paid to mere bodily strength, to that lower nature which man shares with the animals, and in which man must remain the inferior of the animals. Galen ends his argument by pressing home this lesson in a parable, in which he imagines an Olympia to which the heralds have summoned all the animals to compete. There man would not win a single event. The horse would win the long race, the hare the short race, the deer the diaulos. None of the successors of Heracles could compete with the lion or the elephant. And I expect, says he, that the bull will win the crown for boxing, and the donkey in a kicking match will carry off the crown. Yes, and in an elaborate history, donkey will record that “once he defeated man in the pankration, and that it was the twenty-and-first Olympiad when Brayer was victorious.”

Fig. 23. Professional boxer, from mosaic in Thermae of Caracalla. Lateran.