12 EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES. 
Siamese, Kirghiz, in India, and among the North American Indian 
tribes. Gardiner notes the Irish fairs in honor of a departed chief, 
which existed from pagan days down to the last century.! 
The testimony of early Greek athletic art also points to the same 
funerary origin of the games. ‘The funeral games of Pelias and those 
held by Akastos in honor of his father were depicted respectively on the 
two most famous monuments of early Greek decorative art, on the chest 
of Kypselos dedicated in the Heraion at Olympia and on the throne of 
Apollo at Amyklai in Lakonia, the latter being the work of the Ionian 
sculptor Bathykles. “Though both these works are lost, the description 
of one of them at least, that of the chest, by Pausanias,” is so detailed 
and precise that the scenes represented upon it have been paralleled fig- 
ure for figure on early Ionian (especially Chalkidian) and Corinthian 
vases, contemporary or later, and on Corinthian and Argive decora- 
tive bronze reliefs. Many attempts have been made, therefore, to re- 
store the chest, and as more monuments become known, which throw 
light on the composition and types, these attempts are constantly grow- 
ing in certainty, even though conjecture may continue to enter in.° 
The figures were wrought in relief, partly i in Ivory and gold and partly 
in the cedar wood itself, deployed on its surface in a’series of bands, 
such as we commonly see on early vases. ‘This use of gold and ivory 
is the first example in Greek art of the custom employed by Pheidias 
and other sculptors of the great age of Greek sculpture. We have 
already noted its use in the ivory acrobats from Crete, which were 
made, perhaps, a thousand years before the chest. Out of the thirty- 
three scenes depicted on its surface all but two or three were mytho- 
logical, and among these were scenes from the funeral games of Pelias, 
including a two-horse chariot-race (P., §9), a boxing and wrestling 

1Page 28; he quotes P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ireland, I, pp. 435 f. 
2V, 17.5-19.10. The description of the throne (P., III, 18.9 f; ef. Apollodoros, I, 9.28) 
is merely summary, as Pausanias only mentions the games reprieeneen on it without Pcatine 
them in detail. 
’The best reconstruction of the scenes on the chest is by H. Stuart Jones: J. H. S., XIV, 1894, 
pp. 30-80 and Pl. I (repeated by Frazer, III, Pl. X, opp. p. 606). See also Robert, Hermes, 
XXIII, 1888, pp. 436f.; Pernice, /d., III, 1888, pp. 365 f.; Studniczka, Jb., LX, 1894, pp. 52 f., n. 
16; Collignon, I, pp. 93-100; Furtw., Mw., pp. 723-32. 
The best attempt to reconstruct the scenes on the throne is by Furtwaengler: Mw., fig. 135, 
opposite p. 706; text, pp. 689-719; cf. the best of the older attempts by Brunn, Rhein. Mus., 
N. F., V, 1847, p. 325; id., Kunst bet Homer, pp. 22 f.; id., Griech. Kunstgesch., 1893, 1, pp. 178 f. 
Cf. also Klein, Arch.-epigr. Mitt. aus Oesterr.-Ungarn, 1X, 1885, pp. 145 f.; against Klein, see 
Pernice, as above, p. 369. Cf. Collignon, I, pp. 230-2; Murray, I, pp. 89 f. 
4Tf we followed Pausanias’ account that this was the very chest made to save the infant 
Kypselos, father of Periandros and future tyrant of Corinth, and that it was dedicated at Olympia 
by the Kypselid family (for the story, see Hdt., V, 92), the chest would belong to the eighth cen- 
tury B.C., and must have been dedicated before 586-5 B. C., when the Kypselid dynasty ended 
at Corinth; see Busolt, Griech. Gesch.,? I, pp. 638 and 657: However, ‘the chest at Olympia had 
nothing to do with the legendary one, but was merely a richly decorated offering to the gods, the 
work of a Corinthian artist of the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century B. C., 
and one who knew the epic poems well. 
