IIORSE-BACK RIDING. 133 



tion, would have been pitilessly hurled from the 

 summit of Mt. Typens ; and, on the other hand, he 

 mentions three women who had won renown through 

 their success at chariot races, viz., Cynisca, daughter 

 of Archidamus, King of Sparta, and sister of the 

 great Agesilaus ; Euryleonis, another woman of 

 Sparta, and the Macedonian, Bellistria. 



Again he asserts that Chamyne, the priestess of 

 Ceres, and other virgins had their appointed places 

 in the lists of Olympia, from which conflicting ac- 

 counts we may infer that if women were forbidden by 

 law to witness the exercises of the pancratium and 

 pentathlon, on account of the indecency of these 

 contests, there was certainly no cause to prevent 

 them from being spectators or even participants in 

 horse and chariot races, where all was noble — where 

 there was nothing calculated to call the faintest blush 

 to the cheek of modesty. 



It seems more than probable, however, that women 

 did not enter the lists of Olympus in person, but 

 merely sent thither their horses and chariots with a 

 substitute. 



The manners and customs of Greece did not favor 

 the presence of women in public, much less their be- 

 coming a spectacle for the amusement of the jiopu- 

 lace. It was not even necessary that men, in order to 

 gain the victory, should drive their own chariots or 

 ride their own horses over the race-course any more 

 than at the present day. The horses won the crown 



