1. Some preliminary notes

1.1. The Olympic Games have been celebrated for at least 1,200 years, and numbers about 300 festivals (thirty-one Summer Games to date: twenty-three in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Winter Games 2018: at PyeongChang).

1.2. There have been many changes in the programmes during the 300 Olympic Games in the times of Antiquity.

The programme at Olympia at the beginning of the 4th century BCE is one example. The athletes arrived at Olympia following thirty days of training at Elis^1.

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1st day: Oath of Zeus Horkios; of heralds und trumpeters.

2nd day: Morning, agōnes hippikoí. Afternoon, pentathlon.

3rd day: Morning, procession of the hellanodíkai to the great Ash Altar of Zeus: sacrifice of a hekatómbe. Afternoon, paídes: stádion, pále, pygmé, pankrákion. Evening, funeral rites for Pelops. Banquet in the prytaneíon.

4th day: Morning, agōnes gymnikoí: stádion, díaulos, dólickos. Afternoon, pále, pygmé, pankrátion, holpítes.

5th day: Procession of the victors (olympioníkai) to the Temple of Zeus, crowning ceremony with a wreath of wild olive branches (kótinos) by the hellanodíkai; feasting and celebration; phyllobolía (scattering of leaves and flowers after the event).

1.3. Ancient sources, which are historiographical, poetic (e.g. Pindar’s Olympian Odes), inscriptions, coins and papyrological documents, especially those from Egypt, inform of more than 1,000 victors at Olympia². About 3,200 victors are still unknown. Pausanias, who wrote Description of Greece, visited Olympia in the 2nd century CE and described 200 statues³, the approximate number of victory statues is assumed to be about 500.

Isthmioníkai: about 220 winners (6th century BCE, 3rd century CE)⁴.

Periodoníkai: about 60 (compared to the grand slam of today).

1.4. períodos: The four Panhellenic Games (agōnes hieroí or stephanítai) at Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea were festivals at which only a crown or wreath and privileges were awarded.

1.5. Together with the períodos, there were many local periodical sport-festivals documented throughout the Greek and Roman world at the zenith of sport in the ancient civilizations = agōnes thematikoí, argyrítai, and chrematítai. Citystates and individual benefactors offered money or other material prizes⁵ .

2. Feats of athlete-heroes in Antiquity

A special ancient record in a péntathlon? The complete pentathlon comprises stádion (?), akóntion, dískos, hálma and pále⁶. Scholars have controversial

discussions and hypotheses about the determination of winners, about the sequence of events and especially about the long jump (hálma)⁷, which in Antiquity was usually part of the péntathlon. There is a strange notice from the Pythian Games at Delphi in an ancient scholion⁸.

πέντ’ ἐπὶ πεντήκοντα πόδας πήδησε Φάϋλλος/

δίσκευσεν δ’ ἑκατὸν πέντ’ ἀπολειπομένων,

which literally translated means: five and fifty feet jumped Phaÿllos, [and or] threw the discus a hundred missing five (πούς, ποδός in Delphi one foot is 0.296 metres = 16.28 metres. dískos: 28.12 metres)⁹ .

Phaÿllos (early 6th and 5th centuries BCE) was an athlete from Croton in Magna Graecia (Μεγάλη  ̔Ελλάς), then South Italy and Sicily. He won three times at the Pythian Games in Delphi in the stádion-race and in the péntathlon. Statues for the pentathloníkes and stadioníkes were erected at Delphi, and another on the Acropolis in Athens. The Crotoniate sponsored a ship for the battle of Salamis (480 BCE). As a well-known athlete and citizen, Phaÿllos also plays a specific role in the comedies of Aristophanes. His name was even extant in the days of Alexander the Great when the winner of the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE) sent a portion of the spoils to the people of Croton in Italy, “honouring the zeal and valour of their athlete Phäyllos”¹⁰.

Another source, Sextus Julius Africanus¹¹, informs of Chionis (7th century BCE), a long jump athlete from Sparta. The author mentions a distance of 52 Olympic feet for the Chionis jump: ἅλμα ποδῶν ἦν κβ ́ (the Olympic πούς is 0.320 metres = 16.64 metres). Chionis was three or four times olympioníkes, with four victories in stádion, three in díaulos (probably also in péntathlon). In his public life the Spartan athlete was an active founder of the colony at Cyrene, a city in North Africa. About two centuries later the Spartans dedicated a statue in Olympia to Chionis, which was made by the famous sculptor Myron.

Is it a simple exaggeration if both sources of Phaÿllos and Chionis relate of a long jump of more than 16 metres? (World record: 22 April 2017. 8.95 metres, US athlete Mike Powell). First of all, it is necessary to take into account the peculiar skills in long jump: the athletes were obliged to use jumping weights (haltēres) and to coordinate their action with the rhythm of an aulós (flute).

The most convincing explanation for the sixteen metres claimed is that it was a multiple jump, perhaps three or five jumps (five as a symbol of the pentathlon; one hypothesis also tells of a five-stádion race). But it was not a triple jump like the modern “hop, step, and jump”. Joachim Ebert¹² offers several compelling arguments, quoting a commentary made to Aristotle by Themistius¹³. The Greek rhetorician (4th century CE) mentions that the jumper did not undertake a single, continuous movement, which implies several jumps.

Both athletes, Chionis and Phaÿllos, were honoured by Sparta and Croton, their city-states. They were remembered for hundreds of years after their athletic victories. David C. Young is sceptical concerning the reference of these long jumps, because in later sources are found palaistés “in questionable circumstances”¹⁴. Perhaps he is right. I am not so sure.

A brief excursive: here it is necessary to speak about the matter of agonistic records in Antiquity. There is an intense discussion about records in the time before the industrial revolution, premodern societies in general, one could say. Of course, records given in minutes and seconds do not exist. Records given in distances could be possible, as we see in the case of the two discus throwers. These are the only examples, because we are informed that the heroic athlete Phlegyas of Pisa could throw the discus from one bank of the River Alpheios to the other. It says almost nothing about the widest distance¹⁵. In the stádion, in which the athletes had to throw the discus, the judges used a σῆμα to mark the distance. There is another argument for the existence of a certain mentality concerning records; ancient inscriptions and literary sources often mention phrases showing ranking. In the following are some examples about winning athletes! The word πρῶτος, “first”, formally and somewhat proudly announces their records”:¹⁶ πρῶτος Μιλησίων, πρῶτος Ἰώνων, πρῶτος πάντων. Titus Flavius Archibius (palaistés, pýktes, pagkratiastés), a winner in pankrátion in two Olympic Games, and four Capitolian Games, calls himself πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων¹⁷. Three brothers claim that of all mortals they are the only ones to have won these crowns (μοῦνοι δὲ θνατῶν)¹⁸. Many other phrases, such as εἷς, μόνος, πρῶτος¹⁹ inform of the ἄριστος Ἑλλήνων, μοῦνος Ἑλλάνων (thus, “twice the best of the Hellenes”²⁰), or also of the most talented herald who had to proclaim the names of athletes in the stádion – we hear that he is μόνος καὶ πρῶτος τῶν ἀπ’ αἰῶνος κηρύκων²¹.

In 2014 Wolfgang Decker published a catalogue of Antike Spitzensportler (top-class athletes) in his Athleten biographien (Biographies of the Athletes)²². This monograph offers ancient sources of about 88 athletes and it is a very rich collection in respect of our topic. I select, chronologically, only some of the very successful ancient sport-heroes.

Hipposthenes (632-604 BCE) and his son Hetoimokles (592-576 BCE)from Sparta²³.

Pausanias describes the statue with an inscription of both athletes. Hetoimokles won eleven Olympic victories in wrestling and succeeded his father by beating him by one victory.

Milon of Croton (540, 532-516 BCE)²⁴, celebrated six victories at Olympia, seven at Delphi, ten at Isthmia, and nine at Nemea. The city-state (pólis) of Magna Graecia was a famous stronghold of athletics and a philosophical and medical centre of the Pythagorean brotherhood. The geographer Strabon refers to the people of Croton²⁵. “The city is reputed to have cultivated warfare and athletics; nevertheless, in one Olympian festival the seven men who took the lead over all others in the stádion race were all Crotoniates”. Therefore the saying, “The last of the Crotoniates was the first among all other Greeks”, seems reasonable. And this, it is said, is what gave rise to another proverb, “more healthful than Croton”.

Hagias and Telemachos from Pharsalos in Thessaly (early 5th century BCE)²⁶: In an epigram, Hagias is called πρῶτος Ὀλύμπια πανκράτιον ... νῖκαις, three times pythioníkes, five times nemeoníkes and isthmioníkes. On the same number of days his brother Telemachos, a palaistés, was awarded the same number of stéphanoi (wreaths). Both athletes were periodoníkai²⁷.

Astylos of Croton (488-480 BCE)²⁸: The Crotoniate became unfaithful to his hometown and moved to Syracuse (much like our modern soccer players). Pausanias commented²⁹: “The statue of Astylus of Croton is the work of Pythagoras; this athlete won three successive victories at Olympia, in the stádion and in the díaulos. But because on the two latter occasions he proclaimed himself a Syracusan in order to please (the týrannos) Hiero, the son of Deinomenes, the people of Croton condemned his house to become a prison, and pulled down his statue set up at the temple of Lacinian Hera”. It was a kind of damnatio memoriae.

Another famous athletic champion was Theogenes of Thasos (early 5th century BCE)³⁰, pýktes and pagkratiastés, periodoníkes. Ancient sources inform that he won 1,200 to 1,400 crowns. Among the Greeks he enjoyed – by far the greatest fame (πολύ ... πλεῖστον ἔπαινον)³¹. He was olympioníkes in pygmé (480), and three times in pankrátion (476). He named a son Diolympios. He also won the Pythian Games three times, and won nine times at Isthmia, and at Nemea. These competitions are the so-called agōnes of the Panhellenes and part of the périodos. The other triumphs were celebrated at local sport-festivals. We should consider that in the ancient world there existed athletic events in almost every Greek city-state. For twenty-two years nobody was able to defeat the famous pýktes. Dio Chrysostomus said that he was “a most excellent citizen” and was engaged in political life. Theogenes supposedly possessed “a sort of divine power”³², and Lucian attributed to him an exceptional ability, thus, iffever patients touched the statue of the athlete-hero they were healed³³.

Diagoras (464 BCE)³⁴, a pýktes, won several Olympian victories. He came from a remarkable family of athletes in Rhodes. His triumph is well-known from the seventh Olympian Ode of Pindar³⁵. Diagoras had the opportunity to see his two sons, Damagetos and Agesilaos, victorious on one day at Olympia. At that moment an old man approached the father congratulating him, and said (ironically?): “Die Diagoras, for you are not destined to ascend to heaven (morere, Diagora; inquit: non enim in caelumascensuruses)”³⁶.

There is a strange story about one daughter of Diagoras, called Kallipateira (or Pherenice), told by Pausanias³⁷. Near Olympia is a rocky mountain called Typaion. It is a law of Elis to cast down from the rock any women caught present at the Olympic Games. Kallipateira cleverly disguised herself as a trainer (gymnastés), and brought her son Peisirodos to compete at Olympia. When Peisirodos was victorious, she jumped over the enclosure in which the trainers were contained, and bared herself. Her gender was thus disclosed but in respect for her father, her brothers and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia, she was set free and permitted to go unpunished. But a law was passed that in future gymnastaí should be as equally naked as the athletes.

Pulydamas (late 5th century BCE)³⁸ was an Olympic champion in pankrátion (408 BCE). According to Plato a pancratiast is the prototype of a strongman, such as Heracles³⁹. He is associated with several fabulous stories. Pausanias⁴⁰ describes a statue in the Altis, which shows the tallest of all men, except those called heroes. On the pediment of the statue in the museum of Olympia one can see Pulydamas at the Persian court challenging three Persians Immortals, one against three – and he killed them all.

Kyniska (396 BCE?)⁴¹ was a female winner in the téthrippon (quadriga). Her Olympian inscription reads, “Kings of Sparta were my fathers and brothers. Kyniska, victorious at the chariot race with her fleet-footed horses, erected this statue. I assert that I am the only woman in all Greece to have won this crown”. A commentary by Plutarch⁴² relates, “When Agesilaos noted that some of the citizens of Sparta thought they were important because they were breeding horses, he urged his sister Kyniska to enter a chariot in the Olympic games; he wanted to show the Greeks that an equestrian victory was the result of wealth and expenditure, not in any way the result of arête”. Of course, Kyniska herself was not present at Olympia.

Posidippus of Pella created the Milan papyrus (late 3rd century BCE)⁴³, which was published in 200 and mentions several female chariot-champions at Isthmia and Nemea, including Berenike and Arsinoe.

Dikon of Kaulonia (392 BCE?),⁴⁴ stadioníkes and periodoníkes. Pausanias relates: “As a boy he won five footraces at Pytho, three at the Isthmian Games, four at Nemea, one at Olympia in the race for boys, besides two in the men’s race. Statues of him, equal in number to the races he won, have been set up at Olympia. When he was a boy he was proclaimed a native of Caulonia, as in fact he was. But afterwards he was bribed to proclaim himself a Syracusan”. Chairon of Pellene (356-344 BCE) was a successful palaistés and twice a winner in Isthmia, four times in Olympia⁴⁵. The Pellenians of the pólis refuse to even mention his name because he became a tyrant.

Dioxippos of Athen (336 BCE)⁴⁶ pankratiastés; Ailian tells a nice short story about Dioxippos⁴⁷: On arriving in Athens the olympioníkes realised that among his many fans was an attractive, beautiful woman. This led to criticism by Diogenes of Sinope, who said: “Look at your great big athlete, throttled by a little girl”.

In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, hundreds of epigraphical, numismatic, papyrological, and archaeological documents, in this post-classical era from the 3rd century BCE to late Antiquity, mention between 400 and 500 agonistic festivals additional to the periodical agōnes hieroí in the Greek motherland. Contests were celebrated in many city-states of Asia Minor, North Africa and Magna Graecia⁴⁸. The successful athletes were admired by the spectators⁴⁹ and by the people of their hometown.

3. Conclusion

3.1. Honours in Olympia, for example, and other Panhellenic centres: A herald announced in a stentorian voice the name and the polis of the victor, and after a solemn procession to the Temple of Zeus (with the phyllobolía), the judges (hellanodíkai) crowned the athlete with the kótinos. In the evening the Eleians, who were responsible for the entire organisation, sponsored an official dinner in the prytanneíon. Some of the victors received a statue in the Altis, which was idealised or showed individual features (if he had won three times), a poem (odé, epígramma, epiníkion), and inclusion in the list of winners. Special titles were for parádoxos (exceptional, talented athlete), pleistoníkes, pantoníkes, periodoníkes (circuit winner of all four Panhellenic contests; cf. the grand slam), disperiodoníkes; “the only athlete in all memory, undefeated at all stadions”. Inscriptions report of especially outstanding performances in sport: a famous runner was able to win in four consecutive Olympiads, another olympioníkes was a winner eight times, or a stádio-, díaulo- and dólichoníkes on the same day. In competitions outside of Olympia an athlete was successful twenty times in the youth category and forty-eight times in the men’s class in various festivals. And so on...!

3.2. Privileges in the hometown. The people of the hometown also celebrated a victorious citizen with a phyllobolía and a solemn reception (agōnes hieroí kaí eiselastikoí ). In Solon’s laws (nómoi) from the 1st third of the 6th century BCE, the city of Athens donates for an olympioníkes 500 drachmas, for an Athenian isthmioníkes 100⁵⁰. The polis registers a list of winners, sometimes in a public square, in a temple or in local gymnásia. In Athens the victor receives free food in the prytanneíon, a proedría (front-row seat at festival competitions and the theatre), atéleia (freedom from taxes and other civic obligations). Ancient sources also refer to different political functions, such as ambassadors, army commanders (strategoí ), presidents of Greek athletic guilds (sýnodos), directors of the imperial baths (xystárches), honorary citizenship (politeía), in many cities honorary membership was also conferred in the boulé (bouleutaí, councillors)^51. Furthermore, a successful athlete could acquire a position in religious and cultic affairs; he could become a lifelong high priest of an athletic guild, head of the neokóroi (responsible for imperial cults and sanctuaries), and/or custodian in a holy district. Some rich sportsmen became benefactors and sponsors and in one inscription we read ἐν πᾶσιν εὐεργέτης (“benefactor in every respect”, H. W. Pleket)⁵².

The statues and the epigraphical evidence for the utmost self-controlled and decent athletes with brilliant careers present pedagogical and social challenges for the jeunesse dorée to emulate them.

Eight centuries before the Christian criticism of sport⁵³, from the likes of Tertullian (about 150-220 CE), De spectaculis Greek philosophers and poets discriminated against Greek athletes⁵⁴. Two well-known quotations are from Xenophanes of Kolophon (about 565-470 BCE): “For the city-state is not a bit more law-abiding for having a good boxer or a pentathlete or a wrestler or a fast runner even though the running may be the most honored event of the games of man. There is little joy for a state when an athlete wins at Olympia, for he does not fill the state’s coffers”⁵⁵. The other quotation is from Euripides (485/0- 406 BCE), who severely criticised sport with the words: “Of the thousands of evils which exist in Greece there is no greater evil than the race of athletes. In the first place, they are incapable of living, or of learning to live, properly. How can a man who is a slave to his jaws and a servant to his belly acquire more wealth than his father”⁵⁶.

We have many sport heroes in our time. Most of us know the names of such former gold-medallists as Muhammad Ali, Ole Einar Bjørndalen, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Usain Bolt, Nadia Comaneci, Florence Griffith-Joyner, JeanClaude Killy, Spyridon Louis, Paavo Nurmi, Jessy Owens, Vreni Schneider, Ingemar Stenmark and Emil Zatopek. Nevertheless, is it conceivable that in 2,500 years somebody will name an airport after one of them? Or to erect a statue of a sport-hero in the hometown of an Olympian winner today? The airport of the island of Rhodes is called Κρατικός Αερολιμένας Ρόδου «Διαγόρας», olympioníkes in 464 BCE. He is also depicted on a postage-stamp. On the island of Thasos, in recent years, a modern statue was erected in honour of the famous boxer Theogenes, the winner of more than 1,200 contests in the 5th century BCE.

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1. Pleket 1992, 147-152 and 2014, 29-81.

2. Moretti 1957 and 1970.

3. Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.1.1–18.7.

4. Farrington 2012, 20.

5. Pleket 2014, 47f. and 80.

6. Golden 2004, 130; Ebert 1963.

7. Doblhofer 1992.

8. Scholia in Acharnenses of Aristophanes 214.

9. Gardiner 1904, 70-80 and 179-194; Harris 1963, 3-8.

10. Plutarch, Alexander 34.

11. Sextus Julius Africanus, Chronographia 29.

12. Ebert 1963, 57-60.

13. Themistios in Aristotelis physica paraphrasis 5.3.

14. Young 1996, 180.

15. Statius, Thebaid 6.668-79; Jüthner 1968, 258f.

16. Young 1996, 180.

17. Moretti, IAG No. 68, Robert 1970/2013, 125.

18. Pindar, Pythian Ode. Ebert 1972, No.43, Young 1996, 181.

19. Several agonistic examples in Moretti IAG 38, 119, 152.

20. Pleket 2014, 72.

21. Moretti IAG No.90. There was a special competition for heralds and trumpeters at Olympia.

22. See also the Golden 2004.

23. Moretti 1957, no. 61, 70, 73, 82–86; Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.13.9; Decker 2014, 60.

24. Moretti 1957, no. 115, 122, 126, 129133, 139; Pleket 2014, 43; Decker 2014, 64-67.

25. Strabon, Geography 6.1.12: “the belief (was) that the place contains something that tends to health and bodily vigour, to judge by the multitude of its athletes. Accordingly, it had a very large number of Olympic victors, although it did not remain inhabited a long time, on account of the ruinous loss of its citizens”.

26. Moretti 1957, No.190: Decker 2014, 72-74.

27. Ebert 1972, no. 44. Decker 2014, 72.

28. Moretti 1957, no. 178-179, 186-187; Decker 2014, 70f.

29. Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.13.1.

30. Moretti 1957, no. 201, 215; Decker 2014, 79-82; Pleket 2014, 47.

31. Decker 2014, 81.

32. Dio Chrysostomus, Oratio 31.95.

33. Lucian, Council of the Gods 12; the same story is told about the statue for Polydamas in Olympia.

34. Moretti 1957, no. 252; Decker 2014, 85-88.

35. Pindar, Olympian Ode 7.80-86: The poet said: “Diagoras has had himself crowned twice, and at the renowned Isthmus four times, in his good fortune, and again and again at Nemea and in rocky Athens; and the prizes of the bronze shield in Argos and the works of art in Arcadia and Thebes are familiar with him, and the duly ordered contests of the Boeotians, and Pellana and Aegina, where he was six times victor.”

36. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.46 (110f.).

37. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.6.7-8.

38. Moretti 1957, no. 348; Decker 2014, 91-92.

39. Plato, Respublica 338C, Golden 2004, 142.

40. Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.5.1-2; 6-9.

41. Moretti 1957, no. 373; IvO (= Inschriften von Olympia) 160.

42. Plutarch, Agesilaos 20.1.

43. Austin, Bastianini 2002.

44. Moretti 1957, no. 379; Decker 2014, 93; Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.3.11.

45. Moretti 1957, no. 432, see also 437, 443, 447; Decker 2014, 93; Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.27.7.

46. Moretti 1957, no. 458; QAS 64; Decker 2014, 96-97.

47. Aelian, Various History 12.58 (translated by Miller 2004, 119).

48. See Pleket 2014, 80.

49. Petermandl, Mauritsch-Bein 2003-2006.

50. Plutarch, Solon 23.3.

51. Pleket 2014, 68-70.

52. Pleket 2012, 102.

53. Papakonstantinou 2014, 320-331.

54. Mammel 2014, 610-613.

55. Xenophanes, Fragment 2 (translation: Miller 2004, no. 2229).

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Weiler Ingomar, "Feats of athlete-heroes in Antiquity: the social and educational value of athletic excellence", in:K. Georgiadis (ed.), Challenges an Olympic Athlete faces as a Role Model, 58th International Session for Young Participants (Ancient Olympia,16-30/6/2018), International Olympic Academy, Athens, 2019, pp.78-89.

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