Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/73

55 l.FFKCT OF THE DISPLAY AT OLYMI'IA. 53 dissipating the suspicions entertained that she was ruined by the war, and establishing beyond dispute her vast wealth and power. !>v Plutarch (Alkib. c. 11). It is curious that the poet alleges Alkibiades to have been first, second, and Hard, in the course ; while Alkibiades himself, more modest and doubtless more exact, pretends only to first, second, and fourth. Euripides informs us that Alkibiades was crowned twice and pro- claimed twice <52? C-O$EVT' kAaia Kupexi @o$v itcpadovvai. Rciske, Coray, and Schiifer. have thought it right to alter this word (52f to rplf, without my authority, which completely alters the asserted fact. Sintenis in his edition of Plutarch has properly restored trie word Sif. How long the recollection of this famous Olympic festival remained in the Athenian public mind, is attested pariiy by the Oratio dc Bigis of Isok- nites, composed in defence of the son of Alkibiades at least twenty-five years afterwards, perhaps more. I#okra!cs repeats the loose assertion of Euripides, Trptjroc, devrepoc. arid rpira- (Or. xvi, p. 353, sect. 40). The spu- rious Oration called that of Andoktdes against Alkibiades also preserves many of the current tales, some of which I have admitted into the text, because I think them probable in themselves, and because that oration itself may reasonably be believed to be a composition of the middle of the fourth century B.C. That oration puts all the proceedings of Alkibiades in a very invidious temper and with palpable exaggeration. The story of Alkibiades having robbed an Athenian named Diomedes of a fine chariot, appears to be a sort of variation on the story about Tisias, which figures in the oration of Isokrates ; see Andokid. cent. Alkib. sect. 26 : possibly Alkibiades may have left one of the teamj not paid for. The aid lent to Alkibiades by the Chians, Ephesians, etc., as described in that oration, is likely to be substan lially true, and may easily be explained. Compare Athena;, i, p. 3. Our information about the arrangements of the chariot-racing at Olym pia is very imperfect. We do not distinctly know how the seven chariots of Alkibiades ran, in how many races, for all the seven could not, in my judgment, have run in one and the same race. There must have been nany other chariots to run. belonging to other competitors : and it seems difficult to believe that ever a greater number than ten can have run in the same race, since the course involved going twelve times round the goal (Pin- dar. 01. Hi. 33 ; vi, 75). Ten competing chariots run in the race described by Sophokles (Electr. 708), and if we could venture to construe strictly the expression of the poet, 6 e KO.TO v k /c TT /1 77 puv o^ov, it would seem that ten was the extreme number permitted to run. Even so great a num- ber as ten was replete with danger to the persons engaged, as may be seen by reading the description in Sophokles (compare Demosth. 'Epwr. Aoy. p 1410), who refers indeed to a Pythian and not an Olympic solemnity: but the main circumstances must have been common to both ; and we know that the twelve turns (ducJe/cuyvauTrrov dutieKafpouov) were common to both (Pindar. Pyth. v, 31). Alkibiades was not the only person who gained a chariot victory at thin