Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/428

 39^ The European Sky -god.

for eight. It now occurs to us that a combination of these two methods may well have produced one of the most remarkable and characteristic institutions of ancient Greece, viz., the great public games. I venture to suggest ^^^ that these were at first merely a means of selecting the man best fitted to become the priestly king of the locality in which they were held ; and that the enormous importance attached to them is to be explained as due, not to any exaggerated or excessive devotion to athletics, but rather to the religious issues involved in the choice of one who should worthily represent God to men.

The greatest of all Greek games were those celebrated at Olympia ; and it so happens that at Olympia the evidence in favour of my hypothesis is particularly clear. The earliest king of Elis, according to Pausanias,^^* was called Aethlius, " the Prize-winner," a name w^hich presumably implies that he had won the kingdom as the prize in a public contest. He was the father of Endymion, of whom we read^^^ " Endymion . . . offered his sons the kingdom as a prize to be won in the race at Olympia," and again ^^^ " Endymion set his sons to run a race at Olympia for the kingdom : Epeus won the race and obtained the kingdom.'' About a generation after Endymion Pelops, who had already won Pisa from Oenomaus by victory in the famous chariot- race,^" " acquired not only the land of Pisa, but also the border district of Olympia, which he severed from the territory of Epeus, "^^^ and " celebrated the games in honour of Olympian Zeus in a grander way than all who had gone before him."^°^ Later, the claims of Dius and Oxylus were

'*^ Cp. Class. Kev., xvii., 275 n. i.

'^^ Paus., 5. I. 3.

'55 lb., 5. 8. I.

'*« lb., 5. I. 4-

'" Supra, p. 381 f.

'5» Paus., 5. I. 7.

'="* lb., 5. 8. 2.