SPORTS IN CRETE. 5 
have no lasso and so can hardly be hunters; besides, if the bull had im- 
paled a hunter with its horns, the hunter would have been represented 
with his head up and not down. ‘The figure is, however, uninjured and 
holds on with its knee bent over one horn and its shoulder against the 
other; it is merely, therefore, intended for a woman acrobat. The net 
shown in the centre was never used for hunting wild bulls; more prob- 
ably it was intended as an obstacle inracing. The fallen man has been 
standing on the netted bull, which, with the gymnast on its back, was 
expected to have leaped over the net, but has not succeeded; conse- 
quently, the acrobat has been tumbled over the bull’s head. 
_ This ancient Cretan sport seems to have been similar to that known 
in Thessaly and elsewhere in historical days as r&~ravpoxabaia.’ “A 
survival of it still persists to our day in certain parts of Italy, as, ¢. g., 
in,the province of Viterbo.? 
4 Kerobatic feats of various sorts were attractive to the later Greeks 
from the time of Homer down. We have already mentioned one 
passage from the Iliad in which a driver of four horses leaps from horse 
tohorsein motion. On the shield of Achilles tumblers appeared among 
the dancers on the dancing-place.* Patroklos ironically remarks over 
the body of Kebriones, as the charioteer falls headlong like a diver 
from his chariot when hit by a missile, that there are tumblers 
also among the [rojans.* In later centuries the Athenians evinced a 
great attraction to acrobatic feats. The story told of Hippokleides® 
reveals that high-born Athenians did not disdain to practice them. 
They appear to have formed a sort of side-show attraction at the 
Panathenaic festival, as such scenes occur frequently on Attic vases. 
Thus on an early (imitation!) Panathenaic vase from Kameiros in the 
Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris,® there 1s represented behind the driver 
a man standing on the back of a horse, armed with a helmet and two 
shields, while in front another appears to be balancing himself on a pole. 
But such acrobatic scenes as those of Crete and later Greece can 
not properly be classed as athletic. “They betoken more the love of 
excitement than of true sport. “The only form of real athletics repre- 
sented on Minoan monuments, one which was classed in later Greece as 
one of the national sports, was that of boxing, which seems to have been 
1See Boeckh, p. 319, on Pyth., II, 78. The same word occurs also in an inscription on a 
late relief from Smyrna, which shows horsemen pursuing bulls, leaping on their backs and 
seizing their horns; C. J.G., II, 3212; also in an inscription from Sinope: ibid., III, 4157 (line 5);’ 
an inscription from Aphrodisias calls such men ravpoxafamrau: tbid., I], Add.,2759b. The evidence 
shows that Gardiner, p. 9, n. 2, is wrong in connecting the taurokathapsta with the hunting-field 
instead of with the circus. He cites the Smyrna relief above mentioned (in the Ashmolean Museum 
at Oxford, no. 219), which, however, should be interpreted as an acrobatic scene. See J. Baunack, 
Rhein. Mus., XXXVIII, 1883, pp. 293 f., who discusses bull-fighting in Thessaly and Rome and 
quotes five inscriptions of Hellenic times to show that beast fights were common in Asia Minor. 
2Cf. Mosso, op. cit., pp. 214-215. 3Tliad, XVIII, 605-6 (=Od., IV, 18-19). 
4Tliad, XVI, 742-50. biidt., Vly v2 
6No. 243; see Salzmann, Le Nécropole de Cameiros, Pl. LVII; Gardiner, p. 245, fig. 39. 

