Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. E. Norman Gardiner
B.C., the Isthmian festival was reorganized. This festival, which claimed an antiquity greater even than that of Olympia, was celebrated at the sanctuary of Poseidon, which stood in a grove of pine-trees at the south-east of the Isthmus, a little to the south of the eastern end of the present Corinth canal. The various legends of its origin are all connected directly or indirectly with the worship of Poseidon. The wreath of dry celery leaves, which in the time of Pindar was the prize, recalled the story that the games were first founded in honour of the luckless Melicertes at the spot to which his dead body was carried by a dolphin. According to another legend they were instituted by the Attic hero Theseus, when he had freed the land from the terror of the robber Sinis. This story points to the close connexion of the Isthmia with Athens. The Athenian envoys enjoyed the privilege of precedence (προεδρία) at this festival, and a space was reserved for them, as much as could be covered by the sail of the ship which brought them to the Isthmus. No other festival was so conveniently situated for the Athenians. Athens and Corinth had much in common, and were on most friendly terms before the relations between them were embittered by commercial rivalry, and their friendship was especially close in the period following the fall of the Cypselidae. Another version of the Theseus legend represents him as founding the Isthmia in rivalry of Heracles, who had founded the Olympic games; and here we may trace a certain jealousy existing between the two festivals.[74] We know on good authority that the Eleans were not allowed to compete at the Isthmia. This ban, which Elean tradition represented as a self-denying ordinance imposed by the curse of Molione, may well have originated in this rivalry. We can imagine that the Elean authorities regarded with no favour the rise of a rival festival on a site so central, the meeting-place of the trade of East and West. Yet, after all, Olympia had no reason to fear its rival. The central position of Corinth involving her in all the feuds and wars of Greek history, prevented the Isthmia from ever acquiring that unique independence which characterized the more remote Olympia. There can be little doubt, too, that from the first the festival reflected the luxurious commercial character of Corinth. There the joyous life of the Ionian race found vent in a sort of cosmopolitan carnival which contrasted strangely with the more strenuous Dorian festival of remote Olympia.
The remodelled festival was a trieteris, held in the spring of the second and fourth years of each Olympiad. The programme was a varied one, including, besides athletics and horse-races, musical competitions, and possibly a regatta. The presidency of the festival belonged to the Corinthians. Whether its establishment as a Panhellenic festival was due to the tyrant Periander or expressed the joy of the people at their liberation from his rule, the evidence does not allow us to determine. The latter seems to me more probable. The great tyrant, laid by his victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, and by costly offerings to Olympia and Delphi, tried to win the support of the authorities at these places, and it may well be that the founding of a rival festival marked the popular reaction against his policy. Be this as it may, the establishment of the Isthmia is another sign of the great national movement towards unity. Tyrants recognized and tried to utilize the movement for their own advantage. But Panhellenism was independent of tyrants; it was a spontaneous movement of the people, and it need cause no surprise that one Panhellenic festival should owe its origin to a tyrant, another to the people.
A similar doubt attaches to the last of the Greek festivals, the Nemea. The cypress grove of Nemea, where stood the temple of the Nemean Zeus, lay in a secluded valley among the hills, half-way between Phlius and Cleonae. Here under the presidency of the latter state local games had long been celebrated. They were said to have been founded by Adrastus as funeral games in honour of the child Opheltes, who, having been left by his nurse in the grove, had been devoured by a serpent. According to another story, they were founded by Heracles after his slaying of the Nemean lion, and by him dedicated to Zeus. They were reorganized in the year 573 B.C. as a trieteris, and took place like the Isthmia in the second and fourth year of each Olympiad, probably at the very beginning of the Olympic year in July. The prize was a wreath of fresh celery, but was said to have been originally a wreath of olive. As at Olympia, the managers of the games bore the title of Hellanodicae. As at Olympia, the contests were until later times purely athletic and equestrian. The striking resemblances to Olympia are clearly due to Dorian influence, and may perhaps help us to understand how it was that, within a few years of the founding of the Isthmia, a second Panhellenic festival was established in its immediate neighbourhood.
The little town of Cleonae, which held the presidency of the Nemea down to the time of Pindar, could certainly never have raised its festival unaided to Panhellenic dignity. Cleonae seems to have been for a time under the dominion of Cleisthenes of Sicyon; yet it seems hardly likely that the tyrant, who had already helped in establishing the Pythia at Delphi, besides a local Pythia at Sicyon, and whose policy was so markedly anti-Dorian, should have founded a second Panhellenic festival of so purely Dorian a type. Moreover, it seems that Cleonae had already thrown off the yoke of Cleisthenes, whose power was on the decline. Argos, too, was on the decline, and though Argos in the year 460 B.C. usurped the presidency of the games, we find similar claims put forward by Corinth and by Mycenae. The fact that so many states claimed the presidency of the festival suggests that its re-establishment was not the work of any one state but of the Dorians of the north-eastern Peloponnese generally. If we are right about the jealousy felt by the authorities of Olympia towards the newly-founded Isthmia, and the character of the latter festival, we may perhaps see in the founding of the Nemea the protest of Dorian puritanism against innovations which seemed to degrade the serious business of athletics. Scandalized by the laxness of the new festival, with its traffic and its pleasures and its multitude of entertainments, the Dorians of Argolis conceived the idea of founding at Cleonae an eastern counterpart of Olympia. The strenuousness of athletics in Argolis is surely indicated in the strength and severity characterizing the athletic school of sculpture which had its origin in Sicyon and Argos, half-way between which places appropriately lay Cleonae. The view suggested above is of course hypothetical, but it accords with what we know of the Isthmia and the Nemea, and satisfactorily explains the Panhellenic character of the latter.
Thus by the year 570 the four Panhellenic festivals were established. They were distinctively the sacred meetings (ἱεροὶ ἀγῶνες) and the games of the crown (στεφανῖται), so called to distinguish them from the numerous games where prizes of value were given (θεματικοί). It is no little proof of the true athletic feeling of the Greeks that in their four greatest festivals no prize was given but the simple crown of leaves. The cycle of these festivals will be best understood by a glance at the following table, which shows the order of the festivals during a single Olympiad.[75] It must be remembered that the Greek year began with the summer solstice, and consequently belongs half to one, half to the next year, according to our reckoning.
| Olympiad. | B.C. | ||||
| 55. 1 | 560/559 | 560 | Late Summer | Olympia. | |
| 2 | 559/8 | { | 559 | Summer | Nemea. |
| { | 558 | Spring | Isthmia. | ||
| 3 | 558/7 | 558 | August | Pythia. | |
| 4 | 557/6 | { | 557 | Summer | Nemea. |
| { | 556 | Spring | Isthmia. | ||
| 56. 1 | 556/5 | 556 | Late Summer | Olympia. | |
Thus we see that in the even years there were two Panhellenic festivals, in the odd years one.
The competition of other Panhellenic festivals threatened the supremacy of Olympia, and forced the easy-going conservative authorities of that place into activity. Hitherto they had allowed the festival to develop from without; they had allowed Gela and Megara to build treasuries overlooking the Altis, and so to establish some sort of claim to a share in the management; content with their traditional customs they had made no attempt to provide adequate organization for an athletic meeting of such importance. Now they saw that if they were to maintain their position they must set their house in order. A significant story is told by Herodotus.[76] In the reign of Psammetichus II. (594–589 B.C.) some Elean ambassadors visited Egypt to see if the Egyptians could suggest any improvement in the rules for the Olympic games, which they boasted were the fairest and best that could be devised. The Egyptians, after considering a while, asked if they allowed their own citizens to compete. The Eleans replied that the games were open to all