é 
ORIGIN OF GREEK GAMES IN THE CULT OF THE DEAD. 118 
As an example of the survival of funeral customs in later ritual, 
Pausanias says that the annual officers at Olympia, even in his day, sac- 
riiced ablackramto Pelops.! The fact that a black victim was offered 
over a trench instead of on an altar proves that Pelops was still wor- 
shipped as a hero and not as a god. The scholiast on Pindar, Ol., I, 
146, says that all Peloponnesian lads each year lashed themselves on 
the grave of Pelops until the blood ran down their backs as a libation 
to the hero. Furthermore, all the contestants at Olympia sacrificed 
first to Pelops and then to Zeus.’ 
Funeral games were held in honor of departed warriors and eminent 
men all over the Greek world and at all periods, from the legendary 
games of Patroklos and Pelias and others to those celebrated at Thes- 
salonika in Valerian’s time.* Thus Miltiades was honored by games 
on the Thracian Chersonesus,* Leonidas and Pausanias at Sparta,° 
Brasidas at Amphipolis,® Timoleon at Syracuse,’ and Mausolos at 
Halikarnassos.* Alexander instituted games in honor of the dead 
Hephaistion® and the conqueror himself was honored in a similar way.” 
The Eleutheria were celebrated at Platza at stated times in honor 
of the soldiers who fell there against the Medes in 479 B. C.,'! and in 
the Academy a festival was held under the direction of the polemarch 
in honor of the Athenian soldiers who had died for their country and 
were buried in the Kerameikos.’* Funeral games were also common 
in Italy. We find athletic scenes decorating Etruscan tombs—includ- 
ing boxing, wrestling, horse-racing, and chariot-racing.’* The Romans 
borrowed their funeral games from Etruria as well as their gladiatorial 
shows, which were doubtless also funerary in origin.'! | Frazer cites 
examples of the custom of instituting games in honor of dead warriors 
among many modern peoples, Circassians, Chewsurs of the Caucasus, 

1V, 13.2. 2According to the same scholiast, on 1. 149; Boeckh, p. 43. 
penis 11; 1969, ayev..... ércradvos Oewarekos. *Adt., iV, 38. 
eRe LU 14.1. 6Thukyd., V, 11. 
7Plut., Zimoleon, 39; Diod. Sic., XVI, 90.1. 8Aulus Gellius, X, 18.5. 
®Arrian, Anabasis, VII, 14. Games were held every four years in honor of Antinoos, the 
favorite of Hadfian, at Mantinea: P., VIII, 9.8. 
Strabo, XIV, 1.31 (C. 644.) 
1P., 1X, 2, 5-6; he says that they were celebrated every fourth year and that the chief prizes 
were for running. . 
2Philostr., Vit. Soph., Il, p. 624; Heliod., Aethiop., I, 17; Aristotle, Constit. of Athens, 58; 
cf. P., I, 29.4. Games were also held in the Academy in honor of Eurygyes: Hesych., s. 2. 
éx’ Evpuytn ayer. 
BDennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,’ 1883, I, p. 374 (Corneto); II, pp. 323 and 330 
(Chiusi). 
4On the Etruscan origin of the /udi funebres, see Val. Max., II, 4.4; Tertullian, de Spect., 12; 
Servius ad Virg., den., X, 520. For the Etruscan origin of the munera gladiatorum, see Tertull., 
op. cit., 5; Athenzeus, IV, 39 (quoting Nikolaos of Damascus); cf. Strabo, V, 4.13 (C. 250). They 
were first introduced into Rome in 264 B.C. in honor of D. Junius Brutus: Livy, XVI (Epit.); 
and are frequently mentioned: ¢. g., by Livy, XXIII, 30, 15; XXXI, 50, 4; XX XIX, 46, 2; 
XLI, 28, 11; Polyb., XXXII, 14, 5; Serv., ad 4en., III, 67 and V, 78; Suetonius, Julius, 26; 
etc. See Dar.-Sagl., II, 2, pp. 1384 f., 1563 f. 
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