2 EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES. 
cargo, and consequently a contemporary record, it may be, of the first 
importation of horses from Libya into Crete.! 
The Cretan bull seems to have been a much larger animal than the 
species found upon the island to-day.?” Bull-grappling at Knossos was 
the sport of female as well as male toreadors. A fragmentary rect- 
angular fresco, dating from about 1500 B.C. (Pl. 1), was discovered 
there by Sir Arthur Evans in 1901 and is now in the Candia museum. 
It is executed with extraordinary spirit and shows a huge bull rushing 
forward with lowered head and tail straight out. A man is in the act 
of turning a somersault on its back, his legs in the air, his arms grasp- 
ing the bull’s body and his head raised, looking back to the rear of the 
animal, where a cowgirl 1s standing, holding out her arms to catch his 
flying figure as soon as his feat is concluded. Another cowgirl, at the 
extreme left, seems to be suspended from the bull’s horns, which pass 
under her armpits, while she catches hold further up. However, she 
is not being tossed, but is taking position preliminary to leaping over 
the bull’s back. Both the man and the women wear striped boots and 
bracelets; the women are apparently distinguished by their white skin, 
short drawers, yellow sashes embroidered with red, and the red-and- 
blue diadems around their brows.’ On the opposite wall a similar scene 
was pictured; among its stucco fragments was found the representation 
of the arm and shoulder of 2 woman grasping a bull by the horns. The 
fragmentary representation of another woman and man was also found. 
A very similar scene has long been known from a fresco painting 
from Tiryns, now in Athens.* A bull is represented galloping to the 
left, while a man’ clings to its horns with his right hand and is swept 


1B. S. A., XI, 1904-5, fig. 7 and pp. 12-14. The horse also appears on clay documents from 
Knossos with royal chariots and also on tombstones and Tagmentary frescoes of Mycene; for 
the latter, see Arch. Eph., 1887, Pl. XI. On the Libyan origin of the first horses introduced 
into Greece, see W. Ridgeway, The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse, 1905, p. 480. 
2See the bull depicted on a seal from Praisos, to be mentioned below: Angelo Mosso, The 
Palaces of Crete, 1907, p. 218, fig. 98. The Italian Mission found at Hagia Triada the bones of 
a gigantic bull, and Mosso (i p. 216, n. 1) found the remains of one at Phaistos. = 
3B. S. A., VII, 1900-1, pp. 94.f. and VIII, 1901-2, p. 74; Mosso, op. cit., pp. 216-218; H. R. 
Hall, Anc. Testory of the Near East, 1913, Pl. IV., 2; Mrs. R. C. Bosanquet, Days in Attica, 1914, 
Pl. II; Richter, Hbk. of the Classical Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1917, p. 23, 
fig. 13. As Dr. Evans’ Atlas has not yet appeared, the plate in the text is taken from a water- 
color by Gillieron, in the museum of Liverpool. 
4It has often been pictured and described: e. g., Schliemann, Tiryns, 1885, PI. XII; Baich- 
hardt, Schliemann’s Excavations, 1891, pp. 119 f. and fig. 111; Tsountas-Manatt, The Mytedean 
Age, 1897, p. 51, fig. 12; Perrot-Chipiez, VI, p. 887, fig. 439; Mibsco’ op. cit., p. 220, fig. 100; H. B. 
Walters, The Art of the Greeks, 1906, Pl. LIX; Springer-Michaelis, p. 113, fig. 242; Tiryns, Die 
Ergebn. d. Ausgrab. d. deutsch. Indias in Athen, II, 1912, Pl. XVIII. 
‘On analogy with the Knossos fresco this figure, because of its white skin, should be that of a 
woman and not of a man, as the usual color of the latter is red. However, the charioteers painted 
white on frescoes discovered at Tiryns in 1910, which represent a boar hunt (see Rodenwaldt, 
A. M., XXXVI, 1911, pp. 198 f. and fig. 2, p. 201, restored; see also Tiryns, IT, Pl. X11, in 
color) are regarded by Hall as youths and not women. He remarks that in Egypt young princes, 
who led the “sheltered life,’ were often represented on monuments as pale, though red was the 
more usual color: see Hall, op. cit., p. 58 and n.1; id., Aegean Archeology, 1914, p. 190 and 
fig. 74 on p. 192. Rodenwaldt interprets them as fonintn Les 
