Identifier: greekathleticspo00gard (find matches)
Title: Greek athletic sports and festivals
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Gardiner, E. Norman (Edward Norman), 1864-1930
Subjects: Athletics Sports Olympics Fasts and feasts
Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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poems and tales. There were shows and performances by
jugglers, clowns, acrobats, circus-riders, and for everything there
were prizes, for every art that was just to be sold, or rewarded
or exhibited or listened to. Like the sacred month of the
Olympic festival, the time of the fairs was one universal
truce, during which all quarrels and strife were repressed, no
distraint for debt, no vengeance was allowed, and the debtor
might enjoy himself with impunity. The Centile of the
Gael, says an old writer, celebrated the fair of Carman with-
out breach of law, without crime, without violence, without dis-
honour. On the introduction of Christianity the Church took
over the old pagan fairs; the pagan rites were abolished, each
day began with a religious service, and the fair concluded with
a grand religious ceremonial. In every detail the history of
these fairs bears an extraordinary resemblance to that of
the Greek athletic festivals.
¹ Frazer, loc. cit.
² P. W. Joyce, Social History/ of Ireland, ii. pp. 435 ff.
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29

30 GREEK ATHLETIC SPORTS AND FESTIVALS CHAP.
In Greek lands there is everywhere evidence of the existence
of funeral games at all periods, from the legendary games of
Pelias to those celebrated at Thessalonica in the time of
Valerian, ot perhaps in his honour.¹ The games of Pelias
and those celebrated by Acastus in honour of his father were
represented respectively on the two most famous monuments
of early decorative art—the chest of Cypselus dedicated in the
Heraeum at Olympia, and the throne of Apollo at Amyclae.
Both works are lost, and known to us only from the de-
scriptions of Pausanias, but the manner in which the games
of Pelias were represented can be judged from the similar
scene on a sixth-century vase, the Amphiaraus vase in Berlin
(Fig. 3).² A still earlier representation of funeral games

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