A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities

by J. C. McKeown

  • He killed a lion on Mt. Olympus with his bare hands.

  • He fought a bull, which only escaped by leaving one of its hooves in his grasp.

  • He stopped a chariot that was being driven at full speed.

  • When Darius of Persia invited him to his court at Susa, he challenged three of the elite royal guard, the Immortals, to fight him three against one, and he killed them all.

  • When he and his friends were picnicking in a cave, the roof began to crack. Everyone else ran out, but Polydamas thought he could hold the roof up. And so he died.

  (Pausanias Guide to Greece 6.5)

  Diodorus Siculus notes that when Polydamas was crushed by the rocks it was obvious to all that it is of dubious benefit to have great strength but little sense (The Library 9.14).

  Milon of Croton was one of the most famous ancient athletes, winning the wrestling contest six times (once in the boys’ category) at Olympia and seven times at Delphi in the Pythian Games (again, once in the boys’ category):

  • No one could wrest a pomegranate from his fist, even when he did not squeeze the pomegranate enough to bruise it.

  • He could stand on a discus that had been greased and defy all attempts to knock him off it.

  • He could tie a cord around his forehead, then hold his breath until the veins stood out and broke the cord.

  • He came across a dried tree trunk with wedges driven into it to split it. Unfortunately he was arrogant enough to think he could split it by himself. He put his hands into it, the wedges slipped, and his hands were trapped. He was stuck there until wolves devoured him.

  (Pausanias Guide to Greece 6.14)

  It is said that Taurosthenes’s victory at Olympia [in 444 B.C.] was reported to his father on Aegina that very same day by a figure in a vision. But it is also said that Taurosthenes took with him a pigeon that had a nest of chicks still moist and unfledged; as soon as he had won, he released it, with a piece of purple cloth attached to it, and it flew back to its chicks (Aelian Miscellaneous History 9.2).

  Athletes live a dozy sort of existence that is risky for their health. Don’t you see how they sleep their way through life and suffer severe illnesses if they deviate even slightly from the diet prescribed for them? (Plato Republic 404a).

  • Dust from clay is good for cleansing and encourages moderation in sweating.

  • Dust from terra-cotta opens the pores to induce sweating.

  • Dust from bitumen gives warmth.

  • Dust from black and yellow earth softens and nourishes the body.

  • Yellow dust also makes the body glisten, a delight to look at when the athlete is well built and in good training.

  • Dust should be sprinkled gently with a free movement of the wrist and with the fingers widely spread, and it should cover the athlete like a fine down.

  (Philostratus The Gymnast 56)

  Wrestling with a bull.

  Arrhachion, who had won the pancratium twice before, was wrestling in the final at Olympia [in 564 B.C.]. While his opponent was squeezing his neck, he broke one of his opponent’s toes. Arrhachion died of suffocation just as his opponent gave in because of the pain in his toe. His corpse was crowned and proclaimed victor (Pausanias Guide to Greece 8.40).

  Evening was approaching when Creugas of Epidamnus and Damoxenus of Syracuse were boxing at the Nemean Games, so they agreed that each should allow the other to inflict one free punch. Boxers at that time were still wearing soft gloves that left the fingers uncovered. Creugas punched Damoxenus on the head. Then Damoxenus told Creugas to raise his arm. As soon as he did so, Damoxenus struck him with straight fingers under the ribcage. The sharpness of his nails and the force of the blow were such that he drove his hand right into Creugas’s body. He grabbed his intestines and tore them as he pulled them out (Pausanias Guide to Greece 8.40). Damoxenus was adjudged to be cheating, because the blow from each finger was regarded as a separate punch, and a boxer was in any case only allowed to strike his opponent on the head, not on the body, so Creugas was posthumously declared victor.

  A graffito from Perge in Asia Minor.

  Eurydamas of Cyrene won the boxing event. He had his teeth knocked out, but he swallowed them to prevent his opponent from realizing what had happened (Aelian Miscellaneous History 10.19).

  This man, who now looks so battered, used to have a nose, a chin, eyebrows, ears, and eyes. Then he entered a boxing competition and lost them all, so he did not receive his share in the inheritance from his father. For his brother showed a little picture of him to the judge, who ruled that he was someone different, since he had none of the same features (Lucillius Greek Anthology 11.5, a fictitious inscription for a statue).

  When a humble and very inferior boxer is matched against a famous opponent who has never been defeated, the spectators immediately side with the weaker fighter, shouting encouragement to him and punching when he does. If he manages to hit his opponent on the face, leaving a mark, this really sets them off. They shout insults at the champion, not because they hate him or have no respect for him, but simply because they feel curiously sympathetic to the underdog and give him their support (Polybius Histories 27.9).

  Melancomas of Caria was a boxer, but he was as healthy as any runner. He trained so rigorously that he was able to stand with his guard up for two days in succession, and no one could catch him taking a rest, as usually happens. He forced his opponents to give up, not just before he received a punch, but also before he himself dealt a punch. He did not think courage consisted in hitting and being hit; he thought that such a style of boxing indicated a lack of stamina and a desire to end the match (Dio Chrysostom Melancomas II 7).

  It is best if a boxer has a small belly, for this allows him to move quickly and breathe easily. On the other hand, a big belly has the advantage that it impedes an opponent who is trying to punch your face (Philostratus The Gymnast 34).

  Apollas, who wrote On Olympic Victors, tells how Demaenetus of Parrhasia took part in the human sacrifice that the Arcadians were still making every year in honor of Zeus the Wolf God. On tasting the entrails of the boy who had been sacrificed, he turned into a wolf. But after ten years he changed back into a human being, trained as a boxer, and came home as a winner from the Olympic Games (Pliny Natural History 8.82). Pliny offers this story as an example of the extent of Greek gullibility, noting that “no lie is so barefaced that it lacks support from someone.”

  According to Thucydides, to promote his case for being appointed to command the Sicilian expedition, Alcibiades boasted: I entered seven teams in the chariot-race at Olympia, more than any private individual ever did before, and I not only won the victory but came second and fourth as well, and it was all done in a style worthy of a victor (History 6.16). Euripides credited him with first, second, and third places.

  Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, sent several four-horse chariots to compete in the Olympic Games, along with professional declaimers to recite his poetry. His chariots crashed into each other, his poetry was mocked, and the ship bringing his delegation back to Sicily was wrecked. The sailors who managed to get back to Syracuse put the blame for the disasters on Dionysius’s bad poetry, but his flatterers persuaded him that every brilliant accomplishment is envied before it is admired, so he did not give up his enthusiasm for poetry (Diodorus Siculus The Library 14.109).

  When Exaenetus of Acragas won the foot race at the ninety-second Olympic Games [in 412 B.C.], he was led back into the city in a chariot. Quite apart from the splendor of the rest of the parade, he was escorted by three hundred chariots, each drawn by two white horses and all belonging to citizens of Acragas (Timaeus frg. 26a).

  Empedocles [the pre-Socratic philosopher] is said to have won the single horse race in the same Olympic Games in which his son was victorious either in wrestling or in one of the running races (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 8.53).

  In his short treatise On Exercise with the Small Ball, Galen sets out his reasons why such ex
ercise is superior to all other types of gymnastic activity:

  • It exercises the body and gives pleasure to the soul.

  • It requires little equipment or investment of time.

  • It exercises all parts of the body, at an intensity of the participants’ choosing.

  • Catching the ball develops good hand-eye coordination.

  • Most other exercises encourage lethargy. Even wrestlers at the Olympic Games tend to put on weight and develop breathing difficulties. People like that are useless as leaders in war or politics; one would sooner entrust such duties to pigs.

  • Running causes excessive weight loss. Being able to run did not give the Spartans supremacy in war. Running exercises some parts of the body too much, others too little, and this nourishes the seeds of disease.

  • Ball playing is risk-free, whereas sprinting has caused many people to burst vital blood vessels; horseback riding can damage the kidneys, or the chest, or the testicles; and there is no need to mention wrestlers: they all end up disabled in some way or other.

  In the old days, there were many types of ball games, and they were taken very seriously. Among whole communities, Sparta was most interested in ball games, among kings, Alexander the Great, among private individuals, the tragedian Sophocles, who was highly acclaimed when he acted the role of Nausicaa playing with a ball in his production of The Washerwomen (Suetonius On Children’s Games 2).

  A game like field hockey on a late 6th-century B.C. funerary bas relief found in Athens.

  The following are debarred from stripping off to exercise in the gymnasium: slaves and freedmen and their sons, male prostitutes, those with no training in gymnastics, those who conduct business in the marketplace, drunks, madmen (Select Greek Inscriptions 27.261).

  Charmus ran in the long distance event with five other competitors. Amazing as it may seem, he actually came seventh. “How,” you may ask, “could he come seventh when there were only six runners?” A friend of his had run onto the track shouting, “Come on, Charmus!” That’s why he came seventh. If he’d had five more friends, he’d have come twelfth (Nicarchus Greek Anthology 11.82).

  Marcus once ran in the race in armor. He was still running at midnight, and the stadium authorities locked up, for they thought he was one of the stone statues. When they opened up again, he had finished the first lap (Nicarchus Greek Anthology 11.85).

  Bind, bind down, restrain Antiochus, and Hierax, and Castor (also known as Dioscorus). Bind their feet, sinews, legs, spirit, strength, the 355 limbs of their bodies and souls, so that they may not make progress in the sprint, but remain like stones, unmoving, without running. With force, with force, with force, bind, bind the aforementioned as I requested, with force! (Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 160 [2007] 163, part of a curse against athletes, written on a sheet of lead).

  There are countless things wrong with Greece, but nothing so bad as athletes…. When they’re young, they strut around as shining ornaments for their city, but when bitter old age befalls them, they’re like threadbare cloaks with holes. I blame the Greeks for their custom of coming together to watch athletes, honoring useless pastimes as an excuse for feasting. For who has ever defended his country by winning a crown for wrestling well, or running fast, or throwing a discus, or punching someone on the jaw? (Euripides frg. 282). Aulus Gellius reports, however, that Euripides competed as a boxer at the Isthmian and Nemean Games and was crowned as victor (Attic Nights 15.20).

  XII

  HOMER

  Who would listen to any other poet? Homer is enough for everyone

  (Theocritus Idyll 16.20).

  I have done a lot of detailed research into the dating of Hesiod and Homer, but I would not care to write about it, for I am only too aware just how quarrelsome scholars of epic poetry are nowadays (Pausanias Guide to Greece 9.30). Nearly two thousand years later, odium philologicum, a sad condition that can only afflict scholars with an unduly rigid commitment to their own opinions, is not entirely extinct in Homeric studies.

  A woman from Memphis, Phantasia, the daughter of Nicarchus, composed the story of the Trojan War and the Odyssey before Homer did. It is said that she deposited her books in Memphis, and that Homer went there later and obtained copies from Phanites, the temple scribe, and composed his poetry in imitation of them (Photius The Library 151b).

  After the conquest of Thebes, Daphne, the daughter of Tiresias, was taken as a war captive to Delphi, where she made prophecies, changing her name to Sibyl. Homer adopted many of her verses as ornaments for his own poetry (Diodorus Siculus The Library 4.66).

  Corinnus was one of the pre-Homeric epic poets. He was the first to write an Iliad, while the Trojan War was still in progress (Suda s.v. Corinnus).

  They say that Helen came and stood beside Homer in the night and ordered him to compose a poem about those who went on the expedition to Troy. She wished their death to seem more enviable than the life of all other people. It is also said that the charm and universal fame of Homer’s poetry is partly due to his own artistry, but far more to Helen (Isocrates Praise of Helen 65).

  According to Philostratus, Homer’s father was the river Meles, a small stream flowing into the Aegean near Smyrna (Lives of the Sophists Preface).

  Meleager claimed that Homer was a Syrian and that it was in accord with his ancestral customs that he represented the Greeks as abstaining from fish, even though there is a great abundance of fish at the Hellespont (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 157b). It is not coincidental that Meleager, an important literary figure in the early 1st century B.C., was himself a Syrian, from Gadara (home of the Gadarine swine).

  Most people think Homer is Egyptian (St. Clement of Alexandria Stromata 1.66).

  In a temple dedicated to Homer in Alexandria by Ptolemy Philopator, Galaton painted a picture of him vomiting, with all the other poets collecting what he threw up (Aelian Miscellaneous History 13.22). Keats and the other romantic poets might not have found this image very inspiring, but it is perhaps less alarming than its Roman equivalent: When Virgil was reading Ennius [the “Roman Homer”] and someone asked him what he was doing, he replied, “I’m looking for gold on a dunghill” (Cassiodorus Institutes 1.1.8).

  When Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, was at war with Argos, he canceled the contests in the recital of poetry because the Homeric poems are so full of praise for the Argives and Argos (Herodotus Histories 5.67).

  At the Great Panathenaea held in Athens every four years, relays of singers recited the complete Homeric epics without a break (Ps.-Plato Hipparchus 228b).

  Alcibiades went into a school and asked for a copy of the Iliad. When the teacher told him he didn’t have any of Homer’s poetry, he punched him and went away (Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 186d).

  To ensure that I grew up to be a good man, my father made me learn all of Homer’s poetry. Even to this day, I could still recite the whole Iliad and Odyssey from memory (Xenophon Symposium 3.5).

  Almost everyone in Borysthenes [on the north coast of the Black Sea] is very keen on Homer, perhaps because they are still a warlike people…. They don’t even want to hear about any poet except Homer. Most of them no longer speak an intelligible form of Greek, living as they do among barbarians; even so, nearly all of them know at least the Iliad by heart (Dio Chrysostom About Borysthenes 9).

  They say that Homer’s poetry is sung among the Indians, translated into their language (Dio Chrysostom On Homer 6).

  When the onlookers realized how closely the young Spartan resembled Hector, they trampled him to death (Plutarch Life of Aratus 3). We may wonder how Greeks in the historical period could agree on what a Homeric hero looked like. In the 6th century A.D., however, Johannes Malalas felt able to describe Hector as swarthy, tall, well built, strong, with a fine nose and beard, curly haired, suffering from a squint and a stutter, noble in his bearing, an awesome warrior, with a deep voice (Chronographia 105). His description of Hector’s cousin, Aeneas, the founder of the Roman race, see
ms particularly surprising: Aeneas was short and fat, with a strong chest; he was burly, with a ruddy complexion, a broad face, a shapely nose, light skin, a receding hairline, and a fine beard (Chronographia 106).

  Cicero mentions a copy of Homer’s Iliad written on parchment inside a nutshell (Pliny Natural History 7.85). Pierre-Daniel Huet, a 17th-century French bishop, copied out eighty verses of the Iliad on a single line of a sheet of paper; at that rate, he could have included nineteen thousand verses on the page, over three thousand more than the Iliad actually contains.

  The poems of Homer were lost through fire, flood, and earthquake, with the books all scattered and destroyed in different ways. Eventually, one man might have one hundred lines of Homer, another a thousand, another two hundred, and so on. That wonderful poetry was on the brink of oblivion. But then Pisistratus, an Athenian general, thought of a plan that would bring him glory and rescue the Homeric poems. He proclaimed throughout Greece that anyone who had lines of Homer should turn them in to him for a fixed price per line. Everyone with verses brought them in and was paid the fixed price without a quibble; even those who brought him verses that he had already received from someone else were paid just the same…. When all the verses had been collected, he summoned seventy-two scholars and asked them each individually to arrange the poems as he thought fit (Scholion to Dionysius Thrax Art of Grammar 26).