ORIGIN OF GREEK GAMES IN THE CULT OF THE DEAD. 9 
pictured 1 in art certainly as early as the sixth century B.C., ‘never hada 
place in the later Greek games.” Jumping, an important part of the 
later pentathlon, is mentioned but once in the poems, as a feature of 
the sports of the Phaiakians. But the later pentathlon, as Gardiner 
says, is certainly not suggested in Homer’s account, though many 
have assumed it,? merely because Nestor mentions his former contests 
at Bouprasion in boxing, in running, in hurling the spear, and in the 
chariot-race.* This, however, is not the combination of contests 
known much later as the pentathlon, in‘ which the same contestants 
had to compete in the series of events—running, jumping, wrestling, 
diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. | 
ORIGIN OF GREEK GAMES IN THE CULT OF THE DEAD. 
In these games described in the Iliad we see an example of the origin 
of the later athletic festivals in the cult of the dead. Homer knows 
only of funeral games? and there is no trace in the poems of the later 
athletic meetings held in honor of a god.® However, the association 
of the later games with religious festivals held at stated times can be 
traced to the games with which the funeral of the Homeric chief was 
celebrated. ‘The o!dest example of periodic funeral games in Greece. 
of which we haye knowledge were those held in Arkadiain-honor-of the 
dead Azan, the father. of -Klettor-and_son of Arkas, at which-prizes were 
offered at least for horse-racing.’ 
Though the origin of the four national religious festivals in Greece— 
_at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus—is buried in a mass 
of conflicting legend, certain writers agree in saying that all of them 
were founded on funeral games, though they were later dedicated to 
17}. g., on certain sarcophagi: see Murray, Sarcophagi in the British Museum, Pls. II, III (one 
from Klazomenai). 
2The true hoplomachia described by Homer and later practised by the Mantineans and Kyre- 
neans (cf. Athenzus, IV, 41, p. 154) should not be confounded, as Gardiner, p. 21, n. 3, remarks, 
with the later competition of the same name held at the Athenian Theseza and taught in the gym- 
nasia, which was. a purely military exercise like fencing: Plato, Laches, 182B and passim; Gorgias, 
456D; de Leg., 833E; cf. Dar.-Sagl., 5. v. Hoplomachia. 
3. g., Leaf, in his Companicn to the Iliad, 1892, p. 380; id., The Iliad, Il, p. 417, note on 
line 621. 
- 4Thiad, XXIII, 634 f.; 2bid., 621-3, where Achilles gives Nestor a prize because he will never 
again be able to contend in boxing, wrestling, hurling the javelin, or running. In Od., VIII, 
103 and 128, leaping is substituted for chariot-racing. 
5F. g., Iliad, XXII, 163-4: “The great prize . . . of amanthatis dead’”’; XXIII, 630 f., where 
Nestor recalls victories in the games held by the Epeians at Bouprasion in Elis at the funeral of 
the local hero Amarynkeus. Bouprasion is also mentioned in Iliad, XI, 756, in Nestor’s story 
of the war between the Pylians and Epeians and of the war waged by his father Neleus on Augeas, 
for stealing four horses which had been sent to Elis to contend for a tripod. 
6Examples of panegyric games in honor of gods are found also in the Homeric Hymn to the 
Delian Apollo, I, 146 f.; in Eas Ol., IX. 6 (Zeus); P., VIII, 2.1 (Zeus) and schol.; and Hdt., 
I, 144 (Apollo) and schol.; 
PPV IIT, 4:5. For aa aan of funeral games, see references in Krause, p, 9, n. 3. He 
also hows chat musical contests were funerary in character. 
