Chariot Races In Ancient Olympic Games

This book is written in a comic book format and teaches quite a bit about the ancient Olympic games. The Ancient Greeks by Charles Freeman Explore the daily life of the ancient Greeks: attend a chariot race, go to a wedding, see a play on a hillside, and learn about the Olympic games, the beginnings of democracy, and lives of the wealthy and poor. Heroes of the Ancient Olympic Games. Source: Flickr. In the 96th and the 97th Olympic games, she also won the horse chariot race. Melankomas was from Karia and was a winner in the Olympic boxing championship. He was a very hard working athlete. He used to do vigorous training by fighting for two days continuously with out lowering his hands.

Underhand serve in volleyball lesson plan. In reaching this conclusion, however, I take an approach that differs from earlier attempts: instead of assuming that Pindar is literally substituting one myth for another, I argue that the substitution as represented in Olympian 1 is in fact a poetic expression of a preexisting fusion of two myths, where the earlier myth is officially subordinated to but acknowledged by the later myth. Furthermore I argue that the relative earliness and lateness of these two myths has to do not with any innovation by Pindar himself but rather with the historical sequence of the accretion of traditional myths officially associated with the complex institution of the Olympics. In other words both myths are traditional and in fact signal that they are traditional. As for the subordination of the myth that told of the dismemberment of Pelops to the myth that told of the abduction of Pelops by Poseidon and the hero’s victory in the chariot race, I propose that this pattern corresponds to the subordination of the oldest athletic event of the Olympics, the single-course foot race, to the most prestigious athletic event of the Olympics in Pindar’s time, the four-horse chariot race. In this sense Pindar’s Olympian 1 may be said to reflect the evolving aetiology of the Olympics in the early fifth century. For a most convenient introduction to the subject of the ritual essence of ancient Greek athletics, on which there is a considerable bibliography, I refer to the compressed summary in Walter Burkert’s handbook on Greek religion, who concludes that the Archaic institutions of athletic activity evolved out of practices that could be described as (1) rituals of initiation into adulthood and (2) rituals of compensation for the catastrophe of death. This is not to say that Greek athletics could be described synchronically as such rituals.

Burkert says explicitly: “Of course, age groups and initiation were no longer part of the Panhellenic festival.” Still, a synchronic description reveals diachronic features of the two kinds of ritual just noted. In fact such diachronic features can help us find a connection between these two kinds of ritual in the specific instance of Greek athletics.

Such a pattern of thought can be elicited from a rereading of Burkert’s analysis of the chronologically oldest athletic event in the Olympics, the stadion, a single-course foot race in the stadium (the recording of victors in this race starts with 776 B.C.). This event was as a rule inaugurated with the sacrifice of a black ram at the Pelopion ‘precinct of Pelops’to be followed by the corresponding sacrifice of a bull at a heap of ash known as “the altar of Zeus,” which was to serve as the finishing-point of the single-course foot race that came after these sacrifices (in fact the early stadium at Olympia ended at the altar of Zeus). As Pausanias observes (5.13.1), the preeminence of Pelops among all the heroes involved in the sacrifices at Olympia corresponded to the preeminence of Zeus among all the gods.

Thus the inaugural set of sacrifices to Pelops and to Zeus, before the foot race, unites the hero and god in a “polar tension,” while the foot race itself “presupposes the bloody act of killing.” Moreover, from an aetiological point of view the foot race was actually part of the overall sacrifice, as we learn from the observation, made by Philostratus, that the sacrifice to Zeus was not complete until the foot race was won. Specifically, as Burkert shows, the myth of the slaughter of Pelops must have been an aition correlated with the ritual of the slaughter of the black ram at the precinct of Pelops.

In the myth the only part of the dismembered Pelops that was actually eaten by the gods was the hero’s shoulder, consumed by Demeter, which was later replaced with an ivory piece in his reintegrated body. For example, let us take the athletic event of the chariot race at the Olympics, supposedly introduced there in the year 680; whether or not this date is exactuntil the introduction of the chariot race only the victors of the foot race had been consecutively recorded since the year 776. Corresponding to the athletic event of the chariot race is an aition, the myth of the life-and-death chariot race of Pelops with Oinomaos. The death of Oinomaos, resulting from the race, led to the foundation of the Olympics by Pelops, according to one version of this myth. As an aition for the foundation of the Olympics with special reference to the chariot race, the myth of the death of Oinomaos would at first seem to be at odds with the myth of the death of Pelops, an aition with special reference to the foot race.

But in fact the two layers of myths are integrated into a sequence, just like the two layers of athletic events. Pelops had his chariot race with Oinomaos after he had been restored to life, as I argue on the basis of the narrative sequence in Pindar’s Olympian 1. Even in the later aition about the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos, however, there is a narrative connection with the earlier aition about the death of Pelops. The story has it that Oinomaos would sacrifice a ram before his chariot race with each suitor and let the suitor have a head start until the consecrated parts of the meat were consumed by fire; then he would chase after the suitor, catch up with him, and kill him. This theme, by being parallel to the Olympic ritual of the ram’s slaughter at the precinct of Pelops, is thereby also parallel to the Olympic myth about the slaughter of Pelops. In this way the older aition about the slaughter of Pelops leaves its signature on the newer aition about the chariot race of Pelops.

The most remarkable of these rearrangements in Olympian 1 is a narrative reordering, whereby the story about the dismemberment of Pelops is ostentatiously subordinated to a story that starts with his abduction by Poseidon, which leads into the story about the chariot race of Pelops. The key to this rearrangement is the detail about the ivory shoulder of Pelops in Olympian 1.27, which can be correlated with the cult object of the larger-than-life ivory shoulder blade of Pelops as described by Pausanias 5.13.4–6. Thus the Pindaric retelling of the Tantalos story, though it steers away from the theme of cannibalism, still bears the signature of this theme. Besides the image of “digesting” just noted, there is also that of ‘boiling’ one’s youthful vitality for an excessively long time, presumably just as fresh meat loses its vitality from overboiling. Pelops is pictured as using this image in the context of asking Poseidon for the gift of a chariot team and declaring to the god his desire to risk death in his quest for the hand of Hippodameia. The maintenance of the aetiological sequence of the Olympics in Pindar’s Olympian 1 is at the cost of a narrative inconsistency in terms of the professed “true” story: the emergence of Pelops from the cauldron, ivory shoulder and all, just before his abduction by Poseidon ( Olympian 1.25–27), gives the impression that, even from the standpoint of Olympian 1, there were two perverted feasts of Tantalos.

It is as if Tantalos first fed human flesh to the immortals before the abduction of Pelops and then fed nectar and ambrosia to mortals after the abduction. This impression is “false” in terms of the professed “true” story of Olympian 1, but the sequence of two perverted feasts, one before and one after the abduction, may be valid in terms of the accretive aetiological program of the Olympics. The full aetiological sequence is reinforced by the description of the feast at which Poseidon fell in love with Pelops as the youth emerged from the cauldron with his ivory shoulder, where the wording fits the context of the “first” feast ( Olympian 1.37–40). In terms of the “true” story of Olympian 1, however, the two stories of the two perverted feasts must be alternatives, and Pindar’s composition in fact treats them that way, explicitly rejecting one of the stories as “false” (= ABC) in favor of the other, which is “true” (= A´B´C´).

As soon as you disappeared, immediately one of the envious phthoneroi neighbors said stealthily that What ‘steals’ into the story is the rejected idea that Pelops had in fact never emerged from the cauldron. At the same time, what ‘steals’ into Pindar’s own story is the ostentatiously rejected “false” story of Pelops in the cauldron. The aetiology of the Olympics amounts to a combination of the “false” and the “true” stories, in the sequence A B C A’ B’ C’, with the subordination of the “false” ABC to the “true” A’ B’ C’.

This working definition of ritual can apply to the ritual foundations of tragedy as briefly discussed in Ch. Further discussion at Ch. 13§8–10 and following. My working definition of ritual is broad enough to accommodate much of the valuable comparative evidence on athletics assembled by Sansone 1988 (see especially pp. Sansone’s own formulation of ritual, however, is narrower: for example, he assumes at p.

113 that a given society’s procedures of fasting and purification in hunting “are by no means ritual matters” on the grounds that “they are rational and pragmatic measures designed to enhance the likelihood of success.” There is no reason to assume that ritual cannot be “rational and pragmatic.” Such narrowing leads to unnecessary complications in establishing a hermeneutic compatibility between ritual and athletics in Sansone’s book (e.g., p. It is important to keep in mind the following formulation of Rohde 1898 I 151-152 (1925.117): “The greatest Games of all, to which all Greece assembled, the Pythian, Olympian, Nemean, and Isthmian, were during the historical period, it is true, celebrated in honor of the gods; but that they had been originally instituted as Funeral Games of Heroes and only subsequently transferred to higher guardianship was, at any rate, the general opinion of antiquity.” Rohde’s accompanying note at I 152n1 is particularly helpful. Phlegon ibid.: the Delphic Oracle is quoted as saying (lines 9-11): τρίτατος δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς πάις Ἀμφιτρύωνος Ἡρακλέης ἐτέλεσσ’ ἔροτιν καὶ ἀγῶνα ἐπὶ μήτρῳ Τανταλίδῃ Πέλοπι φθιμένῳ ‘after them, the third was Herakles, son of Amphitryon: he established the festival and the contest agōn for the dead Pelops, son of Tantalos, a maternal relative’ the daughter of Pelops, myth has it, was the mother of Amphitryon, father of Herakles. On the basis of the phraseology here, I am ready to argue that the collocation of agōn ‘contest’ with epi with the dative conveys the notion that Herakles instituted the festival in compensation for the death of Pelops (cf. Herodotus 5.8 on agōn as a response to death; cf. Also 5§2-3 on the state-supported Athenian institution of the agōn epi-taphios in honor of the war-dead).

From the standpoint of this oracular poem, Pelops and Herakles were respectively the second and the third founders of the Olympics; the “first founder” was one Pisos (lines 6-7), the eponymous hero of Pisa, the site of the Olympics. For another version, see Pindar Olympian 10.43 and following, where Herakles founds the Olympics with the spoils taken from the dead Augeias (41-42). For a survey of versions about the foundation of the Olympics, with references, see Burkert 1983.95n7. On Herakles as the founder of the Olympics, there is a generalized reference in Pindar Olympian 2.3-4; see also Aristotle F 637 Rose (cf. Pausanias 5.13.12); overview in Brelich 1958.103. According to the scholia to Pindar Olympian 1.149a Drachmann, Herakles is said to have instituted the practice of sacrificing first to Pelops and then to Zeus.

Bacchylides 9.12 SM (note the phraseology: ἄθλησαν ἐπ’ Ἀρχεμόρῳ, with ἐπί + dative in the context of aethlos); Aeschylus Nemea (TGF 149); Euripides Hypsipyle (ed. Bond) 97-103; Apollodorus 3.6.4 (note the phraseology: ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἀγῶνα, with ἐπί + dative in the context of agōn); Hyginus Fables 273; Clement Protrepticus 2.29; and Hypotheses to Pindar Nemeans. This myth can function as a supplement to the myth of Herakles and the Nemean Lion: cf. Callimachus F 254–269 in the edition of Lloyd-Jones and Parsons 1983.

Race points out to me that the myth involving the Seven may correspond to the chariot race specifically, as distinct from the myth involving Herakles. See Roller, pp. 5–6, who ascribes the obsolescence of this custom to the progressive encroachment of the polis upon funerary practices and other such practices characteristic of powerful extended families. In the case of once-only athletic events in honor of immediate ancestors and the like, we must take note of the tendency toward Panhellenism even in this obsolescent custom: we know from the inscriptions that the athletes who competed in such events could come from other city-states (Roller, p. Thus there must have been some degree of Panhellenic “advertisement.”. For example, Hesychius s.v.

Ἐπ’ Εὐρυγύῃ ἀγών, with reference to the Athenian festival of the Panathenaia (cf. Amelesagoras FGH 330 F 2 and Jacoby’s commentary). Also Hesychius s.v. Βαλλητύς ἑορτὴ Ἀθήνησιν ἐπὶ Δημοφῶντι τῷ Κελεοῦ ἀγομένη, with reference to a seasonally-recurring ritual mock battle in compensation for the death of the child-hero Demophon (cf.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter 262–267, with commentary by Richardson 1974.245–247); this mock battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games (cf. Richardson, p. 4§5–6, with reference to the festival of the Olympics.

In this connection I found it helpful to read Ong 1981.104–107 on the custom of “land diving” as practiced on the New Hebrides island of Pentecost. In an annual ritual intended to promote a good yam crop, the men of the community compete with each other by diving “from tree-and-vine towers as high as eighty feet and more, headfirst, with lianas tied to their ankles, the woody vines just long enough to break the men’s fall as they hit the bare ground below” (p.

Ar defender 2 3 download. Player 2 plays center field trying to steal a pass thrown to either player. Skip Pass - Top of the Key to the Corner:Here's the proper rotation if a skip pass is thrown from the top of the key to the corner:. Skip Pass - Wing to Wing:Here's the proper rotation if a skip pass is thrown from wing to wing:Player 3 takes away the outside shot until Player 2 rotates over to guard the ball.

For the participants, the aetiological motivation for the ritual is as follows: once “a man named Tamalie quarreled with his wife, who ran away and climbed a banyan tree. Tamalie followed to recapture her, she jumped down to escape him, and he jumped after her. But she had tied lianas around her ankles to break her fall, while he, without lianas, simply plunged to his death. The other men took up the practice of land diving so that no woman would trick them again” (p. I infer that the mock death of the men engaged in the ritual, modeled on the mock death of the primordial woman in the myth, compensates for the “real” death of the primordial man in the myth.

Note too that the setting for the stylized death in the ritual is a thing of culture, that is, a tower, while the setting for the “real” death in the myth was a thing of nature, a tree. Ong continues: “The threat of death is real enough, though accidents, which occur with fair frequency, are generally minor (pulled muscles, sprains, contusions, skinned shoulders), since even if the lianas break, they generally do so at a point where they have already notably decelerated the fall. But death is in the air, literally and figuratively, and it is meant to be” (p. Translation after Burkert, p. 97, who notes (p.

100) that the portent recounted in Herodotus 1.59.1 about Hippokrates, father of the tyrant Peisistratos of Athens, must be understood as taking place immediately after the Olympic event of the diaulos, as the envoys were approaching the altar of Zeus. Hippokrates was one of these envoys, and as he approached, the water inside the sacrificial cauldrons (presumably at the altar of Zeus) started to boil before the application of fire. This portent seems to have conveyed the idea that the very presence of Hippokrates, as the future father of Peisistratos, was the equivalent of the Olympic victor’s fire that was required to start the sacrifices at the altar of Zeus. Note his discussion of age divisions at p.

90 and of expulsion/impulsion rituals at p. I would draw special attention to this observation (p.

92): “The younger members of the rising generation had to be forced away into the wild ‘outdoors’ while the older twenty-five-year-olds, now marriageable, entered athletic competitions.” In other words age classes could be differentiated by way of overt vs. Stylized separation (i.e., rustication vs. Athletics, respectively). N 1979.284 on the aetiological significance of the myth concerning the death of Aesop at Delphi: “The Life of Aesop tradition actually presents the death of Aesop as a cause of the First Sacred War, but the institutional reality that Aesop reproaches—namely, that the people of Delphi are sacred to Apollo—is a lasting effect of the First Sacred War. From the standpoint of the myth, the death of Aesop is the effect of his reproaching the institutions of Delphi; from the standpoint of these institutions, on the other hand, his death is their indirect cause. It is this sort of ‘cause’ that qualifies as an aition.”.

We may contrast the story of the abduction and rape of Ganymede by Zeus in Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 200–217. In this case the boy never leaves Olympus (nor does he ever become a man), and the gift of a magnificent chariot team goes not to him but to his father—a fitting compensation for permanently losing the boy. I consider this story a variant, just as the story of the abduction and rape of Pelops by Poseidon must be considered a variant. It is methodologically unsound to insist that one variant is the exemplum and the other, the imitation. I see no reason to argue that the story about Tantalos’ perverted sharing of nectar and ambrosia was an invention of Pindar. That Tantalos had received the gift of nectar and ambrosia—a gift that he proceeded to misuse—can be analyzed as a traditional story pattern where (1) the gods wrong a mortal, (2) the mortal is given a divine gift in compensation for the wrong, (3) the mortal misuses the gift, thereby wronging the gods, and (4) the gods punish the mortal and take back the gift.

It may be that Tantalos’ gift of nectar and ambrosia from the gods was viewed as a payment in compensation for the gods’ having taken Pelops to Olympus, just as the gift of a chariot team to the father of Ganymede was in compensation for the gods’ having taken Ganymede to Olympus (see n83). Then, after Tantalos wrongs the gods, the gift is taken back and Pelops is expelled from Olympus. The compensation that was owed to Tantalos, so long as Pelops stayed on Olympus, now reverts to Pelops, once he is released, just as the abducted Cretan boy is compensated by his abductor upon being released.

Thus Pelops gets the gift of a chariot team. One of the anonymous referees for the earlier version of this presentation points out that the word ammoros ‘having no share’ in this passage may convey yet another image of eating; on the semantics of moira and related words in the sense of ‘share, portion’ of meat, see N 1979.134–135. I quote from the referee’s incisive remarks: “Pelops, sitting by the cauldron of his stewing old age, cannot get a name for himself because he does not reach in and ‘get his share’—the champion’s portion.” On the theme of the champion’s portion of meat in Greek and Irish traditions, see N 1979.133§19n4.