Greek athletic sports and festivals (1910) (14790046293)

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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s. There were shows and performances byjugglers, clowns, acrobats, circus-riders, and for everything therewere prizes, for every art that was just to be sold, or rewardedor exhibited or listened to. Like the sacred month of theOlympic festival, the time of the fairs was one universaltruce, during which all quarrels and strife were repressed, nodistraint for debt, no vengeance was allowed, and the debtormight enjoy himself with impunity. The Centile of theGael, says an old writer, celebrated the fair of Carman with-out breach of law, without crime, without violence, without dis-honour. On the introduction of Christianity the Church tookover the old pagan fairs; the pagan rites were abolished, eachday began with a religious service, and the fair concluded witha grand religious ceremonial. In every detail the history ofthese fairs bears an extraordinary resemblance to that ofthe Greek athletic festivals. ^ Frazer, loc. cif.2 P. W. Joyce, Social History/ of Ireland, ii. pp. 435 ff. 150141
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29 30 GREEK ATHLETIC SPORTS AND FESTIVALS CHAP. Ill Greek lands there is everywhere evidence of the existenceof funeral games at all periods, from the legendary games ofPelias to those celebrated at Thessalonica in the time ofValerian, ot perhaps in his honour.^ The games of Peliasand those celebrated by Acastus in honour of his father wererepresented respectively on the two most famous monumentsof early decorative art—the chest of Cypselus dedicated in theHeraeum at Olympia, and the throne of Apollo at Amyclae.Both works are lost, and known to us only from the de-scriptions of Pausanias, but the manner in which the gamesof Pelias were represented can be judged from the similarscene on a sixth-century vase, the Amphiaraus vase in Berlin(Fig. 3).2 A still earlier representation of funeral games