Olympic Cavalcade

OLYMPIC CAVALCADE The training concluded with a set speech: "If you have exerciseayourselves in a manner worthy ofOlympia, if you have been guilty ofno slothful or ignoble act, go on with a good courage. You who have not so practisedgo whither you will." From Marseilles to the Black Se-a, from Thrace to Africa, the whole Greek world was !-~presented at the Games by either competitors or spectators, or both. The plain outside th·e Altis was just one 'vast fair, from which none save married women were excluded. The festival lasted from th.e twelfth to the sixteenth day of a month. On the -first day the competitors, their trainers, fathers and bro_thers were scrutinized in .the Council House and, standing before the statue of Zeus Horkios, took the Oly!llpic oath up.~m- the entrails of a pig th?t they would use no unfair ,means l:o secure victery and that the competitors had trained faithfully for ten months. Then the judges _toQ.lCoath that they would give fair decision and not reveal ·their reasons for such decisions. _ -On the second day the Games began with the chariot race and the ·ho'rse race in the Hippodrome, which lay to the-south of the Stadium. Tire chariots were arranged in stalls, in.front of each of which a rope was stretched: It is-probable tJrq,t these ropes_were withdrawn as each pair came level -with the stall_ahead o1:1t, officially, tlie start-was controlled by a piece of 11l_.echanism which ca:u§ed an,eagle-to rise and a dolphi11 !O drop from the prpw of the range of staUs in which the chariots andnqrses·were housed. T:herewere· seats for the judges,- but none for the speet~rors, who stood all day ba~eheaded under~ a blq.zing sun. ~ ~- Then,as now, horse racing was 't~e sport of Kings', for th~ csport was expensive. Anything up to fifty charietS:.may have .Deen entered ih the-four– horse chariot race, and Alcibiades on one occasion boasted tha:t-· he had entered ~s ~any as_seven chariots in one-·race._.-Luckily the -course~was long -twelve c!,oub1e-lap~, seventy:'-nv.G stades; which is nearly nine miles-or there would have been more -acdcfent~: a:f tfie 1:1Jt_!ling points. _IJl- any case getting round .the pillars. at each end o£-the ..) :Jippodrome musi:~have taxed "' nerve and skilJ 'to the utmost limit; - _ ~ When the race was won ther~ was a spectacle, to which <! modern custom may well b<t t.raced,_ for the owner of the victorious foui::-hO'rs..e chario.t team came into.the arena and-bound·a fillet round the brow of his chario'teer. Then, leadi_rrg, _p~rf!aps, his chariot, }le:a'clv.aneed to- ~ table of gol·d .and ivory on which rep-osed the chaplet of olive ,which the_chief Hellanodikai placed upon his heap_, and ~is name, that of liis father and his city were proclaimed. · It was ·the nob1e owner and not ~the charioteer who received the pr_ize. In heroic_tjmes it is pro~able th?f the owners drove thel.r own chariots, but that practice· had gone out of fashion by the fifth century. , · Next came the horse race of pne laE_ of six ~tades with the start amiriged as above described. - _ - - The spec tators then trans{~rred theif-auention to the Stadium, where the