FOOTNOTES:

Saint Paul's teaching.

Stoic elements in Saint Paul.

§ 87. When we pass by the first three, or Synoptical, Gospels, there remains a series of books by early Christian teachers, of whom Saint Paul and Saint John are by far the most prominent. To Saint Paul is due a peculiar development of the faith which brings into prominence that side of Christianity now known as Protestantism,—the doctrine of justification by faith; of the greater importance of dogma than of practice; of the predestination or election of those that will be saved. This whole way of thinking, this mode of looking at the world,so different from anything in the Jewish books, so developed beyond the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, was quite familiar to the most serious school of Hellenism, to the Stoic theory of life popular all over the Hellenistic world, and especially at Tarsus, where Saint Paul received his education.

The Stoic sage.

The Stoic wise man, who had adopted with faith that doctrine, forthwith rose to a condition differingin kindfrom the rest of the world, who were set down as moral fools, whose highest efforts at doing right were mere senseless blundering, mere filthy rags, without value or merit. The wise man, on the contrary, was justified in the sight of God, and could commit no sin; the commission of one fault would be a violation of his election, and would make him guilty of all, and as subject to punishment as the vilest criminal. For all faults were equally violations of the moral law, and therefore equally proofs that the true light was not there. Whether one of the elect could fall away, was a matter of dispute, but in general was thought impossible[203:1]. Whether conversion was a gradual change of character, or a sudden inspiration, was an anxious topic of discussion. The wise man, and he alone, enjoyed absolute liberty, boundless wealth, supreme happiness; nothing could take from him the inestimable privileges he had attained.

The Stoic Providence.

Can any one fail to recognize these remarkable doctrines, not only in the spirit, but in the very letter, of Saint Paul's teaching? Does he not use eventhe language of the Stoic paradoxes, 'as, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things'? Is not his so-called sermon at Athens a direct statement of Stoic views against the Epicureans, taking nothing away, but adding to their account of the moral world the revelation of Jesus Christ and of the Resurrection? Will any one venture to assert in the face of these facts that the most serious and religious of Greek systems was the offspring of children in morals, or that it failed to exert a powerful influence through the greatest teacher of Christianity upon all his followers? It is of course idle to weigh these things in a minute balance, and declare who did most, or what was the greatest advance made in our faith beyond the life and teaching of its Founder. But the more we compare Greek Stoicism with Pauline Christianity, the more distinctly their general connection will be felt and appreciated.

Saint John's Gospel.

§ 88. Let us now come to the more obvious and better acknowledged case of Saint John. It has been the stock argument of those who reject the early date and alleged authorship of the Fourth Gospel that the writer is imbued with Hellenistic philosophy; that he is intimate with that fusion of Jewish and Platonic thought which distinguished the schools of Alexandria; that in particular the doctrine of theWord, with which the book opens, is quite strange to Semite thought, doubly strange to Old Testament theology, not even hinted at inthe early apocryphal books. In other words, the Greek elements in the Fourth Gospel are so strong that many critics think them impossible of attainment for a man of Saint John's birth and education!

Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos.

For my purpose this is more than enough. I need not turn, to refute these sceptics, to show how the author of the book of Revelation, if he be the same, made great strides in Greek letters before he wrote the Gospel, thus showing the importance he attached not only to Greek thought, but to Greek expression. The Alexandrian tone of Saint John's Gospel, derived from the same sources as those which gave birth to Neo-Platonism, is as evident as the Stoical tone in Saint Paul, derived from the schools of Tarsus and Cilicia.

Here is a chapter of deeper Greek history yet to be written from the Greek side, not as an appendage to Roman history, or as an interlude in theological controversy.

The Cynic independence of all men;

the Epicurean dependence upon friends.

§ 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its exaggerations of weakness, elements passed into this faith which is asserted to be wholly foreign to Hellenism. The Cynic ostentation of independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose solitude and poverty from higher butkindred motives. The sentimental display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to substitute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has passed into Christianity,—an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very recent writers[206:1].

The university of Athens.

What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing traditions from the earliest Hellenistic days? One must read Libanius, a writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of this Hellenistic university life and system passed silently, but not less certainly, into the oldest mediæval Italian universities, and thence to Paris and to England,—just as the Greek tonesor scales passed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the noble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures.

Greece indestructible.

§ 90. It is indeed difficult to overrate the amount and the variety of the many hidden threads that unite our modern culture to that of ancient Greece, not to speak of the conscious return of our own century to the golden age of Hellenic life as the only human epoch in art, literature, and eloquence which ever approached perfection. As the Greek language has lasted in that wonderful country in spite of long domination by Romans, of huge invasion by Celts and Slavs, of feudal occupation by Frankish knights, of raid and rapine by Catalans and Venetians, ending with the cruel tyranny of the Turk, so the Greek spirit has lasted through all manner of metamorphose and modification, till the return wave has in our day made it the highest aspiration of our worldly perfection.

Greek political history almost the private property of the English writers,

§ 91. I said at the opening of this essay that I should endeavour to indicate the principal problems to be solved by future historians of Greece,—at least by those who have not the genius to recast the whole subject by the light of some great new idea; and in so doing, particular stress has been laid on the political side, not without deliberate intention. For, in the first place, this aspect of Greek affairs is the peculiar province of English historians.They, with their own experiences and traditions of constitutional struggles, cannot but feel the strongest attraction towards similar passages in the life of the Greeks, so that even the professional scholar in his study feels the excitement of the contested election, the glow of the public debate, when he finds them distracting Athens or Ægion. The practical insight of a Grote or a Freeman leads him to interpret facts which may be inexplicable or misleading to a foreign student. Even with Grote before him, Ernst Curtius or Duruy is sometimes unable to grasp the true political situation.

who have themselves lived in practical politics.

I say this in the higher and more delicate sense; for of course many recent histories give an adequate account of the large political changes to the general student. Perhaps, indeed, the remoteness of foreign writers from political conflicts such as ours gives them a calmness and fairness which is of advantage, while the English writer can hardly avoid a certain amount of partisanship, however carefully he may strive to be scrupulously impartial. For in all these things we are compelled unconsciously to reflect not only our century, but our nation, and colour the acts and the motives of other days with the hues our imagination has taken from surrounding circumstances.

Not so in artistic or literary history,

where the French and Germans are superior;

§ 92. When we come to the literary and artistic side, the foreign historians have a decided advantage. The philosophical side of Greek literature has indeed been treated by Grote and other Englishwriters with a fulness and clearness that leave little to be desired; but on the poetry and the artistic prose of the Greeks, foreign scholars write with a freshness and a knowledge to which few of us attain. Of course a Frenchman, with the systematic and careful training which he gets in composition, must have an inestimable advantage over people, like us, who merely write as they list, and have no rules to guide their taste or form their style. And the German, if as regards style he is even less happily circumstanced than the Englishman, whose language has at least been moulded by centuries of literature, has yet on the side of archæology and art enjoyed a training which is only just now becoming possible in England or America.

especially in art.

Hence it is that the earlier part of Curtius' history has such a charm,—though we must not detract from the individual genius of the man, which is manifest enough if we compare him with the solid but prosaic Duncker. However complete and well articulated the bones of fact may lie before us, it requires a rare imagination to clothe them with flesh and with skin, nay, with bloom upon the skin, and expression in the features, if we are to have a living figure, and not a dry and repulsive skeleton.

Importance of studying Greek art.

§ 93. What I think it right, in conclusion, to insist upon is this: that a proper knowledge of Greek art, instead of being the mere amusement of the dilettante, is likely to have an importanteffect upon the general appearance of our public buildings and our homes, and to make them not only more beautiful, but also instructive to the rising generation. The day for new developments of architecture and of decorative art seems past, though the modern discovery of a new material for building—iron—ought to have brought with it something fresh and original. In earlier ages the quality of the material can always be shown to be a potent factor in style.

Modern revivals of ancient styles,—Gothic, Renaissance.

If, however, we are not to have a style of our own, we must necessarily go back to the great builders and decorators of former ages, and make them the models of our artists. This has in fact been the history of the revivals since the universal reign of vulgarity in what we call the early Queen Victoria period in England. First there was a great Gothic revival, when we began to understand what the builders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant, and to reproduce their ideas with intelligence. This has since given way to the Renaissance style, in which most recent buildings have been erected, and which has beauties which the Gothic revivalists used to regard with horror.

There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model. This, however, will have been gained,—that our ordinary lay public will have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic works of the early, but the great Renaissance worksof the late Middle Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or added to it[211:1].

Probability of Hellenic revival.

It is more than likely that the next revival will be a Hellenic revival. Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or late Hellenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676) from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2].

Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose, Dörpfeld.

Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann, had studied with real carethe secrets of Greek art, till Mr. Penrose had disclosed the marvellous subtlety in the curves of the Parthenon, till Dr. Dörpfeld had analyzed the plan and materials and execution of the Olympian treasure-houses and temples, could we say that we were beginning to have a clear perception of the qualities which made Greek sculpture and architecture so superior to all imitations which have since been attempted.

Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated,

§ 94. It is high time that all this profound research, this recondite learning, these laborious excavations, should be made known in their results, and brought home to the larger public. Then when the day comes that we undertake to carry out a Hellenic Renascence, we shall know what we are about; we shall abandon the superstition of white marble worship, and adopt colours; we shall learn to combine chastity of design with richness of ornamentation; we shall revert to that harmony of all the arts which has been lost since the days of Michael Angelo.

and upon every detail of our life.

If it be true that there is in heaven a secret treaty between the three sovran Ideas that ennoble human life,—the Good, the Beautiful, and the True—which enacts that none of them shall enrich us without the co-operation of the rest, then our study of this side of Greek perfection may even have its moral results. May not the ideas of measure, of fitness, of reserve, which are shown in all the best Greek work, radiate their influence into our ordinary life, and, making it fairer, prepare itfor the abode of larger truth and more perfect goodness?

Greek Literature hardly noticed in this Essay.

§ 95. Thus far I have sought to bring out the political lessons which are the peculiar teaching of history, and have only suggested what may yet result from the artistic lessons left us by this wonderful people. The reader may wonder that I have said little or nothing concerning another very prominent side of Greek perfection,—the wonders of the poetry which ranks with the best that has been produced by all the efforts of man before or since. My reason for this omission was, that here, if anywhere, the excellence of the extant Hellenic work is acknowledged, while the fact that all those ignorant of the language are excluded from enjoying it, makes any discussion of it unsuited to the general public. For whatever may be said of good translations of foreign prose, poetry is so essentially the artistic expression of the peculiar tongue in which it originates, that all transference into alien words must produce a fatal alteration. A great English poet may indeed transfer the ideas of a Greek to his page; but he gives us an English poem on Greek subjects, not the very poem of his model, however faithful his report may be.

Demands a good knowledge and study of the language.

If, therefore, we are to benefit by this side of Hellenic life, there is no short cut possible. We must sit down and study the language till we can read it fluently; and this requires so much labour, that the increasing demands of modern life upon our time tend to thrust aside the study of bygonelanguages for the sake of easier and more obvious gains.

§ 96. Nevertheless, it seems well-nigh impossible that a Hellenic Renascence, such as I have anticipated, can ever be thorough and lasting unless the English-speaking nations become really familiar with the literary side of Hellenic life. Revivals of the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles must not be confined to the learned stage and public of an English or American university, but must come to be heard and appreciated by a far larger public.

Other languages must be content to give way to this pursuit.

This can hardly be done until we make up our minds that the subjects of education must not be increased in number, and that moreover they may be alternated with far more freedom than is now the case. There is, for example, a superstition that everybody must learn Latin before learning Greek, and that French is a sort of necessary accomplishment for a lady, whereas it is perfectly certain that the cultivation to be attained through Greek is ten times as great as that we can gain through Latin; while in the second case it is no paradox to assert that any woman able to understand theAntigoneof Sophocles or theThalusiaof Theocritus would derive from them more spiritual food than from all the volumes of French poetry she is ever likely to read. If we cannot compass all, the lesser should give way to the greater; and it is not till our own day that the supremacy of Greek has been acknowledged by all competent judges.

The nature and quality of Roman imitations.

§ 97. What has promoted the reign of Latin, andhas told against Greek in our schools, is partly, I believe, the bugbear of a strange alphabet; partly also—and this among more advanced people—the want of a clear knowledge how closely most Roman poetry was copied from Greek models. Were the Greek models now extant, the contrast would probably cause the Roman imitations to disappear, as indeed many such must have disappeared when the Roman readers themselves approached the great originals. Even now, if the lyrics of Sappho and Alcæus were recovered from some Egyptian tomb or from the charred rolls of Herculaneum, it might have a disastrous effect on the popularity of Horace.

The case of Virgil.

But in most cases the Romans copied from inferior poets of the Alexandrian age; and before the reader and I part company, it is of importance to insist upon this,—that the best of Roman poetry was often a mere version of third-rate Greek. By far the greatest of the Roman poets is Virgil; and if he alone remained, Latin would be worth learning for his sake. But even Virgil copies from second-rate Alexandrian poets, Apollonius and Aratus—from the latter to an extent which would be thought shameful in any independent literature. It may be true that the translations are in this case not only equal, but far superior, to the originals. I will not dispute this, as my case does not require any doubtful supports. For even granting that he can exceed a second-rate Greek model, what shall we say when he attempts to imitate Theocritus in hisBucolics? Here he is taking a really good Greekpoet for his model, and how poor is the great Roman in comparison! Even therefore in imitating an Alexandrian master, we can see that the first of Latin poets cannot bear the comparison.

Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry.

§ 98. If I had not written fully on this subject in my recentGreek Life and Thought, and myGreek World under Roman Sway, I should fain conclude with some brief account of the after-glow of Hellenic genius, when the loss of freshness in the language and the life of the people had made pedantry and artificiality common features in the writing of the day. Yet these patent faults did not strike the Romans, whose poets, with only few exceptions, copied Callimachus and Parthenius as the finest models in the world.

From my point of view, though I have cited these facts to show what a superstition the preference of Latin to Greek is, I can urge them as but another evidence of the supremacy of Greece and its right to a spiritual empire over cultivated men. Even debased and decaying Hellenism could produce poetry too good for the ablest disciples to rival, too subtle for any other tongue to express. Can we conclude with any greater tribute to the genius of the race, with any higher recommendation of their history than this, that it is the history of a people whose gifts have never ceased to illumine and to sustain the higher spirits in every society of civilized men?

[190:1]I am of course speaking generally, nor do I venture to decide without argument the difficult question of the exact status of Greece in the years after 146B.C.

[196:1]Greek Life and Thought, from Alexander to the Roman Conquest.Macmillan, 1887.

[202:1]The old belief in an original Hebrew Gospel, from which Saint Matthew's was translated, now turns out to have no better foundation than the existence of an old version into Hebrew (Aramaic) for the benefit of the common people who were too ignorant to read Greek. Cf. Dr. Salmon'sIntroduction to the New Testament.

[203:1]Cf. further details in myGreek Life and Thought, pp. 140, 372.

[206:1]Cf. Mr. W. Pater'sMarius the Epicurean, which is built on this idea; also the excellent account in Mr. Bury's newHistory of the Later Roman Empire, vol. i. chap. i.

[206:2]The reader who fears to attack Libanius directly, may find all the facts either in Sievers' (German)Life of Libanius, or in Mr. W. W. Capes's excellent book onUniversity Life at Athens(London, 1877).

[211:1]Of this confusion the hall of the Middle Temple in London is a very interesting specimen, seeing that the Renaissance screen, a splendid thing, is only two years later than the Gothic hall.

[211:2]They are not, however, one whit worse than the ordinary attempts at Greek dress made by nineteenth-century ladies who go to Fancy Fairs.

On the Authenticity of the Olympian Register[217:1].

There seems a sort of general agreement among modern historians of Greece to accept the 1st Olympiad (776B.C.) as the trustworthy starting-point of solid Greek chronology. Even Grote, so sceptical about legends, and so slow to gather inferences from them, accepts this date. There is only one exception, I think, to be found in Sir George Cox, who evidently rejects the Olympian register, who will not set down in his chronology any figure higher than 670B.C., and even that under the protest of a query.

When we come to inquire on what authority so early a date can be securely established, we find a sort of assumption, not supported by argument, that from 776 onward the Eleians kept a regular record of their great festival, and as a matter of fact the alleged list is still extant. It was generally acknowledged and cited by the late historians of Greece, who determined events accordingto it. Above all, the critical doubts of philologists are soothed by the supposed authority of Aristotle, who is reported to have made researches on the question, and to refer to the list as if authentic[218:1]; at all events he mentioned a discus at Olympia with Lycurgus' name inscribed upon it, but in what work, and for what purpose, is unknown. Aristotle is considered an infallible authority by modern philologists, so much so that even the most sceptical of them seem almost to attribute verbal inspiration to this philosopher. One other Greek authority shares with him this pre-eminence—the historian Thucydides. And it so happens that in his SicilianArchæology(book vi) Thucydides gives a number of dates, apparently without hesitation, which start from 735B.C., and therefore persuades his commentators that accurate dates were attainable concerning a period close to the 1st Olympiad. These are apparently the reasons which have determined the general consent of modern historians.

But neither Grote, nor E. Curtius, nor even Sir George Cox, has analysed the evidence for the authenticity of the older portion of this register. I cannot find in Clinton'sFasti, where it might well be expected, any such inquiry. In Mure'sHistory of Greek Literature(iv. 77-90), a work far less esteemed than it deserves, and here only, do we find any statement of the evidence. The negative conclusions reached by Mure have made no impression on the learned world, and are now well-nigh forgotten. I will take up the question where he left it, and add some positive evidence to corroborate his argument—that the list of victors at Olympiads handed down to us by Eusebius is, at least in its earlier part, anartificially constructed list, resting on occasional and fragmentary monumental records, and therefore of no value as a scientific chronology. I will also endeavour to determine when the victors began to be regularly recorded, and when the extant list was manufactured. Such an inquiry must be of great importance in measuring the amount of credence to be given to the dates of events referred to the eighth and the first half of the seventh centuriesB.C.—for example, Thucydides' dates for the western colonies of the Hellenes.

Let us first sketch the tradition about the Register as we find it implied in Diodorus, Strabo, the fragments of Timæus, and other late historians. We find especially in Pausanias a considerable amount of detail, and an outline of the general history of the feast as then accepted. All admitted, and indeed asserted, a mythical origin for the games. The declarations of Pindar and other old poets were express, that Herakles had founded them, that Pelops and other mythical heroes had won victories at them—and victories of various kinds, including chariot races. Another account ascribed their foundation to Oxylus (Paus. v. 8, 5). But a long gap was admitted between these mythical glories and the revival of the games by his descendant Iphitus, king of Elis. 'This Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 4, 6), 'the epigram at Olympiadeclares to be the son of Hæmon, but most of the Greeks to be the son of Praxonides, and not of Hæmon; the old documents (ἀρχαῖα γράμματα) of the Eleians, however, referred[219:1]Iphitus to a father of the same name.' Iphitus, in connection with the Spartan Lycurgus, re-established the games, but (as was asserted)only as a contest in the short race (στάδιον), and in this first historical Olympiad Corœbus won, as was stated in an epigram on his tomb, situated on the borders of Elis and Arcadia (Paus. viii. 26, 4). A quoit on which Lycurgus' name was engraved, was at Elis, says Plutarch, in the days of Aristotle. The 'discus of Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 20, 1), 'has the truce which the Eleians announce for the Olympiad, not inscribed in straight lines, but the letters run round the discus in a circular form[220:1].' He alludes to the list again and again:e.g.(v. 8, 6) 'ever since there is a continuous record of the Olympiads (ἐξ oὗ το συνεχὲς ταῖς μνήμαις ἐΠὶ ταῖς Ὀλ. ἐστί); prizes for running were first established, and the Eleian Corœbus won.'

Pausanias proceeds in this passage to give an account of the successive additions of other competitions to the sprint race, 'according as they remembered them,' that is, according as they recollected or found out that they had been practised in mythical days. In the 14th Ol. theδίαυλος, or double course, was instituted, and Hypenus the Pisæan won, and next after him Acanthus. In the 18th they remembered the pentathlon and the wrestling match, in which Lampis and Eurybatus respectively won, both Lacedæmonians. In the 23rd came boxing, and Onomastus of Smyrna, which then already counted as Ionian, won. In the 25th the first chariot race was won by the Theban Pagondas. In the 33rd came the pancration, and the monument of the first victor, Lygdamis, was at Syracuse. . . . . The boys' contests were based on no old tradition, but the Eleiansestablished them of their own good pleasure. The boys' wrestling match was accordingly instituted in the 37th Ol.

I need not here pursue the account further, but will return to this passage in connection with the other arrangements of the feast.

We find that other authorities, such as Polemo, quoted by the Scholiast on Pindar (Ol. v.), agree with Pausanias as to some of these details. Strabo quotes from Ephorus the double foundation, by Oxylus and again by Iphitus. So does Phlegon, a freedman of Hadrian, who wrote a work on the Olympian festival, and gave a list of victors, probably from the same source as Eusebius' list. Phlegon notes indeed the difficulty of making Lycurgus and Iphitus contemporary with Corœbus in 776B.C., and fixes the date of Iphitus twenty-eight Olympiads earlier (at 887B.C.). But he introduces an Iphitus again in the 6th registered Ol., inquiring about the crowning of victors, and states that Daïcles of Messene was first crowned with wild olive at the 7th contest. The only other point of interest in Phlegon's fragments is the full catalogue of the 177th Ol. (frag. 12 in Müller'sFrag. Hist.iv. 606), which gives the winners in seventeen events; some of them thrice successful in the competitions.

We may therefore take it for granted that the account of Pausanias, which now passes current in all the German and English works on Greek athletics, was, in the main, that established or adopted by Timæus or by Aristotle, the latter of whom is often alleged to have first given the Olympiads their prominent position as the basis of Greek chronology. But whether he adopted the list as genuine from the beginning or not, his isolated remark about thequoit with Lycurgus' name is not sufficient to inform us[222:1]. Indeed we have only negative evidence concerning his opinion and no direct information.

It is of far more importance to examine what positive evidence there was for this theory of the gradual rise and progress of the festival, its regularity, and the prominence of thestadion, or short race, in giving the name of its victor as the index of the date. We have two kinds of authority to consult—the older literature; and the monuments, either at first hand, or as described for us by former observers. As regards the literature, our review need be but very brief.

(1) The twenty-third book of theIliadseems composed without any reference to the earliest Olympian games as Pausanias describes them. The nature of this (perhaps special) competition is quite different. There are some events, such as the armed combat, which never made part of the historical games; there are others, such as the chariot race, which are expressly asserted to have been later innovations at Olympia. The giving of valuable prizes, and several of them in each competition, is quite against the practice at Olympia. The Phæacian games in theOdyssey(θ120, sq.) containfiveevents, running, wrestling, leaping, discus, and boxing. Those who believe that the epics were composed before 776B.C., or those who believe them to be the much later compilation of antiquarian poets, will find no difficulty in this. The one will assert that the poet could not know, and the other that he would not know, what was established at Olympia. The latter will also hold that the accounts of the mythicalcelebrations by Herakles, Pelops, &c., were invented in imitation of the Homeric account. But still if Lycurgus indeed promoted the knowledge of the Homeric poems, why did he and Iphitus found a contest without the least resemblance to the heroic models? And if, as I hold, the Homeric poems were growing into shape about the time of the alleged 1st Olympiad, and after it, the contrast of theIliadin its games to the Olympian festival is so difficult to explain, that we must assume the old Eleian competition to have been no mere sprint race, but a contest similar in its events to that in theIliad, or at least to that in theOdyssey.

(2) This view is strongly supported by the statements of Pindar, who is the next important witness on the subject. In his Tenth Olympic Ode (vv.43sq.) he tells of the foundation by Herakles, and gives the names offiveheroes who won the various events of the first contest. He gives us no hint that there was any break in the tradition, or that these five events had not remained in fashion ever since. In fact he does mention (Isth.i. 26sq.) that thepentathlonandpancrationwere later inventions, thus making it clear that the rest were in his mind the original components of the meeting. Nor does he anywhere give priority or special dignity to thestadion; only the last of his Olympian Odes is for this kind of victory, his Thirteenth for thestadionandpentathlontogether. He never mentions, as we should certainly have expected, that thesestadionvictors would have the special glory of handing down their names as eponymi of the whole feast. The other contests, the chariot race, the pancration, and the pentathlon, were evidently far grander and more highly esteemed, and we find this corroborated by the remark of Thucydides(v. 49), 'This was the Olympiad when Androsthenes won for the first time the pancration.' Thucydides therefore seems to have marked the Olympiad, not by the stadion, but by the pancration.

(3) This historian indeed (as well as his immediate predecessors, Herodotus and Hellanicus) gives us but little information about the nature of the games, except the remark that 'it was not many years' since the habit of running naked had come into fashion at Olympia. Such a statement cannot be reconciled with Pausanias' account, who placed the innovation three centuries before Thucydides' time. But in one important negative feature all the fifth-century historians agree. None of them recognise any Olympian register, or date their events by reference to this festival. Thucydides, at the opening of his second book, fixes his main date by the year of the priestess of Hera at Argos, by the Spartan ephor, and by the Athenian archon. In his SicilianArchæology, to which we will presently return, where it would have been very convenient to have given dates by Olympiads, he counts all his years from the foundation of Syracuse downward. Yet we know that Hellanicus, Antiochus and others had already made chronological researches at that time, and the former treated of the list of the Carneian victors. All these things taken together are conclusive against the existence, or at least the wide recognition, of the Olympian annals down to 400B.C.

In the next century Ephorus wrote in his earlier books concerning the mythical founding of the festival, but we have nothing quoted from him at all like the history set down by Pausanias. It is nevertheless about this time that the newer and more precise account came into vogue, for Timæus, the younger contemporary ofEphorus, evidently knew and valued the register. Its origin in literature would have remained a mystery but for the solitary remark of Plutarch. At the opening of hisLife of Numa, in commenting on the difficulty of fixing early dates, he says:

τοὺς μὲν οὖν χρόνους ἐξακριβῶσαι χαλεπόν ἐστι, καὶμάλιστα τοὺς ἐκ τῶν Ὀλυμπιονίκων ἀναγομένους, ὧντὴν ἀναγραφὴν ὀψέ φασιν Ἱππίαν ἐκδοῦναιτὸν Ἠλεῖον, ἀπ᾽ οὐδενὸς ὁρμώμενον ἀναγκαίου πρὸς πίστιν.

What does this mean? Does it mean that Hippias firstpublishedor edited in a literary form the register, or does it mean that heboth compiled and editedit? The former is the implied opinion of the learned. 'Dieser Zeit,' says E. Curtius,Hist.i. 494 (viz.'der Mitte des achten Jahrhunderts'), 'gehören ja auch die Listen derer an, welche in den Nationalspielen gesiegt'; and in the note on this at the end of the volume, he indicates, together with theἀναγραφαίof the Argive priestesses, which Hellanicus published, two passages in Pausanias, and adds: 'wissenschaftlich bearbeitet zuerst von Hippias dem Eleer, dann von Philochorus in seinenὈλυμπιάδες.' Now of the latter work we know nothing more than the name; of the former nothing but the passage just cited from Plutarch. Does it justify Ernst Curtius'wissenschaftlich bearbeitet? Or does our other knowledge of Hippias justify it? The pictures of him drawn in the Platonic dialogues called after his name, and in Philostratus, though perhaps exaggerated, make him a vain but clever polymath, able to practise all trades, and exhibit in all kinds of knowledge. We should not expect anything 'wissenschaftlich' from him. Indeed, in this case there was room for either a great deal of science, or for none. If there was really an authentic list atOlympia, Hippias need only have copied it. But is this consistent with Plutarch's statement? Far from it.

Plutarch implies a task of difficulty, requiring research and combination. And this, no doubt, was what the Sophist wanted to exhibit. Being an Eleian, and desirous to make himself popular in the city, he not only chose Olympia for special displays of various kinds, but brought together for the people a history of their famous games. And in doing this he seems to have shown all the vanity, the contempt of ancient traditions, and the rash theorizing which we might expect from a man of his class. We have, fortunately, a single case quoted by Pausanias which shows us both that this estimate of the man is not far from the truth, and what licence the Eleians gave him when he was reconstructing the history of the festival. Pausanias (v. 25, 2sqq.) tells a pathetic story about the loss of a choir of boys and their teacher on the way from Messana in Sicily to Olympia, where they were commemorated by statues.τὸ μὲν δὴ ἐπίγραμμα ἐδήλου τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἀναθήματα εἶναιτῶν ἐῷν πορθμῷ Μεσσηνίων· χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον Ἱππίαςλεγόμενος ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων γενέσθαι σοφὸς τὰ ἐλεγεῖα επ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἐποίησεν.Here, then, we have some kind of falsification, and apparently one in favour of the Messenians of the Peloponnesus, if we may judge from the form of Pausanias' remark. In more than one case a later epigram appears to have been inscribed on a votive offering, and I think we can show in Hippias a decided leaning to the Messenians, whose restoration to independence he probably witnessed.

But were there really no registers,ἀναγραφαί, from which Hippias could have copied? If there was certainly no single complete list, of undoubted authority, may there not have been partial lists, affording himsuitable materials? This we must endeavour to answer from the passages of Pausanias referred to by E. Curtius, as well as from others, which he has not thought it necessary to quote.

The first is the opening passage of the sixth book, where the author says that as his work 'is not a catalogue of all the athletes who have gained victories at Olympia, but an account of votive offerings, and especially statues, he will omit many who have gained victories, either by some lucky chance, or without attaining the honour of a statue.' Though this passage may imply that there was such a catalogue—of course there was in Pausanias' day—it says not a word about an old and authentic register. It is indeed a capital fact in the present discussion, that neither does Pausanias, in this elaborate account of Olympia, nor, as far as I know, does any other Greek author, distinctly mentionἀναγραφαί, orπαραπήγματα, or any equivalent term for any official register at Olympia. Pausanias speaks ofτὰ των Ἠλείων γράμματα, and also says of certainan-Olympiads[227:1]:ἐν τῷ τῶν Ὀλ. καταλόγῳ οὐ γράφουσιν—not that they noted in, or erased from any official register. In Pausanias the absence of such mention appears to me decisive.

Let us pass to the second passage indicated by E. Curtius,viz.vi. 6, 3. 'There stands there also the statue of Lastratidas, an Eleian boy, who won the crown for wrestling; he obtained also in Nemea among the boys, and among youths (ἔν τε παισὶ καὶ ἀγενείων) another victory.' Pausanias adds: that Paraballon, the father of Lastratidas, won in theδίαυλος, ὑπελείπετο δὲ καὶ ἐς τοὺςἔπειτα φιλοτιμίαν, τῶν νικησάντων Ὀλυμπίασιτὰ ὀνόματα ἀναγράψας ἐν γυμνασίῷ τῷ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ. Here, at last, we have some definite evidence, and I will add at once another passage—the only other passage I can find where any register is alluded to—as it expounds the former. In vi. 8, 1, we find: Euanorides the Eleian gained the victory for wrestling both at Olympia and Nemea:γενόμενος δὲ Ἑλλανοδίκης ἔγραψε καὶ oὗτος τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ τῶν νενικηκότων. It appears then that if an Eleian had distinguished himself at the games, he was likely to be afterwards chosen as one of the judges—a reasonable custom, even now prevailing amongst us. It also appears that suchἑλλανοδίκαιobtained the right of celebrating their year of office by inscribing the names of the victors, and doubtless their own, in the gymnasium.

But fortunately, the date of these inscriptions is determined by two facts. In the first place both came after the establishing of boys' contests, which Pausanias expressly calls an invention of the Eleians, and fixes at the 37th Olympiad. Again the son of Paraballon, and Euanorides himself, won prizes at Nemea—a contest not established, according to E. Curtius, till about 570B.C., but probably a little earlier, and nearer to 600B.C.I do not for a moment deny the existence of some kind of register from this time onward; in fact there are some probable reasons to be presently adduced in favour of it. Indeed the very form of the note about Paraballonseems to imply some novelty, an exceptional distinction in his inscription; and what we are here seeking is evidence for anearlyregister, in fact a register of the contests previous to 600B.C.

What evidence does Pausanias afford of this? As I have said, there is not a word about a register orcatalogue, but there are several notes of old offerings and inscriptions, which show us what sort of materials existed, at least in Pausanias' day. And there is no reason whatever to believe that many ancient monuments or inscriptions had been injured, unless Hippias carried out his work of falsifying them on a large scale. There were indeed several monuments antedated by mere vulgar mistakes. Such was thesteleof Chionis (vi. 13, 2), who was reported to have won in four successive contests (Ols. 28-31), but the reference in the inscription toarmed races as not yet introduced, proved even to Pausanias that the writer of it must have lived long after Chionis' alleged period. There was again the monument of Pheidolas' children, whose epigram Pausanias notes as conflicting (vi. 13, 10) withτὰ Ἠλείων ἐς τοὺς Ὀλυμπιονίκας γράμματα.ὀγδόῃ γὰρ Ὀλ. καὶ ἑξηκοστῇ καὶ οὐ πρὸ ταύτης ἐστὶνἐν τοῖς Ἠλ. γράμμασι ἡ νίκη τῶν Φ. παίδων. Theseγράμματα—a word apparently distinct fromἀναγραφαί—are probably nothing but the treatise of Hippias, preserved and copied at Elis. Had theseγράμματαindeed been an authentic register, inscribed at the time of each victory, is it possible that any epigrams of later date would have been allowed to conflict with it? Surely not. But if the register came to be concocted at a late period, such discrepancies might be hard to avoid.

But as regards genuine early monuments, Pausanias tells us that Corœbus had no statue at Olympia, and implies thatthere was no record of his victory save the epigram on his tombat the border of Elis and Arcadia. Then comes the case of the Spartan Eutelidas (vi. 15, 8), who conquered as a boy in the 38th Ol., the only contest ever held for a pentathlon of boys.ἔστι δὲ ἥ τε εὶκὼν ἀρχαία τοῦ Εὐτ., καὶτὰ ἐπὶ τῷ βάθρῳ γράμματα ἀμυδρὰ ὑπὸ τοῦχρόνου.But this statue cannot have been so old even as the 38th Ol. For in vi. 18, 7, Pausanias tells us that the first athlete's statues set up at Olympia were those of Praxidamas the Æginetan, who won in boxing at the 59th Ol., and that of the Opuntian Rexibios the pancratiast, at the 61st. 'These portrait statues are not far from the pillar of Œnomaos, and are made of wood, Rexibios' of fig-tree, but the Æginetan's of cypress, and less decayed than the other.' Just below this we have a mention of a treasure-house, dedicated by the Sicyonian tyrant Myron in the 33rd Ol. In this treasure-house was an inscribed shield, 'an offering to Zeus from the Myones.'τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ ἀσπίδι γράμματα παρῆκται μὲν ἐπὶβραχύ, πέπονθε δὲ αὐτο διὰ τοῦ ἀναθήματος τὸ ἀρχαῖον(vi. 19, 5).

These exhaust the oldest dated monuments found by Pausanias. He mentions indeed an ancient treasury of the Megarians, built in a time before either yearly archons at Athens or Olympiads (vi. 19, 13)[230:1]. Thus the antiquarian traveller, who revelled in the venerable in history and the archaic in Greek art, could find no dated votive offerings older than the 33rd Ol., and these he specially notes as of extraordinary antiquity, decayed and illegible with age. We may feel quite certain that he omitted no really important extant relic of old times in his survey.

Such then were the materials from which Hippias proceeded, not before the year 400B.C., and probably a generation later, to compile the full register of the Olympiads. There may have been some old inscriptions which Pausanias failed to see, or which had becomeillegible, or had disappeared under the soil with time. Doubtless there were many old traditions at Elis, which the Eleian sophist would gather and utilise. There were also throughout Greece, in the various cities he visited, traditions and inscriptions relating to victors who had been natives of these cities. But that these formed an unbroken chain from Corœbus down to Hippias' day is quite incredible.

His work is so completely lost that we can only conjecture his method of proceeding from the general character of his age, and from the critical spirit we can fairly attribute to it. He had before him the history of the Pythian festival, which began in historical times (Ol. 48), if we omit the old contest in composing a hymn to the gods. The various innovations and additions were well known, and it is certain that at Olympia too the range of contests had been enlarged by the pentathlon, the pancration, the hoplite race, &c. But it is likely that Hippias carried out this analogy too far. He found no traditions for the other events as old as Corœbus, and he assumed that the games had begun with a simple short race.According to the order of the first record of each competition, he set down its first origin. He was thus led to make theστάδιονthe 'eponymous competition,' if I may coin the expression, though it is more than probable that the early festivals were noted by the victor in the greatest feats and—if there was a real register—by the Hellanodicæ who had presided. For it is certain from Pausanias that the umpire did inscribe his own name with those of the victors.

Hippias' work, theγράμματαof the Eleians in after days, was thus a work based upon a problematical reconstruction of history. It rested for its earlier portionson scanty and broken evidence; as it proceeded, and monuments became more numerous, its authenticity increased. After Ol. 60, when the fashion came in of setting up athlete statues, we may assume it in the main to have been correct; though even here there were not wanting discrepancies with other evidence, and possibly somemala fideson the part of the compiler[232:1].

There remain, therefore, three points of interest connected with the theory thus proposed. Have we any evidence of the date at which the Hellanodicæ first made it a matter of ambition to inscribe their own names, and those of victors in the gymnasium, at Olympia? Are there traces of deliberate theorizing in the extant list of victors previous to this date? Why and for what reasons did Hippias fix on the year 776B.C.as the commencement of his list?

(1) There are several probable reasons for fixing the origin of registering the victories at about the 50th Ol. It was about this time that the Eleians finally conquered the Pisatans, and secured the complete management of the games. From the spoils of Pisa they built the magnificent Doric temple lately excavated, and no doubt increased the splendour of Olympia in other ways. For in addition to their increase of power they were stimulated by a new and dangerous competition—that of the Pythian games, established in the third year of the 48th Ol., and this may have been one of the reasons why they determined finally to crush and spoil the Pisatans. It is likely that the Nemean and Isthmian games were institutedabout the same time, and these rival games were perhaps connected with some complaints as to the management of the Olympian festival, for no Eleian seems to have competed at the Isthmian games (Paus. v. 2, 2). The Eleians were accordingly put upon their mettle, both to keep their contest unequalled in splendour, and beyond suspicion in fairness. To obtain the first, they lavished the spoils of Pisa, as already mentioned. As to the second, we have a remarkable story told us by Herodotus (ii. 160), and again by Diodorus (i. 95), that they sent an embassy as far as Egypt to consult the Pharaoh as to the best possible conduct of the games. This king told themthat no Eleian should be allowed to compete. Herodotus calls him Psammis (Psammetichus II), who reigned 594-587B.C.; and he is a higher authority than Diodorus, who calls him Amasis, and so brings down the date by twenty-five years. Herodotus' story has never been much noticed, or brought into relation with the other facts here adduced, but it surely helps to throw light on the question. And there is yet one more important datum. Pausanias tells us that in Ol. 50 a second umpire was appointed. If the practice of official registering now commenced at Olympia, as it certainly did at Delphi in the Pythian games, we can understand Pausanias' remarks about Paraballon and others having esteemed it a special glory to leave their names associated with the victors'. For it was a new honour. From this time onward, therefore, I have nothing to say against the register which we find in Eusebius.

(2) But as regards the first fifty Olympiads, is there any appearance of deliberate invention or arrangement about the list of names? Can we show that Hippiasworked on theory, and not from distinct evidence? It is very hard to do this, especially when we admit that he had a good many isolated victories recorded or remembered, and that he was an antiquarian, who no doubt worked out a probable list. Thus the list begins with victors from the neighbourhood, and gradually admits a wider range of competitors. This is natural enough, but I confess my suspicion at the occurrence of eight Messenians out of the first twelve victors, followed by their total disappearance till after the restoration by Epaminondas. For the sacred truce gave ample occasion for exiled Messenians to compete at the games[234:1]. I also feel grave suspicions at the curious absence of Eleian victors. Excepting the first two, there is not a single Eleian in the list. How is this consistent with Psammis' remark to the Eleians? For how could they have avoided answering him that their fairness was proved by the occurrence of no Eleian as victor eponymous for 170 years? Many Eleian victors are indeed noticed by Pausanias in the other events. It is hardly possible that they could not have conquered in thestadion, so that I suspect in Hippias a deliberate intention to put forward non-Eleians as victors. I have suspicions about Œbotas, placed in the 6th Ol. by Hippias, but about the 75th by the common tradition of the Greeks. It is curious, too, that Athenian victors should always occur in juxtaposition with Laconian. But all these are only suspicions.

(3) I come to the last and most important point; indeed it was this which suggested the whole inquiry.On what principles, or by what evidence, did Hippias fix on the year 776B.C.as his starting-point? We need not plunge into the arid and abstruse computations of years and cycles which make early chronology so difficult to follow and to appreciate. For one general consideration is here sufficient. Even had we not shown from Plutarch's words, and from the silence of all our authorities, that Hippiascouldnot have determined it by countingupwardsthe exact number of duly recorded victories, it is perfectly certain that hewouldnot have followed this now accepted method. All the Greek chronologists down to Hippias' day (and long after) made it their chief object to derive historical families and states from mythical ancestors, and they did this by reasoningdownwardsby generations. They assumed a fixed starting-point, either the siege of Troy, or the return of the Herakleids. From this the number of generations gave the number of years. Thus we may assume that Hippias sought to determine the date of the 1st Olympiad by King Iphitus, who had been assigned to the generation 100 Olympiads—a neat round-number—before himself. Hippias thus fixed the date of both Iphitus and Lycurgus. The Spartan chronologers would not accept such a date for Lycurgus. His place in the generations of Herakleids put him fully three generations earlier. Other chronologers therefore sought means to accommodate the matter, and counted twenty-eight nameless Olympiads from Lycurgus to Corœbus (and Iphitus). Others imagined two Iphiti, one of Lycurgus' and one of Corœbus' date. But all such schemes are to us idle; for we may feel certain that the number of Olympiads was accommodated to the date of Iphitus, and not the date of Iphitus to the number of Olympiads.

Unfortunately the genealogy of Iphitus is not extant; in Pausanias' day he already had three different fathers assigned to him (v. 4, 6.); and we cannot, therefore, follow out thea priorischeme of Hippias in this instance; but I will illustrate it by another, which still plays a prominent figure in our histories of Greece—I mean the chronology of the Sicilian and Italian colonies, as given by Thucydides in his sixth book. He speaks with considerable precision of events in the latter half of the eighth centuryB.C.; he even speaks of an event which happened 300 years before the arrival of the Greeks in Sicily. As Thucydides was not inspired, he must have drawn these things from some authority; as he mentions no state documents it has been conjectured that his source was here the work of Antiochus of Syracuse. This man was evidently an antiquarian no wiser or more scientific than his fellows; Thucydides betrays their method by dating all the foundationsdownwardsfrom that of Syracuse. Antiochus was obliged to admit the priority of Naxos, but grants it only one year; then he starts from his fixed era. But how was the date of the foundation of Syracuse determined? Not, so far as we know, from city registers and careful computations of years backward from the fifth century. Such an assumption is to my mind chimerical, and the source of many illusions. The foundation of Syracuse was determined as to date by its founder, Archias,being the tenth from Temenos. The return of the Herakleidæ was placed before the middle of the eleventh centuryB.C.; hence Archias would fall below the middle of the eighth century. The usual date of Pheidon of Argos, 747B.C., was fixed in the same way by his being the tenth Temenid, and hence the 8th Ol. was set down as thean-Olympiadcelebrated byhim. He should probably, as I have before argued, be brought down nearly a century (to 670B.C.) in date.

I will now sum up the results of this long discussion. When we emerge into the light of Greek history, we find the venerable Olympian games long established, and most of their details referred to mythical antiquity. We find no list of victors recognised by the early historians, and we have the strongest negative evidence that no such list existed in the days of Thucydides. Nevertheless about 580B.C.the feast was more strictly regulated, and the victors' names recorded, perhaps regularly, in inscriptions; from 540B.C.onward the practice of dedicating athlete statues with inscriptions was introduced, though not for every victor. About 500B.C.there were many inscriptions (that of Hiero is still extant), and there was evidence from which to write the history of the festival; but this was never done till the time of the archæologist and rhetorician Hippias, who was a native of Elis, with influence and popularity there, and who even placed new inscriptions on old votive offerings. This man (probably in 376B.C.) constructed the whole history of the feast, partly from the evidence before him, partly from the analogy of other feasts. He fixed the commencement of his list, after the manner of the chronologers of his day, by the date of the mythical founder. Hence neither the names nor the dates found in Eusebius' copy of the register for the first fifty Olympiads are to be accepted as genuine, unless they are corroborated by other evidence.

We have not even, as yet, the corroborative evidence of any other Greek inscriptions of the seventh or eighth centuriesB.C.Till some such records, or fragments of such records, are found, we are not entitled to assumethat the Greeks began to use writing upon stone for any records at such a date as 776B.C.That great storehouse of old civilization, the Acropolis of Athens, has yielded us nothing of the kind; and even if we admit that the annual archons were noted down since 683B.C.(which is far from certain), is not the further step to nearly a century earlier completely unwarrantable?

I have reserved till now a passage in Aristotle's fragments (594) on the Olympian festival, which may help the still unconvinced reader to estimate the value of his opinion, on the authenticity of the Register. Aristotle is commonly spoken of as having made critical researches upon this question: here isthe only specimenleft to us:—

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