Problems in Greek history Part 22

APPENDIX.

ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE OLYMPIAN REGISTER[217:1].

There seems a sort of general agreement among modern historians of Greece to accept the 1st Olympiad (776 B.C.) as the trustworthy starting-point of solid Greek chronology. Even Grote, so sceptical about legends, and so slow to gather inferences from them, accepts this date.

There is only one exception, I think, to be found in Sir George c.o.x, who evidently rejects the Olympian register, who will not set down in his chronology any figure higher than 670 B.C., and even that under the protest of a query.

When we come to inquire on what authority so early a date can be securely established, we find a sort of a.s.sumption, not supported by argument, that from 776 onward the Eleians kept a regular record of their great festival, and as a matter of fact the alleged list is still extant. It was generally acknowledged and cited by the late historians of Greece, who determined events according to it. Above all, the critical doubts of philologists are soothed by the supposed authority of Aristotle, who is reported to have made researches on the question, and to refer to the list as if authentic[218:1]; at all events he mentioned a discus at Olympia with Lycurgus' name inscribed upon it, but in what work, and for what purpose, is unknown. Aristotle is considered an infallible authority by modern philologists, so much so that even the most sceptical of them seem almost to attribute verbal inspiration to this philosopher. One other Greek authority shares with him this pre-eminence--the historian Thucydides. And it so happens that in his Sicilian _Archaeology_ (book vi) Thucydides gives a number of dates, apparently without hesitation, which start from 735 B.C., and therefore persuades his commentators that accurate dates were attainable concerning a period close to the 1st Olympiad. These are apparently the reasons which have determined the general consent of modern historians.

But neither Grote, nor E. Curtius, nor even Sir George c.o.x, has a.n.a.lysed the evidence for the authenticity of the older portion of this register.

I cannot find in Clinton's _Fasti_, where it might well be expected, any such inquiry. In Mure's _History of Greek Literature_ (iv. 77-90), a work far less esteemed than it deserves, and here only, do we find any statement of the evidence. The negative conclusions reached by Mure have made no impression on the learned world, and are now well-nigh forgotten. I will take up the question where he left it, and add some positive evidence to corroborate his argument--that the list of victors at Olympiads handed down to us by Eusebius is, at least in its earlier part, an artificially constructed list, resting on occasional and fragmentary monumental records, and therefore of no value as a scientific chronology. I will also endeavour to determine when the victors began to be regularly recorded, and when the extant list was manufactured. Such an inquiry must be of great importance in measuring the amount of credence to be given to the dates of events referred to the eighth and the first half of the seventh centuries B.C.--for example, Thucydides' dates for the western colonies of the h.e.l.lenes.

Let us first sketch the tradition about the Register as we find it implied in Diodorus, Strabo, the fragments of Timaeus, and other late historians. We find especially in Pausanias a considerable amount of detail, and an outline of the general history of the feast as then accepted. All admitted, and indeed a.s.serted, a mythical origin for the games. The declarations of Pindar and other old poets were express, that Herakles had founded them, that Pelops and other mythical heroes had won victories at them--and victories of various kinds, including chariot races. Another account ascribed their foundation to Oxylus (Paus. v. 8, 5). But a long gap was admitted between these mythical glories and the revival of the games by his descendant Iphitus, king of Elis. 'This Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 4, 6), '_the epigram at Olympia_ declares to be the son of Haemon, but most of the Greeks to be the son of Praxonides, and not of Haemon; the old doc.u.ments ([Greek: archaia grammata]) of the Eleians, however, referred[219:1] Iphitus to a father of the same name.' Iphitus, in connection with the Spartan Lycurgus, re-established the games, but (as was a.s.serted) only as a contest in the short race ([Greek: stadion]), and in this first historical Olympiad Corbus won, as was stated in an epigram on his tomb, situated on the borders of Elis and Arcadia (Paus. viii. 26, 4). A quoit on which Lycurgus' name was engraved, was at Elis, says Plutarch, in the days of Aristotle. The 'discus of Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 20, 1), 'has the truce which the Eleians announce for the Olympiad, not inscribed in straight lines, but the letters run round the discus in a circular form[220:1].' He alludes to the list again and again: _e.g._ (v. 8, 6) 'ever since there is a continuous record of the Olympiads ([Greek: ex hou to syneches tais mnemais epi tais Ol. esti]); prizes for running were first established, and the Eleian Corbus won.'

Pausanias proceeds in this pa.s.sage to give an account of the successive additions of other compet.i.tions to the sprint race, 'according as they remembered them,' that is, according as they recollected or found out that they had been practised in mythical days. In the 14th Ol. the [Greek: diaulos], or double course, was inst.i.tuted, and Hypenus the Pisaean won, and next after him Acanthus. In the 18th they remembered the pentathlon and the wrestling match, in which Lampis and Eurybatus respectively won, both Lacedaemonians. In the 23rd came boxing, and Onomastus of Smyrna, which then already counted as Ionian, won. In the 25th the first chariot race was won by the Theban Pagondas. In the 33rd came the pancration, and the monument of the first victor, Lygdamis, was at Syracuse. . . . . The boys' contests were based on no old tradition, but the Eleians established them of their own good pleasure. The boys'

wrestling match was accordingly inst.i.tuted in the 37th Ol.

I need not here pursue the account further, but will return to this pa.s.sage in connection with the other arrangements of the feast.

We find that other authorities, such as Polemo, quoted by the Scholiast on Pindar (Ol. v.), agree with Pausanias as to some of these details.

Strabo quotes from Ephorus the double foundation, by Oxylus and again by Iphitus. So does Phlegon, a freedman of Hadrian, who wrote a work on the Olympian festival, and gave a list of victors, probably from the same source as Eusebius' list. Phlegon notes indeed the difficulty of making Lycurgus and Iphitus contemporary with Corbus in 776 B.C., and fixes the date of Iphitus twenty-eight Olympiads earlier (at 887 B.C.). But he introduces an Iphitus again in the 6th registered Ol., inquiring about the crowning of victors, and states that Dacles of Messene was first crowned with wild olive at the 7th contest. The only other point of interest in Phlegon's fragments is the full catalogue of the 177th Ol.

(frag. 12 in Muller's _Frag. Hist._ iv. 606), which gives the winners in seventeen events; some of them thrice successful in the compet.i.tions.

We may therefore take it for granted that the account of Pausanias, which now pa.s.ses current in all the German and English works on Greek athletics, was, in the main, that established or adopted by Timaeus or by Aristotle, the latter of whom is often alleged to have first given the Olympiads their prominent position as the basis of Greek chronology. But whether he adopted the list as genuine from the beginning or not, his isolated remark about the quoit with Lycurgus' name is not sufficient to inform us[222:1]. Indeed we have only negative evidence concerning his opinion and no direct information.

It is of far more importance to examine what positive evidence there was for this theory of the gradual rise and progress of the festival, its regularity, and the prominence of the _stadion_, or short race, in giving the name of its victor as the index of the date. We have two kinds of authority to consult--the older literature; and the monuments, either at first hand, or as described for us by former observers. As regards the literature, our review need be but very brief.

(1) The twenty-third book of the _Iliad_ seems composed without any reference to the earliest Olympian games as Pausanias describes them.

The nature of this (perhaps special) compet.i.tion is quite different.

There are some events, such as the armed combat, which never made part of the historical games; there are others, such as the chariot race, which are expressly a.s.serted to have been later innovations at Olympia.

The giving of valuable prizes, and several of them in each compet.i.tion, is quite against the practice at Olympia. The Phaeacian games in the _Odyssey_ ([Greek: th] 120, sq.) contain _five_ events, running, wrestling, leaping, discus, and boxing. Those who believe that the epics were composed before 776 B.C., or those who believe them to be the much later compilation of antiquarian poets, will find no difficulty in this.

The one will a.s.sert that the poet could not know, and the other that he would not know, what was established at Olympia. The latter will also hold that the accounts of the mythical celebrations by Herakles, Pelops, &c., were invented in imitation of the Homeric account. But still if Lycurgus indeed promoted the knowledge of the Homeric poems, why did he and Iphitus found a contest without the least resemblance to the heroic models? And if, as I hold, the Homeric poems were growing into shape about the time of the alleged 1st Olympiad, and after it, the contrast of the _Iliad_ in its games to the Olympian festival is so difficult to explain, that we must a.s.sume the old Eleian compet.i.tion to have been no mere sprint race, but a contest similar in its events to that in the _Iliad_, or at least to that in the _Odyssey_.

(2) This view is strongly supported by the statements of Pindar, who is the next important witness on the subject. In his Tenth Olympic Ode (_vv._ 43 _sq._) he tells of the foundation by Herakles, and gives the names of _five_ heroes who won the various events of the first contest.

He gives us no hint that there was any break in the tradition, or that these five events had not remained in fas.h.i.+on ever since. In fact he does mention (_Isth._ i. 26 _sq._) that the _pentathlon_ and _pancration_ were later inventions, thus making it clear that the rest were in his mind the original components of the meeting. Nor does he anywhere give priority or special dignity to the _stadion_; only the last of his Olympian Odes is for this kind of victory, his Thirteenth for the _stadion_ and _pentathlon_ together. He never mentions, as we should certainly have expected, that these _stadion_ victors would have the special glory of handing down their names as eponymi of the whole feast. The other contests, the chariot race, the pancration, and the pentathlon, were evidently far grander and more highly esteemed, and we find this corroborated by the remark of Thucydides (v. 49), 'This was the Olympiad when Androsthenes won for the first time the pancration.'

Thucydides therefore seems to have marked the Olympiad, not by the stadion, but by the pancration.

(3) This historian indeed (as well as his immediate predecessors, Herodotus and h.e.l.lanicus) gives us but little information about the nature of the games, except the remark that 'it was not many years'

since the habit of running naked had come into fas.h.i.+on at Olympia. Such a statement cannot be reconciled with Pausanias' account, who placed the innovation three centuries before Thucydides' time. But in one important negative feature all the fifth-century historians agree. None of them recognise any Olympian register, or date their events by reference to this festival. Thucydides, at the opening of his second book, fixes his main date by the year of the priestess of Hera at Argos, by the Spartan ephor, and by the Athenian archon. In his Sicilian _Archaeology_, to which we will presently return, where it would have been very convenient to have given dates by Olympiads, he counts all his years from the foundation of Syracuse downward. Yet we know that h.e.l.lanicus, Antiochus and others had already made chronological researches at that time, and the former treated of the list of the Carneian victors. All these things taken together are conclusive against the existence, or at least the wide recognition, of the Olympian annals down to 400 B.C.

In the next century Ephorus wrote in his earlier books concerning the mythical founding of the festival, but we have nothing quoted from him at all like the history set down by Pausanias. It is nevertheless about this time that the newer and more precise account came into vogue, for Timaeus, the younger contemporary of Ephorus, evidently knew and valued the register. Its origin in literature would have remained a mystery but for the solitary remark of Plutarch. At the opening of his _Life of Numa_, in commenting on the difficulty of fixing early dates, he says:

[Greek: tous men oun chronous exakribosai chalepon esti, kai malista tous ek ton Olympionikon anagomenous, hon ten anagraphen opse phasin Hippian ekdounai ton eleion, ap' oudenos hormomenon anankaiou pros pistin.]

What does this mean? Does it mean that Hippias first _published_ or edited in a literary form the register, or does it mean that he _both compiled and edited_ it? The former is the implied opinion of the learned. 'Dieser Zeit,' says E. Curtius, _Hist._ i. 494 (_viz._ 'der Mitte des achten Jahrhunderts'), 'geh.o.r.en ja auch die Listen derer an, welche in den Nationalspielen gesiegt'; and in the note on this at the end of the volume, he indicates, together with the [Greek: anagraphai]

of the Argive priestesses, which h.e.l.lanicus published, two pa.s.sages in Pausanias, and adds: 'wissenschaftlich bearbeitet zuerst von Hippias dem Eleer, dann von Philochorus in seinen [Greek: Olympiades].' Now of the latter work we know nothing more than the name; of the former nothing but the pa.s.sage just cited from Plutarch. Does it justify Ernst Curtius'

_wissenschaftlich bearbeitet_? Or does our other knowledge of Hippias justify it? The pictures of him drawn in the Platonic dialogues called after his name, and in Philostratus, though perhaps exaggerated, make him a vain but clever polymath, able to practise all trades, and exhibit in all kinds of knowledge. We should not expect anything 'wissenschaftlich' from him. Indeed, in this case there was room for either a great deal of science, or for none. If there was really an authentic list at Olympia, Hippias need only have copied it. But is this consistent with Plutarch's statement? Far from it.

Plutarch implies a task of difficulty, requiring research and combination. And this, no doubt, was what the Sophist wanted to exhibit.

Being an Eleian, and desirous to make himself popular in the city, he not only chose Olympia for special displays of various kinds, but brought together for the people a history of their famous games. And in doing this he seems to have shown all the vanity, the contempt of ancient traditions, and the rash theorizing which we might expect from a man of his cla.s.s. We have, fortunately, a single case quoted by Pausanias which shows us both that this estimate of the man is not far from the truth, and what licence the Eleians gave him when he was reconstructing the history of the festival. Pausanias (v. 25, 2 _sqq._) tells a pathetic story about the loss of a choir of boys and their teacher on the way from Messana in Sicily to Olympia, where they were commemorated by statues. [Greek: to men de epigramma edelou to archaion anathemata einai ton en porthmo Messenion; chrono de hysteron Hippias ho legomenos hypo h.e.l.lenon genesthai sophos ta elegeia ep' autois epoiesen]. Here, then, we have some kind of falsification, and apparently one in favour of the Messenians of the Peloponnesus, if we may judge from the form of Pausanias' remark. In more than one case a later epigram appears to have been inscribed on a votive offering, and I think we can show in Hippias a decided leaning to the Messenians, whose restoration to independence he probably witnessed.

But were there really no registers, [Greek: anagraphai], from which Hippias could have copied? If there was certainly no single complete list, of undoubted authority, may there not have been partial lists, affording him suitable materials? This we must endeavour to answer from the pa.s.sages of Pausanias referred to by E. Curtius, as well as from others, which he has not thought it necessary to quote.

The first is the opening pa.s.sage of the sixth book, where the author says that as his work 'is not a catalogue of all the athletes who have gained victories at Olympia, but an account of votive offerings, and especially statues, he will omit many who have gained victories, either by some lucky chance, or without attaining the honour of a statue.'

Though this pa.s.sage may imply that there was such a catalogue--of course there was in Pausanias' day--it says not a word about an old and authentic register. It is indeed a capital fact in the present discussion, that neither does Pausanias, in this elaborate account of Olympia, nor, as far as I know, does any other Greek author, distinctly mention [Greek: anagraphai], or [Greek: parapegmata], or any equivalent term for any official register at Olympia. Pausanias speaks of [Greek: ta ton eleion grammata], and also says of certain _an-Olympiads_[227:1]: [Greek: en to ton Ol. katalogo ou graphousin]--not that they noted in, or erased from any official register. In Pausanias the absence of such mention appears to me decisive.

Let us pa.s.s to the second pa.s.sage indicated by E. Curtius, _viz._ vi. 6, 3. 'There stands there also the statue of Lastratidas, an Eleian boy, who won the crown for wrestling; he obtained also in Nemea among the boys, and among youths ([Greek: en te paisi kai ageneion]) another victory.' Pausanias adds: that Paraballon, the father of Lastratidas, won in the [Greek: diaulos, hypeleipeto de kai es tous epeita philotimian, ton nikesanton Olympiasi ta onomata anagrapsas en gymnasio to en Olympia]. Here, at last, we have some definite evidence, and I will add at once another pa.s.sage--the only other pa.s.sage I can find where any register is alluded to--as it expounds the former. In vi. 8, 1, we find: Euanorides the Eleian gained the victory for wrestling both at Olympia and Nemea: [Greek: genomenos de h.e.l.lanodikes egrapse kai houtos ta onomata en Olympia ton nenikekoton]. It appears then that if an Eleian had distinguished himself at the games, he was likely to be afterwards chosen as one of the judges--a reasonable custom, even now prevailing amongst us. It also appears that such [Greek: h.e.l.lanodikai]

obtained the right of celebrating their year of office by inscribing the names of the victors, and doubtless their own, in the gymnasium.

But fortunately, the date of these inscriptions is determined by two facts. In the first place both came after the establis.h.i.+ng of boys'

contests, which Pausanias expressly calls an invention of the Eleians, and fixes at the 37th Olympiad. Again the son of Paraballon, and Euanorides himself, won prizes at Nemea--a contest not established, according to E. Curtius, till about 570 B.C., but probably a little earlier, and nearer to 600 B.C. I do not for a moment deny the existence of some kind of register from this time onward; in fact there are some probable reasons to be presently adduced in favour of it. Indeed the very form of the note about Paraballon _seems to imply some novelty_, an exceptional distinction in his inscription; and what we are here seeking is evidence for an _early_ register, in fact a register of the contests previous to 600 B.C.

What evidence does Pausanias afford of this? As I have said, there is not a word about a register or catalogue, but there are several notes of old offerings and inscriptions, which show us what sort of materials existed, at least in Pausanias' day. And there is no reason whatever to believe that many ancient monuments or inscriptions had been injured, unless Hippias carried out his work of falsifying them on a large scale.

There were indeed several monuments antedated by mere vulgar mistakes.

Such was the _stele_ of Chionis (vi. 13, 2), who was reported to have won in four successive contests (Ols. 28-31), but the reference in the inscription to _armed races as not yet introduced_, proved even to Pausanias that the writer of it must have lived long after Chionis'

alleged period. There was again the monument of Pheidolas' children, whose epigram Pausanias notes as conflicting (vi. 13, 10) with [Greek: ta eleion es tous Olympionikas grammata. ogdoe gar Ol. kai hexekoste kai ou pro tautes estin en tois el. grammasi he nike ton Ph. paidon]. These [Greek: grammata]--a word apparently distinct from [Greek: anagraphai]--are probably nothing but the treatise of Hippias, preserved and copied at Elis. Had these [Greek: grammata] indeed been an authentic register, inscribed at the time of each victory, is it possible that any epigrams of later date would have been allowed to conflict with it?

Surely not. But if the register came to be concocted at a late period, such discrepancies might be hard to avoid.

But as regards genuine early monuments, Pausanias tells us that Corbus had no statue at Olympia, and implies that _there was no record of his victory save the epigram on his tomb_ at the border of Elis and Arcadia. Then comes the case of the Spartan Eutelidas (vi. 15, 8), who conquered as a boy in the 38th Ol., the only contest ever held for a pentathlon of boys. [Greek: esti de he te eikon archaia tou Eut., kai ta epi to bathro grammata amydra hypo tou chronou.] But this statue cannot have been so old even as the 38th Ol. For in vi. 18, 7, Pausanias tells us that the first athlete's statues set up at Olympia were those of Praxidamas the aeginetan, who won in boxing at the 59th Ol., and that of the Opuntian Rexibios the pancratiast, at the 61st. 'These portrait statues are not far from the pillar of nomaos, and are made of wood, Rexibios' of fig-tree, but the aeginetan's of cypress, and less decayed than the other.' Just below this we have a mention of a treasure-house, dedicated by the Sicyonian tyrant Myron in the 33rd Ol. In this treasure-house was an inscribed s.h.i.+eld, 'an offering to Zeus from the Myones.' [Greek: ta de epi te aspidi grammata parektai men epi brachy, peponthe de auto dia tou anathematos to archaion] (vi. 19, 5).

These exhaust the oldest dated monuments found by Pausanias. He mentions indeed an ancient treasury of the Megarians, built in a time before either yearly archons at Athens or Olympiads (vi. 19, 13)[230:1]. Thus the antiquarian traveller, who revelled in the venerable in history and the archaic in Greek art, could find no dated votive offerings older than the 33rd Ol., and these he specially notes as of extraordinary antiquity, decayed and illegible with age. We may feel quite certain that he omitted no really important extant relic of old times in his survey.

Such then were the materials from which Hippias proceeded, not before the year 400 B.C., and probably a generation later, to compile the full register of the Olympiads. There may have been some old inscriptions which Pausanias failed to see, or which had become illegible, or had disappeared under the soil with time. Doubtless there were many old traditions at Elis, which the Eleian sophist would gather and utilise.

There were also throughout Greece, in the various cities he visited, traditions and inscriptions relating to victors who had been natives of these cities. But that these formed an unbroken chain from Corbus down to Hippias' day is quite incredible.

His work is so completely lost that we can only conjecture his method of proceeding from the general character of his age, and from the critical spirit we can fairly attribute to it. He had before him the history of the Pythian festival, which began in historical times (Ol. 48), if we omit the old contest in composing a hymn to the G.o.ds. The various innovations and additions were well known, and it is certain that at Olympia too the range of contests had been enlarged by the pentathlon, the pancration, the hoplite race, &c. But it is likely that Hippias carried out this a.n.a.logy too far. He found no traditions for the other events as old as Corbus, and he a.s.sumed that the games had begun with a simple short race. _According to the order of the first record of each compet.i.tion_, he set down its first origin. He was thus led to make the [Greek: stadion] the 'eponymous compet.i.tion,' if I may coin the expression, though it is more than probable that the early festivals were noted by the victor in the greatest feats and--if there was a real register--by the h.e.l.lanodicae who had presided. For it is certain from Pausanias that the umpire did inscribe his own name with those of the victors.

Hippias' work, the [Greek: grammata] of the Eleians in after days, was thus a work based upon a problematical reconstruction of history. It rested for its earlier portions on scanty and broken evidence; as it proceeded, and monuments became more numerous, its authenticity increased. After Ol. 60, when the fas.h.i.+on came in of setting up athlete statues, we may a.s.sume it in the main to have been correct; though even here there were not wanting discrepancies with other evidence, and possibly some _mala fides_ on the part of the compiler[232:1].

There remain, therefore, three points of interest connected with the theory thus proposed. Have we any evidence of the date at which the h.e.l.lanodicae first made it a matter of ambition to inscribe their own names, and those of victors in the gymnasium, at Olympia? Are there traces of deliberate theorizing in the extant list of victors previous to this date? Why and for what reasons did Hippias fix on the year 776 B.C. as the commencement of his list?

(1) There are several probable reasons for fixing the origin of registering the victories at about the 50th Ol. It was about this time that the Eleians finally conquered the Pisatans, and secured the complete management of the games. From the spoils of Pisa they built the magnificent Doric temple lately excavated, and no doubt increased the splendour of Olympia in other ways. For in addition to their increase of power they were stimulated by a new and dangerous compet.i.tion--that of the Pythian games, established in the third year of the 48th Ol., and this may have been one of the reasons why they determined finally to crush and spoil the Pisatans. It is likely that the Nemean and Isthmian games were inst.i.tuted about the same time, and these rival games were perhaps connected with some complaints as to the management of the Olympian festival, for no Eleian seems to have competed at the Isthmian games (Paus. v. 2, 2). The Eleians were accordingly put upon their mettle, both to keep their contest unequalled in splendour, and beyond suspicion in fairness. To obtain the first, they lavished the spoils of Pisa, as already mentioned. As to the second, we have a remarkable story told us by Herodotus (ii. 160), and again by Diodorus (i. 95), that they sent an emba.s.sy as far as Egypt to consult the Pharaoh as to the best possible conduct of the games. This king told them _that no Eleian should be allowed to compete_. Herodotus calls him Psammis (Psammetichus II), who reigned 594-587 B.C.; and he is a higher authority than Diodorus, who calls him Amasis, and so brings down the date by twenty-five years. Herodotus' story has never been much noticed, or brought into relation with the other facts here adduced, but it surely helps to throw light on the question. And there is yet one more important datum. Pausanias tells us that in Ol. 50 a second umpire was appointed. If the practice of official registering now commenced at Olympia, as it certainly did at Delphi in the Pythian games, we can understand Pausanias' remarks about Paraballon and others having esteemed it a special glory to leave their names a.s.sociated with the victors'. For it was a new honour. From this time onward, therefore, I have nothing to say against the register which we find in Eusebius.

(2) But as regards the first fifty Olympiads, is there any appearance of deliberate invention or arrangement about the list of names? Can we show that Hippias worked on theory, and not from distinct evidence? It is very hard to do this, especially when we admit that he had a good many isolated victories recorded or remembered, and that he was an antiquarian, who no doubt worked out a probable list. Thus the list begins with victors from the neighbourhood, and gradually admits a wider range of compet.i.tors. This is natural enough, but I confess my suspicion at the occurrence of eight Messenians out of the first twelve victors, followed by their total disappearance till after the restoration by Epaminondas. For the sacred truce gave ample occasion for exiled Messenians to compete at the games[234:1]. I also feel grave suspicions at the curious absence of Eleian victors. Excepting the first two, there is not a single Eleian in the list. How is this consistent with Psammis'

remark to the Eleians? For how could they have avoided answering him that their fairness was proved by the occurrence of no Eleian as victor eponymous for 170 years? Many Eleian victors are indeed noticed by Pausanias in the other events. It is hardly possible that they could not have conquered in the _stadion_, so that I suspect in Hippias a deliberate intention to put forward non-Eleians as victors. I have suspicions about botas, placed in the 6th Ol. by Hippias, but about the 75th by the common tradition of the Greeks. It is curious, too, that Athenian victors should always occur in juxtaposition with Laconian. But all these are only suspicions.

(3) I come to the last and most important point; indeed it was this which suggested the whole inquiry. On what principles, or by what evidence, did Hippias fix on the year 776 B.C. as his starting-point? We need not plunge into the arid and abstruse computations of years and cycles which make early chronology so difficult to follow and to appreciate. For one general consideration is here sufficient. Even had we not shown from Plutarch's words, and from the silence of all our authorities, that Hippias _could_ not have determined it by counting _upwards_ the exact number of duly recorded victories, it is perfectly certain that he _would_ not have followed this now accepted method. All the Greek chronologists down to Hippias' day (and long after) made it their chief object to derive historical families and states from mythical ancestors, and they did this by reasoning _downwards_ by generations. They a.s.sumed a fixed starting-point, either the siege of Troy, or the return of the Herakleids. From this the number of generations gave the number of years. Thus we may a.s.sume that Hippias sought to determine the date of the 1st Olympiad by King Iphitus, who had been a.s.signed to the generation 100 Olympiads--a neat round-number--before himself. Hippias thus fixed the date of both Iphitus and Lycurgus. The Spartan chronologers would not accept such a date for Lycurgus. His place in the generations of Herakleids put him fully three generations earlier. Other chronologers therefore sought means to accommodate the matter, and counted twenty-eight nameless Olympiads from Lycurgus to Corbus (and Iphitus). Others imagined two Iphiti, one of Lycurgus' and one of Corbus' date. But all such schemes are to us idle; for we may feel certain that the number of Olympiads was accommodated to the date of Iphitus, and not the date of Iphitus to the number of Olympiads.

Unfortunately the genealogy of Iphitus is not extant; in Pausanias' day he already had three different fathers a.s.signed to him (v. 4, 6.); and we cannot, therefore, follow out the _a priori_ scheme of Hippias in this instance; but I will ill.u.s.trate it by another, which still plays a prominent figure in our histories of Greece--I mean the chronology of the Sicilian and Italian colonies, as given by Thucydides in his sixth book. He speaks with considerable precision of events in the latter half of the eighth century B.C.; he even speaks of an event which happened 300 years before the arrival of the Greeks in Sicily. As Thucydides was not inspired, he must have drawn these things from some authority; as he mentions no state doc.u.ments it has been conjectured that his source was here the work of Antiochus of Syracuse. This man was evidently an antiquarian no wiser or more scientific than his fellows; Thucydides betrays their method by dating all the foundations _downwards_ from that of Syracuse. Antiochus was obliged to admit the priority of Naxos, but grants it only one year; then he starts from his fixed era. But how was the date of the foundation of Syracuse determined? Not, so far as we know, from city registers and careful computations of years backward from the fifth century. Such an a.s.sumption is to my mind chimerical, and the source of many illusions. The foundation of Syracuse was determined as to date by its founder, Archias, _being the tenth from Temenos_. The return of the Herakleidae was placed before the middle of the eleventh century B.C.; hence Archias would fall below the middle of the eighth century. The usual date of Pheidon of Argos, 747 B.C., was fixed in the same way by his being the tenth Temenid, and hence the 8th Ol. was set down as the _an-Olympiad_ celebrated by him. He should probably, as I have before argued, be brought down nearly a century (to 670 B.C.) in date.

I will now sum up the results of this long discussion. When we emerge into the light of Greek history, we find the venerable Olympian games long established, and most of their details referred to mythical antiquity. We find no list of victors recognised by the early historians, and we have the strongest negative evidence that no such list existed in the days of Thucydides. Nevertheless about 580 B.C. the feast was more strictly regulated, and the victors' names recorded, perhaps regularly, in inscriptions; from 540 B.C. onward the practice of dedicating athlete statues with inscriptions was introduced, though not for every victor. About 500 B.C. there were many inscriptions (that of Hiero is still extant), and there was evidence from which to write the history of the festival; but this was never done till the time of the archaeologist and rhetorician Hippias, who was a native of Elis, with influence and popularity there, and who even placed new inscriptions on old votive offerings. This man (probably in 376 B.C.) constructed the whole history of the feast, partly from the evidence before him, partly from the a.n.a.logy of other feasts. He fixed the commencement of his list, after the manner of the chronologers of his day, by the date of the mythical founder. Hence neither the names nor the dates found in Eusebius' copy of the register for the first fifty Olympiads are to be accepted as genuine, unless they are corroborated by other evidence.

We have not even, as yet, the corroborative evidence of any other Greek inscriptions of the seventh or eighth centuries B.C. Till some such records, or fragments of such records, are found, we are not ent.i.tled to a.s.sume that the Greeks began to use writing upon stone for any records at such a date as 776 B.C. That great storehouse of old civilization, the Acropolis of Athens, has yielded us nothing of the kind; and even if we admit that the annual archons were noted down since 683 B.C. (which is far from certain), is not the further step to nearly a century earlier completely unwarrantable?

I have reserved till now a pa.s.sage in Aristotle's fragments (594) on the Olympian festival, which may help the still unconvinced reader to estimate the value of his opinion, on the authenticity of the Register.

Aristotle is commonly spoken of as having made critical researches upon this question: here is _the only specimen_ left to us:--

'The order of the festivals, as Aristotle makes out the list, is: first, the _Eleusinia_ in honour of the fruit of Demeter; second, the _Panathenaea_ to commemorate the slaying of the giant Aster by Athene; third, that which Danaos established at Argos at the marriage of his daughters; fourth, that of Lykaon in Arcadia, and called _Lykaea_; fifth, that in Iolkos ordained by Akastos for his father Pelias; sixth, that ordained by Sisyphos (_Isthmian?_) in honour of Melikertes: seventh, the _Olympian_, ordained by Herakles in honour of Pelops; eighth, that at Nemea, which the Seven against Thebes established in honour of Archemorus; ninth, that at Troy, which Achilles celebrated for Patroklos; tenth, the _Pythian_, which the Amphiktyons established to commemorate the death of the Python. This is the order which Aristotle, who composed the treatise called [Greek: Peploi], set out of the ancient festivals and games.'