8 EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES. 
Patroklos is pervaded by a spirit of true athletics and has a perennial 
attraction for every lover of sport. Walter Leaf says of the chariot- 
race, which is the culminating feature of the description, that it is “ 
piece of narrative as truthful in its characters as it is dramatic and 
masterly in description.”* Such a description could have been com- 
posed only by a poet who belonged to a people long acquainted with 
athletics and intensely interested in them. Nestor often speaks of a 
remoter past, when the gods and heroes contended. Odysseus says he 
could not have fought with Herakles nor Eurytos, heroes of the olden 
time, “who contended with the immortal gods.”” ‘The Homeric warrior _— 
was distinguished from the merchant by his knowledge of sport. Thus 
Euryalos of the Phaiakians says in no complimentary tone to Odysseus: 
“No truly, stranger, nor do I think thee at all like one that is skilled. 
in games . . . . rather art thou such an one as comes and goes in a 
benched ship, a master of sailors that are merchantmen, one with a 
memory for his freight, or that hath charge of a cargo homeward bound, 
and of greedily gotten gains.’’? It is beside the point whether the 
chief passages in the poems which relate to sports are late in origin or 
not, even if they are later than 776 B.C., the traditional first Olympiad. 4 
In any case the later poet merely Necks an older tradition. At the 
funeral games of Patroklos all the events are practical in character, 
the natural amusements of men chiefly interested in war. They are, 
however, not merely military, but are truly athletic. [he oldest and 
most aristocratic of all the events described is the chariot-race—in which 
the war-chariot 1s used—the monopoly of the nobles then, as it was 
always later the sport of kings and the rich.? Boxing and wrestling ~ 
come next in importance, already occupying the position of preémin- 
ence which they hold in the poems of Pindar. ‘The foot-race between 
Ajax, the son of Oileus, and Odysseus follows: Of the last four events, 
three—the single combat between Ajax and Diomedes, the throwing of 
the solos, and the contest in archery—are admitted to be late additions. 
The last event of all, the casting of the spear, may be earlier, but we 
know little about it, as the contest did not take place, Achilles yielding 
the first prizeto Agamemnon. Most of these later events are described 
in a lifeless manner and have not the vim and compelling interest of 
the earlier ones. Indeed the contest in archery seems to be treated 
with a certain amount of ridicule, which shows the contempt of the 
great nobles for so plebeian a sport. The armed contest, though it is 


7 Pee 
1The Iliad,*? 1900, II, p. 468. Mi Re 
2Od., VIII, 158 f. (translated by Butcher and Lang). Pie 
raed p. 15, points out that there is no mention of a chariot-race 1 in the Odyssey, merely 
because Ithaca was not a land “that pastureth horses,” nor had it “wide courses or meadow- 
land.” ‘The plains of Thessaly and Argos, the homes of Achilles and, Agamemnon respec- 
tively, were, however, famed for their horses, and the plain of Troy was large enough for the 
chariot-race. The only other chariot-races inentanedh in the Iliad are held in Elis: XI, ae. ae 
XXIII, 630 f. = Bi, 
