Greek athletic sports and festivals (1910) (14770190835)

Identifier: greekathleticspo00gard (find matches)
Title: Greek athletic sports and festivals
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Gardiner, E. Norman (Edward Norman), 1864-1930
Subjects: Athletics Sports Olympics Fasts and feasts
Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University



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relax, are a type of clumsy, useless strength, utterlyforeign to the ideal of the fifth century, or to that of Lysippushimself as we know it from the Agias. Perhaps it was thetype of those professional strong men who called themselvessuccessors of Heracles as having, like Heracles, won the wrestlingand pankration at Olympia on the same day.^ The first ofthese was Caprus of Elis, who in the year 212 defeated, inthe pankration, the redoubtable Cleitomachus of Thebes, whois sometimes supposed to be the original of the boxer of theTerme (Fig. 136).>C A tale told by Polybius about the latter throws a curiouslight on the state of sport at the time.^ He had, it appears,incurred the displeasure of King Ptolemy—presumably PtolemyIV.—who went to the trouble and expense of training andsending to Olympia a rival boxer, Aristonicus, to compete with 1 Quintilian aptly contrasts the bulging muscles, tori, of such athleteswith the lacertus of soldiers. 2 Paus. V. 21, 10. 3 poiyij^ 27, 7 a. 146
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Fig. 21.—Farnese Heracles, by Glycon. Naples.(Greek Sculpture, Fig. 125.) 147 148 GREEK ATHLETIC SPORTS AND FESTIVALS niAP. him. The contest excited great public interest, and the ficklecrowd favoured the new man until Cleitomachus, exasperatedat their attitude, taunted them with backing one who wasfighting not for the glory of Greece but for King Ptolemy.This appeal caused such a revulsion of feeling that Aristonicuswas vanquished, not, says our author, so much by Cleitomachusas by the crowd. With such hired prize-fighters it was onlynatural that methods became more brutal, and sciencedeteriorated. The increasing weight of the caestus renderedboxing a contest of brute strength and fit to take its place inthe Roman gladiatorial shows. The science of wrestling hadalso sufiered. As early as 364 B.C. we read of one Sostratusof Sicyon who won the wrestling at Olympia not by skill inXwrestling but by breaking his opponents fingers. Corruption naturally throve under such conditions.^ Only