both the traditional elites and those more newly risen to prominence, to establish the value of athletic competition. Epinician became a significant kind of lyric production precisely because the value of athletics was disputed, and should be understood as a response both to the specific criticisms that were or could be voiced about athletics and to challenges to aristocratic power more generally.
Athletic Festivals and Events
Athletics was itself a complex network of institutions and practices, whose relative importance was itself contested. Just as forms for commemorating victories had multiplied by the end of the sixth century, so too had the venues for winning those victories. The two penteteric festivals, the Olympic and the Pythian games, held pride of place because of their greater antiquity, lesser frequency, and the fact that they (unlike, say, the Panathenaea in Athens, which promoted Athenian interests in various ways) were as close as one could get to neutral spaces, free from the control of the main powerbrokers. The Olympics were regarded as preeminent in athletics, although the Pythia was the most prestigious venue for musical competitions, which were not held at Olympia.15 The greatest Olympic victors had the potential to be heroized, even within their lifetimes, an option not typically open to those who had only won at other festivals.16
Two further festivals, founded in the sixth century and held every two years, the Isthmia and the Nemea, made up a group of the four panhellenic contests, with the Isthmia enjoying priority over the Nemea. These four games were called the “sacred contests” and only awarded crowns to their victors, olive at Olympia, laurel at the Pythia, celery at the Nemea and (in this period) the Isthmia. Some athletic memorials clearly prioritize these four games; for example, the Olympic dedication of the great runner Ergoteles recorded his eight panhellenic wins, two at each festival, but no others.17 Other memorials draw the boundary elsewhere. The Olympic dedication of the boxer Diagoras of Rhodes, who had victories at all four festivals, recorded only his Olympic win,18 while the wealthiest equestrian competitors seem to have privileged the Olympics and the Pythia, and left the lesser panhellenic games to others.19
Beyond these four panhellenic contests, there was a wide variety of festivals, some well-known and supported by major cities, such as the Ioleia at Thebes, the Argive Heraea near Argos, or the Panathenaea at Athens, and others obscure. Pindar’s catalogs of his patrons’ wins give some sense of the more prestigious choices. Diagoras, we are told, won at Athens, Argos, Arcadia, Thebes, elsewhere in Boeotia, Pellene, Aegina, and Megara; Epharmostus of Opuntian Locri at Argos, Athens, Marathon, the Lycaea (i.e., Arcadia), Pellene, the tomb of Iolaus (i.e., Thebes), and Eleusis.20 These better-known venues only scratch the surface, however. A stele dedicated on the Spartan acropolis around the time of the Peloponnesian war records the victories of one Damonon at seven obscure festivals in the southern Peloponnese.21
When Callimachus arranged Pindar’s odes into books, he separated them by festival, privileging the panhellenic contests, and ordering the books according to the traditional hierarchy: the Olympics first, the Pythian games second, the Isthmian third, and the Nemean fourth. (At some point in transmission the order of the Isthmian and Nemean books was reversed.) The few odes that celebrated victories won elsewhere were tacked on to the end of Isthmian and Nemean books.22 Epinician itself was, however, much less interested in privileging particular victories, whether Olympic, panhellenic, or combinations of many such wins. Epinician odes do not differ in form or quality depending on the place of victory. They certainly recognize the traditional hierarchy among the venues—Olympian 1.7 declares no contest better than the Olympics; Pythian 7.14, in an ode praising a Pythian chariot win describes the family victory at Olympia as the “outstanding” family victory; Pythian 5 ends with a wish for an Olympic victory; and Nemean 2.1–11 speaks of a first Nemean win as a strong platform from which to win victories at other sacred games—but an Olympian ode is no longer, and no grander in its language or design than a Pythian or Nemean one. There was, moreover, no firm demarcation dividing panhellenic from non-panhellenic wins in the odes: local victories were celebrated in catalogs of the victor’s achievements; Isthmian and (especially) Nemean wins can be treated more like the well-recognized local festivals, grouped with them and not precisely tallied;23 and some odes celebrated as their primary victory a victory won at a non-panhellenic festival.24 The boundary that mattered to epinician was winning a contest, not winning the most prestigious contests; epinician celebrated athletic victory as a whole.25 This inclusiveness perhaps explains why so few of the truly great athletes in the age of epinician seem to have commissioned epinicians: these athletes had the very real possibility of being heroized, if local norms and institutions permitted it, and to commission an epinician meant embracing a vision of the victor that aligned the truly great athlete with many lesser competitors—victors with no Olympic wins, few or even no panhellenic victories, or victories only in the youth categories.26
The different events also formed complex networks. Events were divided between gymnastic (that is, what we call athletic) and equestrian, and, while there was a core of events that featured at most festivals, there were significant differences in programs.
Equestrian events, especially the chariot race, typically enjoyed greater prestige than gymnastic ones,27 a prestige reflected in Callimachus’ choice to place the equestrian events before the gymnastic in his edition of Pindar’s odes. At Olympia, the east pediment of the temple constructed around 460 represented the chariot race of Pelops and Oenomaus as the founding moment of the games, while the Panathenaea, one of the most prestigious games outside of the four panhellenic contests, offered considerably larger prizes for the main equestrian events.28 The great powerbrokers gravitated toward the main equestrian events at the most important festivals. This was at least partly because these events required (and thus demonstrated) significant resources, but also because the meeting of kings, tyrants, and other great aristocrats leant these events distinction. The list of Olympic chariot victors constitutes a roll-call of the great, if not the good: Damaratus, king of Sparta; Gelon, tyrant of Gela (at the time); Theron, tyrant of Acragas; Anaxilas, tyrant of Messene and Rhegium; Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse; Arcesilas IV, king of Cyrene; Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens (on whom, see below); Alcibiades; and others. These wealthy men supported the special distinction of the chariot race and other main equestrian events by conducting themselves as if they were in a different class. At the site of the victory they dedicated statues of their chariots that dwarfed the regular victor statues, set up expensive pavilions during the festival, and played host to the whole assembled gathering. Empedocles, the grandfather of the philosopher, when he won the horserace at Olympia, is said to fed the crowd with some sort of vegetarian ox-substitute made of myrrh, frankincense, and spices.29 Anecdotes report significant tensions between these great men at the games: Plutarch records that at the Olympic games of 476 Themistocles, the great victor of Salamis, wanted Hieron’s tent destroyed and his horses prevented from competing. Hieron had not joined the fight against the Persians, but the Deinomenids had defeated the Carthaginians at around the same time. Plutarch reports that the spectators neglected the victors to applaud Themistocles, but if he really did attend, he left without a crown, while Hieron won the horserace.30
The primacy of equestrian competition did not go uncontested. When Pindar described the first Olympics, he described a festival with six events: the sprint (or stadion), the wrestling, the boxing, the four-horse chariot, the javelin, and the discus.31 A different version gained traction in the fifth century that made gymnastic events the original events of the festival, and the stadion the very first, and this was the version that the sophist Hippias—an Elean (and thus a local to the Olympics)—canonized in his Olympic chronology at the end of the fifth century.32 The stadion was much more central to the ritual of the festival, taking place close to the heart of the sanctuary; an account written during the Roman empire claims that in the early days of the Olympic festival, the stadion winner lit the fire that would consume the sacrifice for Zeus.33 Moreover, in the wake of the Persian wars, the very luxury and kingliness that marked out equestrian competition could also constitute a liability. The often rich clothing that distinguished equestrian competitors from gymnastic ones also linked them to the Persian kings, while the nudity of