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The Olympian Theatron and the Battle of Olympia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Louis Dyer
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Once only—seven years after the battle of Leuctra—there was actual fighting within the sacred precinct, the Altis, of Olympia,—in the 104th Olympiad (364 B.C.). From time immmoreial, before and since that year, the inhabitants of Elis, as Polybius (iv. 73) phrased it 200 years later, ‘enjoyed on account of the Olympian games’ so unique and privileged a dispensation that Olympia and the whole of Elis was a Holy Land, and feared no ravages of war. The Eleans, by the same token, were ideally conceived of as living consecrated lives (ίερὸν βίον) and enjoyed immunity from battle and sudden death. In his account of the one and only battle of Olympia, Xenophon—writing after he had lived for twenty-three years within an afternoon's stroll of the Olympian Altis—alludes in passing to the θέατρον by way of explaining just where the fighting took place.

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Research Article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , November 1908 , pp. 250 - 273
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Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1908

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References

1 Xenophon lived in retirement at Scillus from just after the battle of Coroneia (394 B.C.) to just after the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.). The closing years of his life were spent at Corinth. When first he settled upon his Scill untine domain, the new Dromos at Olympia had been in use for rather less than sixty years. Spectators presumably forsook the stepped terrace in order to witness contests in the Dromos at the eighty-third celebration of the Olympia (B.C. 448) four years before the probable date of Xenophon's birth (B.C. 444). It is accordingly natural—if the local Olympian application of θέατρον was finally driven out of currency by the multiplication in Greece of stone theatres—that Xenophon should have remembered what Plutarch, Pausanias, and others of the first two centuries A.D. could never have heard of—an obsolescent but perfectly clear application of the word θέατρον chiefly current before full fledged stone theatres had come to play a conspicuous part in Greek civic and religions life. Pausanias' silence is most significant since his account of the Olympian Altis is the most carefully and successfully minute of all his topographical delineations. The Olympian guides with whom he conversed, the Peloponnesian antiquaries whom he consulted (VII. xviii., VIII, xxiv.), and the authors referred to by him in his two books on Elis (Anaximenes, VI. xviii. 2; Androtion, ib. viii. 6 f.; Aristarchus, V. xx. 4 f.; Philistus, ib. xxiii. 6; Theopompus, VI. xviii. 5; Thucydides, ib. xix. 3), all of them failed to suggest to him the idea that there was or had been a theatre at Olympia.

[la I have recently come across another late reference to a θέατρον at Olympia in Chrysostom, Johann., De Nom. Mutat. p. 851Google Scholar, οὐχ ὑρᾶτε τοὐς ᾿ Ολυμπιακοὺς ἀθλητἀς εἰς μέσον τοῦ θεάτρου έστῶτας ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ μέση, καθάπερ έν καμίνῳ τῷ σκἁμματι. Here θέατρον is used of the Stadium or the place where athletes competed. The athletes who contested at midday were the boxers and wrestlers. If the argument in this paper is correct and the θέατρον of Pausanias denotes the triangular space contained beween the treasury tenace and the Colonnades, this passage gives some support to my suggestion that these events continued to be held in this space as long as the festival existed, and were never transferred to the Stadium. It is but fair to add that the passage would equally well suit Dr. Dörpfeld's view that the θέατρον is the Stadium.—E.N.G]

2 Dr.Dörpfeld, (Ol. Text ii. p. 79Google Scholar) argues from I. G. ii. 176, τοῦ σταδίου καὶ τοῦ θεάτρου τοῦ Παναθηναἴκοῦ that in the fourth century B.C. Stadia were subdivided into two parts, (1) the στἁδιον κατ᾿ ἐξοχήν and (2) the surrounding accommodation for spectators, called the θέατρον. This view is adopted by Dr.Philios, (A.M. xx. p. 266Google Scholar) in correction of his original account of an Eleusinian, inscription (Ditt. Syll. ii. 538Google Scholar; Hicks, and Hill, , Hist. Inscr. 161Google Scholar) containing the words τὸ θέατρον τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ σταδίου. That the word θέατρον in both these inscriptions must and does refer to places for spectators in the Panathenaic Stadium and the Stadium at Eleusis respectively is clear. This, however, was simply because θέατρον was at this time still a comparatively vague term, not yet the technically fixed designation for stone theatres, which had not yet come into prominence and were only just building. When these were built and constantly used throughout Greece, the term θέατρον ceased to be current for any part of a stadium or for places like the Olympian terrace or colonnades. Before their advent θέατρον applied to any spectatorium however shaped, e.g. (1) to the seating of the Panathenaic Stadium at Athens, (2) to the seating of the Eleusinian Stadium, (3) to the terrace of the Olympian treasuries before 450 B.C., (4) to that terrace, supplemented after 450 B.C. by its southward extension, the Painted Colonnade, and the Front Colonnade of the South-eastern Building.; Just such another spectatorium was that of the Spartan Agora from which Demaratus departed in high dudgeon (ca. 485 B.C.) according to Herodotus (vi. 67). Excavations yet to be made may enlighten us farther as to the exact application of Herodotus' word θέατρον in this passage, but even now we know (a) from Pausanias III. xi. 3 that the most conspicuous monument there to be seen was the Persian Colonnade, (b) from Thucydides that there were no κατασκεναὶ πολυτελεῖς in Sparta at the beginning of the Pelopounesian war. It is obvious therefore that Pausanias is ‘hedging’ when, having described the Persian Colonnade as ἀπὸ λαφύρων ποιηθεῖσαν τῶν Μη δικῶν he straightway adds: ἀνὰ χρόυον δὲ αὐτὴν ἐς μέγεθος τὸ νῦν καὶ ἐς κόσμον τὸν παρόντα μεταβεβλήκασιν. The glyptic eccentricities and elaborations of the Persian Colonnade were plainly of much later origin than the times just after the Persian wars. Thus the θέητρον from which Demaratus so abruptly withdrew, certainly comprised in its plainest and most primitive dimensions what afterwards was improved into the spacious and somewhat grotesque fabric seen and described by Pausanias.

3 Hdt. vi. 67: ἦσαν μὲν δὴ γυμνοπαιδίαι θεω μένου δὲ τοῦ Δημαρήτου, ὁ Λευτυχίδης . . . ἐπὶ γέλωτί τε καὶ λάσθῃ εἰρώτα τὸν Δημάρητον ὁκοῖόν τι εἴη τὸ ἄρχειν μετὰ τὸ βασιλεύειν. ὁ δὲ ἀλγήσας τῷ ἐπειρωτήματι ειπε φὰς αὐτὸς μὲν ἀμφοτέρων ἤδη πεπιρῆσθαι τὴν μέντοι ἐπειρώ τησιν ταύτην ἄρξειν Λακεδαιμονίοισι ἤ μυρίης κακότητος ἤ μυρίης εὐδαιμονίης ταῦτα δὲ εἴπας καὶ κατακαλυψάμενος ἤϊε ὲκ τοῦ θεήτρου ὲς τὰ ἐωυτοῦ οἰκία . . . Herodotus uses θέητρον twice (vi. 21 and 67). In 21 it has the meaning of Paus. VIII. i. 4, οἰ θεαταί

4 Paus. III. xi. 9: Σπαρτιἀταις δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς αγορᾶς Πυθαέως τέ ἐστιν ᾿Απόλλωνος καὶ ᾿Αρτἐ μιδος καὶ Λητοῦς ἀγάλματα Χορὸς δὲ οὖτος ὁ τόπος καλεῖται πᾶς ὄτι ἐν ταῖς γυμνοπαιδίαις ἐορτὴ δὲ εἴ τις ἄλλη καὶ αἰ γυμνοπαιδίαι διὰ απουδῆς Λακεδαιμονίοις εἰσίν, -ἐν ταύταις οὖν οἰ ἔφηβοι χοροὺς ἰστᾶσι τῷ ᾿Απόλλωνι Pletarch's allusion (agesilaus 29) to the γυμνοπαιδίαι as held ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ cannot possibly apply to the episode of Demaratus, which, if not historical, is assuredly ben trovato, and certainly belongs somewhere about 485 B.C. Plutarch, in this passage, is obviously expatiating currente calamo, after his genial wont, upon Xenophon's contemporary account of how news of defeat at Leuctra came to the Spartan ephors on the last day of the gymnopaidiai τοῦ ἀνδρικοῦ χοροῦ ἔνδον ὄντος (Hell. VI. iv. 16). Xenophon says nothing about the theatre, and means obviously that they were still performing in the ἀγορά but Plutarch, who cared little about topographical minutiae, paraphrases by saying they were ἐν τῷ θεἁτρῳ Doubtless Plutarch had seen or heard of the Spartan theatre. A still more striking instance of Plutarch's, superiority to topographical minutiae is found in his anecdote about the ovation to Themistocles in the Olympian stadium (Themist. 17Google Scholar, παρελθόντος [Θε μιστοκλέουσ] εἰς τὸ στάδιον) at a time when there was no stadium or running-ground at Olympia. On this point Pausanias (VIII. i. 4) would naturally be more trustworthy, and accordingly, where he alludes in passing to the apocryphal story of the Olympian ovation to Themistocles, he says simply Θεμιστοκλέους ἐς τιμὴν ἐπανέστη τὸ ἐν ᾿Ολυμπίᾳ θέατρον meaning by θέατρον simply and solely, as Dr. Frazer has pointed out (Pausanias iii, p. 637 n.), οἰ θεαταί But this whole anecdote about Themistocles at Olympia is of late invention, and entirely apocryphal: (1) because the festival at which it must have taken place would almost certainly be the 76th (476 B.C.), which came just after the organization of the first Athenian Confederacy at Delos—a consummation not popular in the Peloponnesus; (2) because Herodotus, the only contemporary authoiity as to the triumphal progress of Themistocles, knows nothing about it. In fact Herodotus (viii. 124), after detailing the honours paid to Themistocles at Sparta, ends with a guard of honour which accompanied him to Tegea on his way back to Athens, whereas the Plutarchian story implies that he went from Sparta to Olympia, in which case he would have been escorted not to Tegea, but up the valley of the Eurotas to the headwaters of the Alpheius; (3) Neither Thucydides (i. 74) nor Diodorus (xi. 27) knows anything about the ovation to Themistocles at Olympia, although they are quoted along with Hdt. viii. 123 f., as vouching for this figment of latter-day enthusiasm by Dr. Westermann, in Pauly's Real-encyclopädie, s.v. Themistocles. How the tale of Themistocles at Olympia came to be invented is shewn by Pausanias' mention of it (VIII. 50. 3) as an illustration of the ovation to Philopoemen at Nemea. Pausanias does not vouch for its truth, since he introduces it with πυνθάνομαι ‘I understand.’ The common source from which Plutarch and Pausanias derived it was presumably popular report. It was a tale popularly invented as a pendant to the historical episode of Philopoemen at Nemea. Such tales invented themselves among Greeks.

5 That there can have been no stone theatre at Sparta at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war is clear from Thucydides'(I. x. 2) description of the insignificance of Spartan monuments at that time οὔτε ξυνοικισθείσης πόλεως οὐτε ἰεροῖς καὶ κατασκευαῖς πολυτεκέσι χρησαμένης, κατὰ κώμας δὲ τῷ παλαιῷ τῆς ῾Ελλάδος τρόπῳ οἰκισθείσης The date of the Spartan stone theatre has been determined by excavation as of the first or second century B.C. (B.S.A. xii. pp. 405 f.). No traces of a theatre of Hellenic or Hellenistic construction have been found, so that the notion that the word θέητρον in Hdt. vi. 67, can mean a stone theatre which existed at the time of the Persian wars, is completely exploded, along with the parallel notion that the Spartan gymnopaidiai were celebrated either in part or as a whole in the stone theatre.

6 Not till the fourth century B.C., if even by that time, was Greek social life of any kind so far divorced from ritual observance as to admit of provision for onlookers in places where there was no altar. Indeed the ancient altar of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, as lately excavated (Bosanquet, R. in B.S.A. xii. pp. 303–319)Google Scholar admirably illustrates the traditional centring of sight-seeing crowds around altars of immemorial worship. It was not until the reign of Caracalla, (ca. 214Google Scholar A.D.) that a stone theatre—not to be confused with the larger one discussed in the previous note mentioned by Pausanias III. xiv. i, Athenaeus iv. 139 e, and Lucian, , Anacharsis 38Google Scholar, but not by Herodotus vi. 67—encircled this altar of immemorial service, where was focussed a ‘continuous cult of the goddess…for at least 1200 years’ (Dawkins, R. M., Proceedings of the Classical Association 1907, p. 81)Google Scholar. What exactly was the provision for spectators before Caracalla's, time is not yet known (B.S.A. xii. p. 310)Google Scholar. There certainly was no stone theatre of Hellenic or of Hellenistic date either here or in the ἀγορά where the gynmopaidiai were celebrated (Paus. III. xi. 9) and frequented by crowds of strangers (Xen., Mem. I. ii. 61)Google Scholar. Plutarch is quite alone in the erroneous statement—see the preceding note—that this festival was held ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ (Agesilaus 29). When there was a proper stone theatre at Sparta—in Imperial days, various performances, none of them connected with the gymnopaidiai, took place there, such as are alluded to by Athenaeus (iv. p. 139 e) and by Lucian, , Anacharsis 38Google Scholar.

[Professor E. A. Gardner points out to me an excellent illustration of provision for spectators round an altar at Oropus. Close to the Amphiaraum is an altar and above it is a miniature theatre consisting of some semicircular tiers of steps. At Eleusis too there are not only steps all round the sekos itself but the steps extend outside it along the face of the rock and there are other steps lower down commanding the sacred way. When we remember that the theatre proper centred round the altar of the orchestra, we are surely justified in attaching, a religious meaning to the word θέατρον and in using the word of the provision for spectators at Oropus, Eleusis, Sparta, and Olympia. A further indication of the religious association of θέατρον may perhaps be found in the use of the cognate words θεωρία and θεωροί of the representatives sent by cities to the great festivals.—E.N.G.]

7 Even in this, its improved and extended condition after the battle of Chaeroneia (338 B.C.), the Olympian Stadium entirely lacked the curved, theatre-like end-σφενδόνη-which is to-day the most useful portion of the rehabilitated Panathenaic Stadium at Athens, and was a characteristic feature of several Greek Stadia elsewhere.

8 It has been not unnaturally suggested that benches of wood must have been provided for spectators at Olympia, but the fact remains that, except in the Palaestra, which was not built before Macedonian times, and presumably in the Gymnasium, which was built still later, arrangements for sitting are everywhere conspicuous by their absence at Olympia. The hardships of travel in early days effectually prohibited from attendance the old and infirm, and the young would not scruple to lie down on the ground when tired. Certainly no traces appear of any normal contrivances for seating spectators, whether in the Stadium or elsewhere. There was clearly no chance to sit down in the Eleusinian Telesterion. Worshippers appear to have sat as little in witnessing Olympian Games as in viewing Eleusinian mysteries. Athlelic training and clothes that hampered the limbs far less than those of the present day appear to have made continuous standing far easier for the frequenters of the Olympia than we imagine. Socrates and his contemporaries were inured to a life in the streets and porches of Athens which was the very reverse of sedentary. Hence Alcibiades' after-dinner story of Socrates at Potidaea (Plato, , Symp. 220Google Scholar). He began one morning to think about something and continued till noon from the break of day. After supper in the evening, certain Ionians slept out in order to see him at it all night. There he stood till the following morning, when, with the return of light, he offered his prayer to the sun, and went his way. Probably Alcibiades' tale, like other after-dinner stories, is not to be taken too literally, and Socrates did not stand continuously for twenty-four hours. But after all the point of the anecdote is sadly blunted unless one realizes that Alcibiades and the Ionians did not wonder at his standing for so long a time—what really amazed them was that he was rivetted by thought about something he could not resolve, and would not give the puzzle up.

[Sitting was regarded as a slavish habit. In Xenophon's, Occonomicus x. 10Google Scholar, Ischomachos tells his wife not to sit down like a slave, but to stand over her slaves like a master directing and correcting them, and to walk round the house to see what is wanted. Again in the Memorabilia iii. 13. 5 Xenophon tells us that an Athenian walks in five or six days as far as from Athens to Olympia.—E.N.G.]

9 The western end of the running-ground was so much lower than the eastern end that an independent source of water-supply for the latter was required (Ol. Text ii. 174 b). The water supply of the northern and eastern sides of the Altis and of the western half of the Dromos derived, before the improvements of Herodes Atticus, from a tank north of the north-western angle of the Heraeum. An open conduit started from there and then skirted the north side of the Heraeum and the bottom step of the terrace until it reached the way down into the running-ground. There it branched (1) into a major conduit which went along the northern retaining wall (supplanted by the northern support of the barrel-areh in Roman days) down into the Stadium, and (2) a minor conduit which turned southward, crossing the way into the Stadium overhead, i.e. above a hypothetical postern gate which then led eastward into the Dromos. See Gracber, (Ol. Text ii. p. 171)Google Scholar, Dörpfeld, (Ol. Text i. p. 77Google Scholar), and Borrmann, (Ol. Text ii. p. 77)Google Scholar. This overhead communication appears to have been supplanted—probably at the time of the Macedonian extension of the Stadium, demolition of the first Colonnade of Echo, and reconstruction of it further west—by an underground conduit, which, however, did nót work well. Thus the earlier overhead water-supply connected with the runnel discovered along the back wall of the first Colonnade of Echo, where its course slanted from an altitude at the northern end, corresponding to that of the postern gate, to a much lower level near the southern end of the Colonnade, where traces of it have been discovered (O1. Pl. ii. p. li). The hypothetical postern gate was presumably suppressed at the time of the Macedonian extension, and supplanted by some underground conduit connected with the open runnel, still visible in situ, along the bottom step of the reconstructed (western) Colonnade of Echo. It is important to bear in mind that these two successive schemes of water-supply for the two successive Colonnades of Echo both connected at the terrace of the treasuries with the open runnel which ran along the footstep of the stepped terrace. The major conduit above mentioned as leading down into the Stadium, distributed water into a series of shallow basons set at intervals of ca. 15 metres around the western half of the running-ground.

10 A low-lying stretch of ground, quadrilateral and all but rectangular, the Olympian running-field lay ca. 7⅓ m. below the mean level of the terrace of the treasuries, and ca. 3⅓ m. below the stylobates of the two great Temples. Its boundary lines figured what might be called a parallelogram with entasis, since its breadth at the east end was 29·70m. (but 30·70 m. at a point lying 12·73 m. west of the eastern starting lines, 29·60 at the western starting lines and 28·60 at the western end, next the Altis). It extended from the eastern extremity of the terrace and treasuries 212 odd metres northeast ward, skirting the foot of Mt. Cronius. Its breadth was 29 odd metres. It is not known what changes were made in the running-field proper when the spaces adjoining it for the use of onlookers were cut down and moulded up (Paus. VI. xx. 8) in Macedonian times; but the Olympian Stadium certainly was anything rather than a στάδιον αὐτοφυές like that at Laodiceia on the Lycus. Before the Eleans built what they called the Painted Colonnade—the name of ‘Colonnade of Echo,’ conventionally given to the later colonnade built further west in Macedonian times and rebuilt in Roman times is, properly, the Pisatau name applied successively to both (Paus. V. xxi. 7)–and fenced out the whole region of the Dromos from the Altis, there were presumably in that region several centres of specifically Pisatan observance. Dim suggestions of these local cults, whose shrines would naturally border on the site of the vanished tribe centre of the Pisatans, survive in Pausanias' mention of Demeter Chamyne and the Pisatan king Chamynus, and of his location of the sanctuary of this chthonic cult in the Dromos (VI. xxi. i.). Demeter's priestess had a seat of honour in the Stadium (Paus. VI. xx. 9), a peculiarly significant fact in view of the otherwise peremptory exclusion of women(Paus. V. vi. 7), as well as in the naming of the Colonnade, of Echo (cf. Paus. II xxxv. 10, V. xxi. 7 and Od. xi. 632–635)Google Scholar. For ihe remains of the gorgeous shrine of Demeter Chamyne of which Regilla, wife of Attieus, Herodes, was priestess see Ol. Text i. p. 946Google Scholar. They were used by the builders of the early Olympian Basilica.

11 Dr.Borrmann, (Ol. Text ii. p. 68Google Scholar) dates the enlargement approximately in the middle of the-first century B.C. or a trifle later—an astoundingly late date, in view (a) of the crowds which resorted to Olympia and must have required additional room, and (b) of the fact that the first century B.C. was by no means a brilliant epoch for the Olympian games, as is made plain by the fact that Olympia was plundered by Sulla, and by the general helplessness that characterized Greek circumstances in this period. There is even a tale representing; that Sulla summoned all the adult competitors at Olympia to grace his triumph at Rome in 81–80 B.C. so that Epaenetus of Argos, winner in the boys' running race is the only recorded victor at Olympia for the 175th Olympiad (cp. Fòrster's Sieger etc., Africanus and Appian civ. i. 99). Be that as it may, Dr. Borrmann argues that the constantly rising level of the running-field—always a receptacle for the surface water of the Altis (which was not far from 12 feet above it) by reason of the gentle down ward slope which began as far west as the Metroum—enforced alterations of an extensive character and not'confined to the running-ground. He dates from about 50 B.C. an elaborate scheme which was carried out completely within a generation of that date. This scheme comprised: I. the building of a new Echo Colonnade, west of the old one; II. the extension of the western slope of the stadium so as to cover the space previously occupied by the old colonnade henceforward dismantled; III the tunnelling of the hitherto open way leading down to the running-ground; IV. the construction of a monumental gateway in front of III. Dr. Borrmann convincingly argues that IV. must have been built about 175 years before the 226th Olympiad, when the two Zanes flanking it on either side were set up (Paus. V. xxi. 15), i.e. ca. 50 B.C. He argues not quite so convincingly that III. the tunnel, and II. the westward extension of the stadium slope, must have been part of one and the same scheme, because the amount and weight of earth required to mound up the western slope to the top of its new retaining wall (6½ metres high) required a tunnel, if there was to be direct access from the Altis to the running-ground. The tunnel being according to his view of Roman date, it follows then that the extension of the slope was also a part of the Roman scheme, to which, then, the building of the new colonnade must also be added, since it cannot be separated from the extension which dismantled the earlier colonnade. There are, however, three serious objections to conceiving items I.-IV. as each and all of Roman date, and these are met by concluding that IV. and III., the Gate and the Tunnel are of Roman date, while I. and II., the rebuilding of the colonnade further west and the extension of the slope, are of the Macedonian era (ca. 330 B.C.) after Chaeroneia. The first objection is that the sill of IV. is laid so high that its foundations extend over those of I. in such a manner as to preclude their forming part of one consistent scheme of improvements. The second is that in the walls of II. have been found—notably in the northern wall of the tunnelled way—the materials forming the retaining walls of an earlier passageway running to about the height of the spring of the Roman barrel-arch, which may well have served from the date of the Macedonian extension to the building of the Roman Gate (I.) and Tunnel (II.) as a means of direct access to the running-ground. Along the southern retaining wall of this earlier passage-way ran also a stone bench, remains of which were found ire situ. The third objection is that Dr. Dörpfeld has pointed out several detailed features, which the new Colonnade of Echo has in common with the Philippeum, and the date of the Philippeum is unquestionably ca. 330 B.C. These features are: (1) the elaborate and workmanlike treatment of the steps and of the stylobate; (2) the use for the steps of coarse-grained white marble, poros being used for other parts; (3) the use for the steps of ̶ shaped clamps, while the drums of the columns and the blocks of the stylobate are fastened together with thick wooden dowels (Ol. Text ii. 786). The numerous architectural fragments of Roman workmanship belonging to the site of the Macedonian Colonnade must therefore be attributed to extensive Roman repairs, while the western or second Colonnade of Echo must be dated as contemporaneous with the Philippeum, and with the extension of the western slope of the primitive Dromos, which made it into a full-fledged Stadium.

12 This very notable flight of steps occupies practically the whole of the north side of the Altis, 180 m. in extent. Only the Prytaneum with its shrine of Hestia intervenes between the west end of this lavishly broad flight of very shallow steps and the later western wall of the Altis. It is hard to believe that these steps were thus extended merely as a convenient means of approaching the several treasuries and as an especially safe retaining wall to the north of the Heraeuin. Under the Roman emperors lordly flights of steps and royal approaches of various kinds were multiplied in Greek lands, but these terrace-steps are too shallow to make a fine effect. The point seems to have been to have as many as possible, that spectators might perch on them in as great a number as possible.

[Various traditions connect games with altars. In funeral games the altar or the funeral pyre was the natural place for the finish of a race. In the Iliad the footrace must have finished at a place of sacrifice: for Ajax slipped just before the finish ‘where filth was strewn from the slaughter of loud bellowing oxen which Achilles slew in honour of Patroclus,’ Iliad xxiii. 775. The chariot race between Oenomaus and Pelops was from the altar of Poseidon at the Isthmus to Olympia. The torch-race of course was always ended at an altar. Finally the traditional connexion of the races at Olympia with the altar is proved by the account preserved by Philostratos of the origin of the various races, Gym. viii.-x.—E.N.G.]

13 It looks indeed as if the interest so long maintained by remote communities in their several ‘treasuries’ at Olympia had died down after the laying out of the Dromos and the building of the earlier Colonnade of Echo—an undoubtedly public-spirited measure of the Eleaus, analogous no doubt, in the motives which prompted it, to the building by the Athenians of their ‘Marathonian’ Colonnade at Delphi. This last indeed, whether dated with Homolle, M. (ca. 610 B.C.)Google Scholaror with Dr. Homlle (490 B.C., cf. Hdt. vi. 92) or with Messrs. Haussoullier, Hicks, and Dittenberger (460–458 B.C.) may have suggested their Colonnade of Echo to the Eleans.

14 Though the terrace remained at all times a choice position whence sacrifices and processions were viewed, it was not, after 450 B.C., the only one. Suggested no doubt by the accommodations for spectators recently provided at Eleusis in the Telesterion, and at Delphi by the Athenians' colonnade, the Eleans' first Colonnade of Echo ami the front Colonnade of the south-eastern building were probably planned within a generation of the memorable Pan-Hellenic Olympiad of 476 B.C. The first Colonnade of Echo was ready in 448 B.C. and commanded a view of sacrifices on the Great Ash Altar nearly as well as the terrace and the porches of its several Treasuries. That the Terrace was a centre for crowds on the Altis is proved for times even later than Pausanias' visit to Olympia by two facts: (1) The construction of the monument miscalled the ‘Exedra’ of Herodes Atticus on that portion of the Terrace just east of the Heraeum. It cannot properly be called an Exedra, since no human being ever sat there, and the statues which adorned this mammoth ex voto offering were all standing. No doubt it served as a monumental façade or grandiose terminus of the generous latter-day system of water-supply. But it would have been absurdly incongruous, standing as it does beside the ancient Heraeum, if there had not been a ceremonial justification for it, harmonizing to the inner eye at least its garish pretentiousness with the religious observance to which were dedicated alike the treasuries east of it and the temple west of' it. This ideal justification was to be found in the fact that it contained upwards of twenty-two life-size statues of spectators—eight or more members of the Imperial family and fourteen of the houses of the pious founder and of Regilla his wife. These figures stood looking out over the Altar and viewing processions. By this ex voto on the terrace all frequenting worshippers were reminded of the permanent interest felt in Olympian observance by the great people of the earth. That Herodes built his generous tanks on a site frequented by crowds is further proved by (2) an episode in Lucian's De Morte Peregrini xxx. ad fin. Peregrinus railed at the effeminacy promoted by the luxurious water supply of Herodes, and was consequently mobbed ‘while in the act of benefitting by it’ (ἄμα πίνων τοῦ ὔδατος) says Lucian. Indeed it was only by hastily taking sanctuary at the Great Ash Altar near by, that the perverse cynic got off alive—ἐπὶ τὸν Δία καταφυγὼν ὁ γενναῖος εὖρε τὸ μἠ ἀποθανεῖν

15 [As I point out in a later note, there is no evidence to prove that events like wrestling and boxing were ever transferred to the Dromos, , or even to the Stadium. Cp. J.H.S. xxiii, p. 57Google Scholar, n. 13. Faber, Martin's arguments to prove that they were transferred (Philologus L. 495Google Scholar) are all inconclusive, and I incline more and more to the opinion that they had not been transferred when Xenophon wrote the Hellenica and probably were never transferred. V. sup. n. la.—E.N.G.]

16 The lists in the triangular treeless plain east of the Great Ash Altar at Olympia and commanded by the terrace and the ‘treasuries’ were at the foot of the barrow of Pelops, just as the ἀγών where Achilles held the games of Il. xxiii, was at the foot of the barrow of Patrocina, (Il. xxiii. 255–258, 619)Google Scholar, and the Pylian analogue and prototype of the Olympia is described (Ib. 630–643) by Nestor in his reminiscences of the funeral games of Amarynceus at Buprasium. Throughout the Twenty-third Iliad, where it occurs eleven times, the word ἀγών means not a contest but an arena, the place or the lists of the games (vv.273, 448, 451, 495, 507, 617, 654, 696, 799, 847, and 886). In the same sense exactly ἀγών applies to the arena of the Phaeacian games in Od. viii. 200, 238, and 380, and xxiv. 86. Exactly what the word means in Od. viii. 259 depends upon whether ἀγῶνα or ἀγῶνας is read. Four MSS. there read ἀγῶνα and if their reading is adopted, the word has the same sense of arena attaching to it in the very next line (260) as well as in the fifteen cases above cited. In Il. vii. 298 and xviii. 376 ἀγών still means a place, the templum or τέμενος of the gods—a sense in which it would be applicable to the Olympian arena in question. Thus in nineteen Homeric cases ἀγών means a place and not a contest, nor is the meaning of contest known to tlie Iliad or the Odyssey. Twice and twice only (Il. xxiv. 1 and xxiii. 258) it means the people assembled for the games, and it probably has this sense also in Od. viii. 260, if ἀγῶνας is read in place of ἀγῶνα The only remaining examples of the word in Homer, occur in the Iliad (xv. 428, xvi. 239 and 500, xix. 42, and xx. 33)Google Scholar. In these five places ἀγῶν νεῶν means an assemblage of ships. Hesiod only used ἀγῶν four times (Th. 91 and 435, Scut. 204 and 312), everywhere in the sense of an arena. It is therefore plain enough that Homer and Hesiod had no knowledge of ἀγῶν in the sense of contest but used it in the sense of lists or arena for contests. How firmly the Homeric associations clung to the word ἀγῶν even when it came to be used of suits in the law courts is shewn by the metaphors of the arena involved in some of the most common place of current idioms: cf. Lycurgus i. 117 ἔρημον τὸν ἀγῶνα ἐάσαντα see also the elaborate metaphor in ib. 47, cf. Lycurgus i. 10 εἰς τόνδε τὸν ἀγῶνα κατέστην also ib. ii. 104, 105 and 121 with Dinaichus i. 109. Two cases where ἀγών has the sense of contest, like the Homeric ἄεθλος occur in the Hymns, Homeric (vi. 19 and h. Apoll. 150)Google Scholar. ῾Αθλα appears to have the meaning of the Homeric ἀγών in Pl. Laws 868 A: ἀκάθαρτος ὠν ἀγοράν τε καὶ ἆθλα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἱερὰ μιαίνῃ and ib. 935 B: μηδεὶς τοιοῖτον φθέγξηται μηδέποτε μηδέν μηδ αὖ ἐν ἄθλοις μηδ ἐν ἀγορᾷ μηδ ἐν δικαστηρίῳ μηδ᾿ ἐν ξυλλόγῳ κοινῷ μηδενί

17 Indeed a comparison at large shews nothing in his local allusions to Nemea and the Isthmus, or even in his marvellous flash-light pictures of Delphi and the Parnassus, which betokens a local attachment at all comparable to that which he felt for every inch of the precinct of Olympian Zeus at Olympia. This is constantly evinced not only throughout each and all of his Olympiaus, but his Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Odes abound in frequent glances at Olympia and its Premier Lists.

18 In two other Olympian Odes Pindar describes more or less definitely the actual moment of victory (a) in 0. i. 21 Hiero's horse Pherenicus is spoken of ὄτε παρ᾿ ᾿Αλφειῷ σύτο δέμας ‘when he darted on near the Alpheius,’ παρά having a sense just less vague than ‘in the domain of Alpheius’; (b) in 0. viii. 17 f. Zeus made an Olympian victor of θῆκεν ᾿Ολυμπιονίκαν Alcimedon, the boy wrestler, πὰρ Κρόνου λόφῳ In neither of these cases, when compared with that of Agesidamus, is the event so distinctly represented as actually in progress. Nor is the localization at all comparable with that of Agesidamus actually seen at a definite time winning in a definite place. This vision of Archestratus' son alongside the Olympian altar is unique. Elsewhere Pindar merely localizes victories at Olympia, resorting to various circumlocutions in order to avoid monotonous repetition, (a) Pherenicus darted on παρ Αλφειῷ (0. i. 21), (b) Pelops in his grave is resting by the courses of Alpheius, Αλφειοῦ πόρῳ κλιθείς (Ib. 92), (c) Zeus rules the Olympian sanctuary (ἔδος ᾿Ολύμπου) the chief of games and the courses of Alpheius, ἀἐθλων τε κορυφὰν πόρον τ᾿ ᾿Αλφειοῦ (O. ii. 13 f.), (d) Diagoras is crowned παρ᾿ ᾿Αλφειῷ and παρἀ Κασταλίᾳ at Olympia and at Delphi, (c) Praxidamas brought the olive crown ἀπ᾿ ᾿Αλφειοῦ (N. vi. 31). These five periphrastic mentions of Olympia as on the Alpheius, can be matched with the five periphrases in which Mt. Cronius is alluded to. Undoubtedly the far seen and perfectly conical silhouette of Mt. Cronius played its part in focussing just at Olympia and nowhere else in the valley the primitive observances of the grove sanctuary, (a) Pindar is come to the side of the sunlit Cronius παρ᾿ εὐδείελον ἐλθὼν Κρόνιον (O. i. 111), (b) Ephar-mostos and his revelling comrades lead off the victor's strain Κρόνιον παρ᾿ ὔχθον (O. ix. 3f.), (c) Aristagoras would have won glory παρὰ καστακίᾳ and παρ᾿ εὐδένδρῳ ὔχθῳ Κρόνου at Delphi and at Olympia (N. xi. 25), (d) Zeus made Alcimedon victor πἀρ Κρόνου λόφῳ (0. viii. 17), (e) Alcimidas and Polytimidas lost two Olympian crowns through the ‘random lot’ Κρονίου πὰρ τεμένει (N. vi. 105 ff.), at the precinct of Mt. Cronius. These ten passages exhaust Pindar's circumlocutions for the Olympian site, excepting where he designates it as the abode of Oenomaus and Pelops (0. v. 9 f. ), or where it is identified with Pisa (0. xiv. 22 ff.).

[The Alpheius and Mt. Cronius formed the natural boundaries of the τέμενος at Olympia as opposed to the artificial boundaries of the Altis or grove, cp. Pindar O. xi. 43–51. Pausanias tells us that women were not allowed to cross the Alpheius during the Olympia (v. 6. 7). Similarly at Epidaurus, though there seems to have been a holy of holies, the whole valley including the stadium and theatre was sacred. What were the Eastern and Western boundaries at Olympia, is uncertain: the Western boundary certainly extended up to and beyond the Cladeus, Xen., Heil. vii. 4Google Scholar.—E.N.G.]

19 See Appendix.

20 There is sufficient evidence for dating the construction of the Colonnade of Echo late in the first half of the fifth century B.C., and the building of the Hellanodicaeum early in the last half of the same century. Of the front colonnade of the last-named building few remains were identified, but fortunately enough to arrive at the approximate date just mentioned. For the name of the Colonnade of Echo, Pausanias is our authority. Speaking of the reconstructed (later) colonnade he says (V. xxi. 17) πρὸ τῆς Ποικίλης στοᾶς καλουμένης . . . εἰσὶ δ᾿ οἴ τὴν στοὰν ταύτην καὶ ᾿Ηχοῦς ὀνο μάζουσι and then mentions the sevenfold echo. This suggests that the Eleans called it the Painted Colonnade, while the Pisatans persisted in calling it the Colonnade of Echo. Since there was a sevenfold echo, it supplied the Eleans with a good reason for the popular alternative for their official designation, and covered the awkward fact that various chthomc shrines in this neighbourhood had been suppressed when the Dromos was laid out after the building of the great temple of Olympian Zeus (see above, notes 7 and 9). The name Colonnade of Echo was evidently applied equally to the earlier and the later colonnade. The building of the great temple of Zeus would naturally harmonize with the suppression of more primitive chthomc observances, and the fact that the earlier colonnade was built either just after or during the closing years of the-building of Libon's temple (468–456 B.C.) is clearly demonstrated, (a) Stones plainly derived from the demolition in Macedonian times of the earlier colonnade shew marks of ̶ -shaped clamps as contrasted with the ̶ -shaped clamps used in fastening together stones of the stylobate of the later colonnade. (b) Cast-off triglyphs made for the great temple and then rejected were found in the bottom course of the south-eastern foundations of the earlier colonnade. These were used for the warer-course (see above, p. 254, n. 9). The same back wall also yielded fragments of drums made for Libon's temple. The whole of this water-course must have been built after the Terrace of the Treasuries was stepped (ca. 478–77 B.C. or a trifle earlier), since it hugs the lowest of the terrace steps from the north-west corner of the Heraeum to the entrance of the Dromos, where it bifurcates. In fact castoff triglyphs from the temple also appear in the runnel at the foot of the terrace steps. The date of this water supply in fact gives a terminus post quem both for the laying out of the Dromos and for the building of the earlier colonnade. The Great Temple must have been practically completed before these improvements were made. Here is not the place for the intricate and voluminous arguments which quite definitely determine the date of Libon's building as B.C. 468–456. That date being accepted, the stones which Libon's builders rejected become the top and corner-stone of Olympian chronology. They fix the date of the earlier Colonnade of Echo and determine the time when Xenophon's Dromos was laid out, ca. 450 B.C. The south wing of the Council House alone remains to be dated. Its architectural details, when compared with Libon's Doric, are so unmistakably earlier as to make it imperative to suppose an appreciable interval of time between the two. This necessity is accentuated by similar detailed comparisons with the Doric of the Sicyonians', and Megarians', ‘treasuries’ (see my ‘Details of the Olympian Treasuries,’ J.H.S. vol. xxvi. p. 81, n. 112)Google Scholar. The south wing must therefore be very definitely dated ten years more or less before Libon's, temple. The more so because it is now plain (see my ‘Olympian Council House and Council,’ Harvard Studies, vol. xxviGoogle Scholar.) that the Eleans were straining every nerve in a ‘social war’ during that interval.

20a [The place of the distribution of crowns is a point which I never discussed with Mr. Dyer. Mie in Quaestiones Agonisticae states that the crowns were presented immediately after each event. This view is accepted by Roberts and in the article on Olympia in Dar.-Sag. The evidence is hardly sufficient to enable us to decide the point. But if the crowns were presented immediately after each event they must have been presented at the spot where the event took place, i.e. in Pindar's time by the altar of Zeus, in later times in the Stadium for all events which took place there.—E.N.G.]

21 [It is impossible to ascertain from Xenophon's language whether the transference of the wrestling to the space near the altar was ordinary or exceptional. But from this very doubt we may feel sure that the holding of the wrestling by the altar was not unprecedented, or Xenophon must have vouchsafed his readers more explanation. Either it was the usual custom or a reversion to an older custom which existed almost within living memory before the permanent δρόμος was made ca. 450. Certainly it must have been the custom in Pindar's time. Even after the laying out of the δρόμος the triangular space before the altar must have been far more convenient than the racecourse for events like boxing, wrestling, and the pankration, and my own view is that these events continued to be held there at least down to the time of the further improvements in the stadium, if not afterwards. This view gives additional importance to the colonnades as places commanding a view not only of the sacrifices and processions, but also of some of the games.— E.N.G.]

22 At the meeting of the Hellenic Society, February 18th, 1908, where the substantive points of this paper were read by me, it was made quite elear that the conclusions here presented had been independently arrived at on other grounds of proof by Mr. E. Norman Gardiner, who gave his argument at that same meeting.

23 [If Dr. Dörpfeld is right in his contention that θέατρον could be used of the arrangements for spectators in the stadium which at Olympia had neither a semi-circular ending nor stone seats, it follows à, fortiori that the word could be used of the far more elaborate arrangements in the Altis either of the steps of the Treasury Terrace alone, or of the steps and the colonnade, especially as these commanded a view of the altar. His contention that the steps are too narrow to have been used for spectators to sit or even stand upon can be readily disproved by experiment. The steps are 25 cm. in depth. Many readers will be able to find staircases in their own houses the steps of which are no greater or even less in depth: experto crede.— E.N.G.]