The Cruise of the Branwen

THE OLYMPIC GAMES of Hellenic Studies as he kindly permits me to make use of his valuable researches on both the discus and the javelin in ancient literature and art.* The discus was a most important part of the Hellenic pentathlon at the original Olympic Games, and owing to the discus having provided a subject for two of the most famous masterpieces of Greek sculpture, it has been often taken as typical of all classical athleticism, which is yet another reason why the nation in which the Games of 1908 are held should not entirely neglect it. The two statues referred to are, of course, the standing Discobolus of the Vatican, and the still more famous Discobolus in the Palazzo Lancelotti in Rome, by Myron, who has chosen a later mo– ment in the throw and has deliberately frozen into marble, as it were, an instantaneous fraction of a swift combined movement, with a result that can only be understood if the whole process of the throw be carefully reconstructed from indubitably correct classical sources. What happens when nothing but a passage of ancient Greek is taken, and corrupt at that, is only too evident from the impossibilities in the modern Greek rules for the Athenian Games, which are founded on the mistranslation of a corrupt text, and plant the unfortunate athlete on a small platform that slopes downward, hampering him still further by extraordinary restrictions as to the movements of his body and limbs. Mr. • I first published a short account of these researches in an article in the Daily Telegraph from which I have taken several passages for use in this chapter. 68