Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/75

Rh E11111]. ).lJt-F. GAMES G5 The above description of the Olympian games will serve ' best were actors, the Ilomans from first to last were specta- generally for the other great festivals of Greece. Vithout entering on any detailed account of these, it will be sufli- cient here to glance at the 1nost prominent characteristics of each. The 1’_;/I/cian games, second only to the Olympian in i1n- portance, were founded after the ﬁrst Sacred “far out of the spoils of Cirrha, 595 B.C. Originally a local festival held every eighth year in honour of the Delphic god, with no other contests but in the harp and the paean——in fact a sort of Greek Eisteddfod—they developed into a common dydw for all Greece (so Demosthenes calls them), with all the games and races of Olympia, fron1 which they were distinguished only by their musical and poetical com- petitions. They were held under the superintendence of the Amphictyones in the autumn or first half of every third Olympian year. The prizes were a wreath of laurel and a palm. The Xemean games, originally a warlike gathering and review, were held in honour of Nemean Zeus at the grove of N emea, between Cleona: and Phlius, in the second and fourth year of each Olympiad. They date from about 570 B.C. The prize was a chaplet of parsley. The Isl/unian games, founded a little earlier than the N emean, partook at ﬁrst of the nature of mysteries. They were held on the narrowest part of the Istlnnus of Corinth in honour of Poseidon in the ﬁrst and third year of each Olympiad. Their prize was a wreath of pine leaves. The importance of the Isthmian games i11 later times is shown by the fact that Flamininus chose the occasion for proclaim- ing the liberation of Greece, 196 13.0. That at a later anniversary (67 A.D.) Nero repeated the proclamation of Flamininus, and coupled with it the announcement of his own infamous victory at Olympia, shows alike the hollow- ness of the ﬁrst gift and the degradation which had befallen the Greek games, the last faint relic of Greek worth and independence. The Lmli Publici of the Romans included feasts and theatrical exhibitions as well as the public games with which alone we are concerned. As in Greece, they were intimately connected with religion. At the beginning of each civil year it vas the duty of the consuls to vow to the gods games for the safety of the commonwealth, and the expenses were defrayed by the treasury. Thus, at no cost to them- selves, the Iloman public were enabled to indulge at the same time their religious feelings and their love of amuse- ment. Their taste for games naturally grew till it became a passion, a11d under the empire games were looked upon by the mob as one of the two necessaries of life. The zediles who succeeded to this duty of the consuls were ex- pected to supplement the state allowance from their private purse. Political adventurers were not slow to discover so ready a road to popularity, and what at ﬁrst had been ex- clusively a state charge devolved upon men of wealth and ambition. A victory over some barbarian horde or the death of a relation served as the pretext for a magniﬁcent display. But the worst extravagance of private citizens was eclipsed by the reckless prodigality of the Caesars, who squandered the revenues of whole provinces in catering for the mob of idle sight-seers on whose favour their throne depended. But though public games played as important a part in Roman as in Greek history, and must be studied by the Roman historian as an integral factor in social and political life, yet-, regarded solely as exhibitions, they are cnniparatively devoid of interest, and we sympathize with l’liny, who asks his friend how any man of sense can go day after day to view the same dreary round of ﬁghts and races. It is easy to explain the different feelings which the games of Greece and of Rome excite. The Greeks at their tors. It is true that even in Greek games the professional element played a large and ever—increasing part. As early as the 6th century 13.0. Xenophanes complains that the wrestler’s strength is preferred to the wisdom of the philo- sopher, and Euripides, in a well-known fragment, holds up to scorn the brawny swaggering athlete. But what in Greece was a perversion and acknowledged to be such, the Romans not only practised but held up as their ideal. No Greek, however high in birth, was ashamed to compete in person for the Olympic crown. The Roman, though little inferior in gymnastic exercises, kept strictly to the privacy of the palaestra ; and for a patrician to appear in public as a charioteer is stigmatized by the satirist as a mark of shameless effrontery. Roman games are generally classified as ﬁxed, extra- ordina-r_1/, and votive; but for our present purpose they may be more conveniently grouped under two heads according to the place where they were held, viz., the circus or the amphitheatre. For the Roman world the circus was at once a political club, a fashionable lounge, a rendezvous of gallantry, a betting ring, and a playground for the million. J uvenal, speaking loosely, says that in his day it held the whole of Rome ; and there is no reason to doubt the precise statement of P. Victor, that in the Circus Maximus there were seats for 350,000 spectators. Of the various Lmli Circences it may be enough here to give a short account of the most important, the Lmli 1l[a._r/ml or il[cz.7c2'mi. Initiated according to legend by Tarquinius Priscus, the Ludi Jllagni were originally a votive feast to Capitoline Jupiter, promised by the general when he took the ﬁeld, and performed on his return from the annual campaign. They thus presented the appearance of a military spectacle, or rather a review of the whole burgcss force, which marched in solemn procession from the Capitol to the. forum and thence to the circus, which lay between the Palatine and Avcntine. First came the sons of patricians mounted on horseback, next the rest of the burghers ranged according to their military‘ classes, after them the athletes, naked save for the girdle round their loins, then the company of dancers with the harp and flute players, next the priestly colleges bearing censcrs and other sacred instruments, and lastly the simulacra ot' the gods, carried aloft on their shoulders or drawn in cars. The games themselves were four- fold :—(1) the chariot. race; (2) the lurlus Troicc; (3) the military review; and (4) gymnastic contests. Of these only the ﬁrst two call for any comment. (1.) The chariot employed in the circus was the two-wheeled war car, at first draw11 by two, afterwards by four, and more rarely by three horses. Originally only two chariots started for the prize, but under Caligula we read of as many as twenty-four heats run in the day, each of four chariots. The distance traversed was fourteen times the length of the circus or nearly ﬁve miles. The charioteers were apparently from the first professionals, though the stigma 11nder which the gladiator lay never attached to their calling. Indeed a successful driver may compare in popularity and fortune with a modern jockey. The drivers were divided into com- panies distinguished by the colours of their tunics, whence arose the faction of the circus which assumed such importance under the. later emperors. In republican times there were two factions, the white and the red; two more, the green and the blue, were added under the empire, and for a short time in Domitian’s reign there were also the gold and the purple. Even in Juvenal’s day party spirit ran so high that a defeat of the green was looked upon as a second Cannae. After the seat of empire had been transferred to Constantinople these factions of the circus were made the basis of political cabals, and frequently resulted in sanguinary tumults, such as the famous Nika revolt (532 A.D.), in which 30,000 citizens lost their lives. (2.) The Ludus Troiae was a sham ﬁght on horse- back in which the actors were patrician youths. A spirited description of it will be found in the 5th .Eneid. See also Crnccs. The two exhibitions we shall next notice, though occasionally given in the circus, belong more properly to the an1ph1theat_re. Vcnatio was the baiting of wild animals who were pitted either with one another or with men——eaptives, criminals, or trained ll1111tLI‘S called bcstiarii. The ﬁrst certain instance on record of this_an1use— ment is in 186 13.0., when M. Fulvius exhibited lions and tigers 111 the arena. The taste for these brutalizing spectacles grew apaﬂ‘, and the most distant provinces were ransacked by _generals_ and p1'oconsuls to supply the arena with rare animals—g1raffes, tigr-rs, X.———9