Olympic Cavalcade

OLYMPIC CAVALCADE fact that Hippodamia established Games to the honour of Hera comprising three races for girls of varying ages; that the victors were crowned with chaplets of wild olive and received also part of a heifer sacrificed to Hera. The Games were under the control of sixteen selected matrons corresponding to the Hellanodikai. Based upon Pausanius, it has been said that the Games, which had been forgotten during the Dark Ages, were gradually revived as men remem– bered what they had been, and for thirteen Olympiads the only contest was the foot race, but, according to Pindar, that the programme from the first contained the chariot race, foot race, throwing the discus and javelin, boxing and wrestling. In 708 B.c. the pentathlon was introduced, replacing, perhaps, separate contests with the javelin and-discus. The pancration was introduced in 648 B.C. and the horse race included in the same year. In 68o B.C. the four– horse chariot race replaced the two-horse war chariot probably used in the earliest games. A foot race for boys and wrestling first appeared in 632 E.G., with boxing added in 616 B.c. By the end of the fifth century the programme was complete; there was the addition in po B.c. of a race for men in armour. It was later that various equestrian events, a pancration for boys and contests for heralds and trumpeters were added. According to Phlegon the prizes constituted tripods and other valuable awards up to the VIIth Olympiad, when the on~y prize in the Olympic Games was a crown of wild olive, an award which has taught a lesson in sportsmanship which still prevails at the Olympic Games. The Games of the Greeks were mainly athletic; the very essence was the idea of effort. The Greek word_from which 'athlete' is derived has a neuter form denoting the prize of the contest and a mas~uline form meaning 'a contest'. The latt~r is, I feel, the earlier and basic meaning, for it determines the meaning of the words derived from it. We get the 'feeling' of the word in Homer when he describes boxing, wrestling, war and battle as 'grievous'; something in which his warriors delighted and something which Pindar ascribes to the athlete 'who delights in the toil and the cost'. And what are the things that every sportsman, of any era, remembers best and with the greatest enjoyment? Surely it is a strenuous game, or a hard-run race to victory, which remain longest and most happy in the memory of a man. . The real prize was then, and still is, the honour of victory, but it is hard for the true athletic spirit to flourish where conditions o_f life are soft and luxurious. It is found at its best in vigorous and virile nations which put a premium upon physical excellence. Such were the activities of the Homeric Achaeans, from whom the Games were inherited by the Greeks, and among the tribes of Central Europe; -and so the predominance of the English-speaking nations in athletics has developed from the rough condi– tions in which lived our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.