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Isthmian Amusements
[Part 2]
Borimir Jordan
University of California
Santa Barbara
As to prostitutes plying their trade during the Isthmian games, we have, first of all, the name of a prostitute Isthmias, which is attested by several writers and plainly derived from the Isthmus. Next, the combination of athletic and erotic activity in Pindar’s fragment is present also in the Peace of Aristophanes (879-880). There Theoria is both a desirable young woman and also personifies the mission to the Isthmus and the games. Trygaios asks the servant why he is drawing a circle. The servant replies that he is marking out space for himself in which to put up his tent as an accommodation for his tool during his stay at the games. He demonstrates the procedure of reserving the space by drawing the circle around the crotch and genitals of Theoria with his erection. At the same time he explains to the farmers from the Attic countryside and other assorted Athenians in the audience that the space between Theoria’s thighs is just as narrow as the Isthmus of Corinth. Possibly the audience is to understand that in the demonstration the servant’s erection functions as a pole for his tent. In any case there is no question that the servant is looking forward to the pleasures of sexual intercourse at the Isthmian festival; the scholium (line 879) interprets him as saying: “I am reserving a receptacle for my pleasures beforehand”. The servant, then, is evidently telling the audience that now that peace has broken out, he and they can resume their delightful Isthmian pursuits once again. There follows a recital of the most varied and elaborate sexual acts represented by way of double-entendres as sporting events: sexual wrestling, amorous pancration, boxing with feet and penis, and copulation in the form of horse and chariot racing, all events of the Isthmian games:
You can wrestle Theoria to the ground, stand her on all fours, oil up for the pancration, and like young lads bang and gouge with fist and cock alike. Then on the second day you’ll hold the equestrian events, when jockey will outjockey jockey and chariots will tumble over each other and match thrusts, puand panting, and other drivers will lie with cocks unfurled, collapsed at the goal line.
*(lines 896-904 of the translation, with some modification, by J. Henderson in the Loeb edition of Aristophanes: Clouds, Wasps (Camb. Mass., 1998).
The question here is whether all this reflects what actually went on during the festival and to what extent it corresponds to the experiences of the Athenians, and by extension to the other visitors. Aristophanes’ aim was to provoke laughter at any cost, and so he was apt to say anything at all. On the other hand his work does reflect the world around him. For example, his audience understood the benefit to all Greeks of (the personified) Peace, whom the chorus wants to rescue in a passage (302-304) which, incidentally, contains the only mention of the name Panhellenes in all of Aristophanes. Since the Athenians, as we saw, regularly attended the games in large numbers, it was their familiarity with the proceedings there that rendered the poet’s humor effective; divorced from reality, jokes and humor in general tend not to be very successful. The poet knew what some of his audience were up to during the Isthmian festival and so could poke fun at the behavior of his fellow citizens, or at any rate at the cruder country folk among them.
The title of Aristophanes’ lost play The Ladies Taking Up Residence In Tents contains the very same verb used by the servant in the Peace. Since they are living in tents, the women are obviously not at home, wherever that may be. They have set up housekeeping in the tents; the few extant fragments mention boiling water (Fr. 479), a baker’s utensil (Fr. 480), a food container (Fr. 486), and drinking wine; one of the women is talking about “the two-liter jug, the earthenware one, the one with the beak, that I brought along with me, so that I might have a fellow spectator to keep me company” (Fr. 472). Another has filled her belly with a dinner of fish (Fr. 475), and someone is sitting on top of a pile of refuse, “like Kallipides,” a character present also in the Clouds (59-67), along with several other gentlemen with horsy names (Fr. 474). There is some chatter about an invitation to a dinner party (Fr. 483), as well as the unavoidable allusion to bodily functions (Fr. 479). Other fragments make reference to prostitution (Fr. 478), and to an indelicate region of the body, when someone is told that he or she must pull together the cheeks around the anus (Fr. 482). A highly incensed woman is asked to put aside her anger and judge something without ill humor (the amount of a professional fee?).
The fragment about the large beaked jug is a clear indication that the action of the play takes place at one of the games. It is possible that the women in this play, besides being spectators during the day, are also professional ladies of the night. They have taken advantage of so many prospective customers gathered together in a relatively small space to earn some good money. The interpretation advanced here is speculative, but at least it is not inconsistent with any of the fragments. It is impossible to know which athletic festival is the scene of the play. In view of what has been said on the subject so far, the Isthmian games would seem to be a plausible candidate.[17]
the roman era
In postclassical times permanent inns, hotels, and baths began to be built at the major religious sites of the Greek world. At the Isthmia a Roman bath was built for the comfort and cleanliness of the visitors, and in the second century a.d. the athletes, at any rate, no longer lived in tents: from that century comes the first concrete evidence that we have for a hotel at the Isthmus. A priest of Poseidon called P. Licinius Priscus Iuventianus built quarters at his own expense for the athletes assembled from all parts of the Roman Empire, equipped the rooms with furniture, and allowed the competitors to stay in them free of charge. Iuventianus also built or repaired various other buildings. Among them were some buildings called “judgment houses” (egkriterioi oikoi). They are of some interest because they tell us something about the preliminaries to the athletic events, namely that athletes were examined for their qualifications to compete in the games.
After the battle of Actium the Isthmian games were expanded with the addition of a second set of contests, called the Caesarea. The original games combined with the Caesarea (called the “Greater Isthmia” by modern scholars) were held every four years, while the old games (the “Lesser Isthmia”) continued to be held every two years. Under Tiberius yet another set of games, the “Imperial Games,” was added to the Greater Isthmia. The program of this last addition is unknown. The Greater and Lesser Isthmia stood under the management of a president or a board of presidents (agonothetai). The main duty of another board of officials (Hellenodikai) was to judge and present awards to the victors.
Besides the expansion of the festival there were several other innovations, athletic and artistic, in the program of the Caesarea. On the sporting fields the agonothete Lucius Castricius Regulus introduced athletic contests for women, but the innovation did not endure. A novel event in the artistic program was the enacting of children’s roles in classical Athenian drama by child actors. A third innovation was a competition, not known before the Roman imperial period, in which all artists, including the actors, gave a performance in every one of the various genres, poetic, dramatic, and musical. In this competition a first, second, and third prize could be awarded. Lastly, we can trace the beginnings of eulogies in prose and verse to the end of the first century b.c. The personages eulogized, at least in the longer prose pieces, appear to have been chiefly, perhaps exclusively, members of the Roman imperial family. We hear of encomia in prose at the Caesarea for Augustus, Tiberius, and Livia; in fact, during their lifetimes the first rhetorical contests were always eulogies for these three, although a eulogy in verse was also composed for Augustus’ daughter Julia. Having become a regular part of the artistic program of the Isthmia during the early empire, the encomiastic competitions developed with exuberance, and lasted for the remainder of the epoch. Composers of eulogies and victors in encomiastic competitions are attested by literary sources and epigraphically. Plutarch (Mor. 723 b) mentions some rhetoricians, one of whom won an encomiastic victory; and there is an enkomiagraphos in a long victory list from the Isthmia inscribed on stone.
Dramatic performances continued throughout the entire Roman imperial period. The evidence suggests that tragic and comic actors continued to compete by playing the roles of the classical Athenian theater. But contemporary authors were at work as well; the inscriptions list authors of comedies, and tragedies no doubt were also being written.
Among the musical events of the time were instrumental competitions on the lyre, the pipe, and the trumpet. As in previous centuries, vocalists sang poetry to lyre and pipe music. In choral dancing a change similar to that in the musical performances occurred over time. In the fifth century b.c. the chorus was supported by the music of an instrumentalist. Later the soloist became the more important partner in the ensemble of chorus and instrumentalist. Eventually the single virtuoso became the principal performer and the main attraction of a concert. He no longer accompanied the chorus of dancers, which could be made up of children: the chorus accompanied him. The chorus’ role in short became similar to the role of the orchestra in a modern concerto.
Painting contests at the Isthmia during the imperial age are firmly attested by the victory list of the second century a.d. already referred to. The editors of the inscription believe, probably correctly, that the painters competed in the decoration of theatrical materials.
A striking feature of the performances at the Isthmian and other great festivals during this era is the practically limitless spirit of competition which the participating artists displayed. The desire to defeat all rivals reached an extraordinary level, as did the boasting of the victors. Again and again the inscriptions declare a victor to be the first, the best, the only, and the greatest of all others. The ambition of the artists was not merely to win as many victories as possible, but to win them at as many festivals as possible - the more festivals, the better, for in this respect the performers were trying to set an absolute record. Some of the bragging and glorification that we find in the inscriptions from the Isthmia and other places is by our standards so extreme that it deserves to be quoted.
The musician and singer C. Aelius Themison had been victor five times at the Isthmian, Nemean, and Asiatic contests; he had also won 89 other victories for a total 94. Not only that: Themison had also been the first and only performer to adapt and set to music the works of Euripides, Sophocles, and Timotheos. Another musician, poet, and singer, M. Ulpius Heliodorus, an instrumentalist accompanying himself on the lyre, had also won numerous victories at nine festivals (Isthmia, Nemea, Olympia, Delphi, Actium, Naples, Pergamon, Sparta, and Argos), for a total of 30 victories, five of which were at the Isthmia. Like Themison, he too had won more victories than any other lyre-player before him. He apparently believed that his record of victories owed much to his training, because the name of his music coach is also mentioned in the inscription listing his achievements. Yet a third performer, Pythokles, singing to the music of the pipe, had won 13 prizes with his recitals at the four major festivals. He had also competed in “the greatest number of contests,” in which he won “countless crowns.” Pythokles and his brothers Pantokles were the latest members of a family which had been producing performing artists for three centuries.
The compositions of C. Aelius Themison, incidentally, exhibit the fashion of the times of setting to music the works of the dramatists of Athens’ great age, and especially the plays of Euripides. Another inscription from the third century b.c. (SIG3 648, not pertaining to the Isthmia) records the performance of a medley of passages from the Bacchai set to music (a kitharisma).
The craze for setting records under the Empire forms something of a contrast with the more modest claims during the earlier Hellenistic period, which are exemplified by an inscription from Athens (IG II2 3779). There it is said simply of the lyre-player Nikokles son of Aristokles that he was first, i.e. that he had won first prize at the Isthmia with his recital. The current mania for boasting also affected the orators, and even the officials. For example, the agonothete Lucius Castricius Regulus (the same who introduced women’s contests) boasted that he was the first to preside over the Isthmian Games under the sponsorship of the Colonia Julia Corinthiensis. As to the orators, Robert discusses two inscriptions honoring orators who furnish further illustration of the craze for record-setting. One, Aurelius Athenaeus, an orator who had won victories in all the great games (periodoneikes) in 20 competitions, is said to have been the first and only man to win the most contests in which the prize money was one talent. The other, Quintus Samiarius, was “the first of Romans and Greeks” to have won a victory in an encomiastic contest at the Pythian and other sacred competitions.
The bragging in an inscription from the Isthmia reaches comical and perhaps satirical heights. It honors a certain Nicias as first among orators and best of agonothetai. Nicias had won glory in every public office that he held; for this achievementw his fellow agonothetai erected a statue of him in front of the temple of Poseidon. His abilities as a speaker were remarkable: “he pours forth words like streams at the mouths of ever-flowing rivers. His colleagues know his worth: he is a great delight to the city and to the young, both citizens and strangers, to whom nature has given him as their greatest blessing”. The editor of the inscription, Broneer, was perhaps right to suspect that even to the people of the time such praise was too much of a good thing and capable of a double interpretation, and that it may have been a backhanded compliment with a tinge of sarcasm directed at the never-ending garrulity of Nicias.
The loquacity of the orators, and of other performers attending the Isthmian festival, is certainly satirized in a passage quoted by Finley and Pleket. It is put in the mouth of Diogenes the Cynic, but apparently describes the state of affairs in the first century a.d.:
Many miserable sophists could be heard shouting and reviling each other round the temple of Poseidon while their so-called pupils fought with one another. Writers were reading their rubbish aloud. Many poets were reciting their verses to the applause of others, many conjurers were showing off their tricks, fortune- tellers, theirs. There were countless lawyers perverting the law and not a few pedlars hawking everything and anything.
As the centuries passed, the nature of the festival changed greatly. The craze for entertainment was no longer satisfied with the dances and music with which the ancient festival had begun. In the later Roman empire, under the Emperor Julian, the Isthmian festival degenerated into circus shows of the Roman variety. At that time the Corinthians imported bears and panthers and staged fights between these wild animals as a part of the entertainment.[18]
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[1] For the athletics see e.g. Finley and Pleket. As to the religious content, Nilsson (1957) 159 epitomizes the attitude of modern scholarship: “I will be brief about the Pythian Festival since its agonistic aspect has displaced the religious content completely.” If this was so, one may wonder why people bothered to build the massive temples for the gods in the great Panhellenic sanctuaries and at other agonistic festival sites.
[2] The importance of the Isthmia is ranked second by Reinmuth 1474 and third by Stengel 216. Panhellenes in Pindar: Isth. 2.38; 3.47. Decisions during the Persian Wars: Hdt. 7.172.1; 7.173.4; 7.175.1; 7.195. The Isthmus vital to Corinth and site of publication of treaties: Thuc. 1.13.5; 5.18.10.
[3] Early importance of the Isthmian Games and their popularity: Broneer (1971) 57,101; (1973) 3. For amusements cf. Wright. Aeschylus and Ion at the Isthmian Games: Plut. Solon 23; Mor. 79 e. Socrates: Pl. Crit. 52 b; Athen. 5.216 b.
[4] For an example of a theoria taking the sea route to the Pythian Games at Delphi see Sokolowski (1962) 77, #38. Seating of the Athenian delegation: Plut. Theseus 25.7, on the authority of Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus. Athenian theoriai to the Isthmus: Thuc. 8.10.1; And. 1.132. Armed escort of offerings: scholium on Dem. 3.20 (Batterius et Sauppius 62-63). Ritual at the shrine: Nilsson (1951) 167-68.
[5] isthmiasdein = ail: Suda s.v. No place to stay except by reservation: scholium Ar. Pax 879 (Dübner); Ar. Frs. 471-487 (Hall and Geldert). Tents at Olympia: Heniochos Fr. 5.7 (Meineke); Pi. Ol. 10.43-55 with scholia; Böckh 201; Ael. Var. Hist. 4.9; Athen. 12. 534 d; Plut. Alc. 12. For accommodations and other amenities in later times see “The Roman Era” below.
[6] See Bury 93 and 186-87; Wilamowitz 201-202; Farnell 364. According to Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.144 Jason dedicated the Argo to Poseidon on the Isthmus. Antigonus’ ship and the victory plant: Plut. Mor. 676 d.
[7] Horse races chief interest: Reinmuth 1475; Finley and Pleket 27 ff. Costliness of horses: Hdt. 6.35; 6.125; Thuc. 6.12.2; 6.16.2; Pl. Ly. 205 b-c; Isoc. 16.34; Xen. Hiero 9.11; Arist. Pol. 4.3, 1289 b; 6.4, 1321 a; Hyp. 1.16; Lycurg. Contra Leocr. 139; Plut. Alc. 11; Athen. 13. 534 b; J. K. Anderson (1970). See also the long and interesting note of Wyse on Is. 5.43, pp. 471-5. For the home states of victors with horses cf. Smyth xci: “most of the extant odes are in fact composed for victors from the colonies - Sicily, Magna Graecia, Kyrene, and Rhodes.” Cf. Richter 683. For a list of horse-breeding regions see J. K. Anderson (1961) 35-39. The social class and age of the men whose horses competed at the festivals are studied by Golden 336-7. The transport of horses by Athens: Thuc. 2.56.2; 4.42; 6.43; 6.64.1; 6.94.4; 6.98.1. Exaggeration: we may note that Pindar uses nomos with the meaning “district” in several other passages (Ol. 7.33; Paean 4. 51, and Fr. 153 Turyn); cf. Slater’s Pindar Lexicon s. v. Next, the nomos of the Panhellenes in the Suppliants clearly means “the custom common to all the Greeks,” and is so interpreted by Wecklein (on lines 526-7). Finally, authors were not bound to repeat slavishly the meaning of a word or phrase forever, as is too often assumed by philologists; when a word had more than one meaning, they could pick the one that suited them. Pindar for instance also has nomos = law and music, and sometimes he is ambiguous: does eunomia in Pyth. 5.67 refer to law or music?
[8] F. Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I. 39 (my translation).
[9] For the guild of artists of Isthmia and Nemea and the performers in its membership see Poland (1934) cols. 2474-2475, 2486, 2503-2507, 2517-2518; Poland (1909) 129-147; Pickard-Cambridge 279-305 with bibliography on p.336. Pipe music in processionals: Smyth xxxiii-xxxiv. Processions opening musical contests: Smyth lx; opening athletic events: Finley and Pleket 27.
[10] Theater at Isthmia: Broneer (1971) 4, 10; Gebhard passim. For the creation of the Isthmian and Nemean Guild, its status, diversity of ethnic affiliation of its members, activities, title, branches, places of performances, etc. see Poland (1934) cols. 2486, 2500-2501, 2507, 2527. For the presentation of old and new plays cf. Bieber 84: “the technitai of Dionysos presented plays that had been tried out in the great Athenian festivals of Dionysos; both old and new tragedies and old and new comedies were performed”. Costumers: Poland (1934) col. 2486. Authors of satyr plays: Poland (1934) col. 2486; Bieber 6, 84. The summary and discussion of Theoroi/Isthmiastai are based on the editions and commentaries by Lloyd-Jones 549-556; Snell 164-175; and Radt 194-205. That the play takes place at Isthmia is suggested by the allusion to the painted or sculptured heads on the exterior of the temple of Poseidon; many in the audience evidently were familiar with the heads from their visits, otherwise the reference would be meaningless to them. Snell’s conjecture that isthmiasdein in one of the fragments has a pejorative connotation is borne out by the gloss in the Suda (n. 5 above). On Aeschylus writing plays for performance abroad (e.g. Women of Aetna) see Schmid 189-190.
[11] Dance, music, and chanted poetry performed together: Bieber 6. For the “horned owl” dance see Aesch. Isthmiastai Fr. 79 (Radt); Poll. Onom. 4.103; Athen. 9. 391 a; 14. 629 f., and Gulick’s note d in the Loeb edition, Athenaeus VI pp. 398-99 and the references listed there; Ael. N. H. 15.28. Dress of performers: Bieber 8, 10-12, and figs. 3, 4, 34, 35. Chorus members and directors in the Isthmian guild: Poland (1934) col. 2486. Musicians the main performers in the fourth century B.C.: Gentili 26.
[12] Music displaces poetry: Smyth lx-lxi; Gentili 24-31; West 12-14. Duets on the lyre and pipe: this is a very tentative conjecture from Fr. 81 (Radt) of Aeschylus’ Isthmiastai and Hes. Lex. s. v. iambis, who defines the word as lyre music accompanied by pipe music. Such recitals were called pariambides; cf. LSJ s. v. Competitions after 300 B.C.: Poland (1934) col. 2486. Nikokles: IG II2 3779; he was apparently a famous “star” of his time and remembered long afterwards; both Pausanias (1.37.2) and Athenaeus (13. 603 a) mention him. Aristomache of Erythrae: Plut. Mor. 675 b on the authority of Polemon, the early second-century compiler of dedications at Delphi and elsewhere. Cf. Athen. 6.234 d; 10.436 d.
[13] The activities of the sophists at the festivals are summed up by Guthrie 42-44.
[14] Pliny, Nat. Hist. 35.54.1; 35.58.2-3; 35.65; cf. Woodward 217.
[15] For the money expended on hospitality by various competitors see, e.g., Athen. 1.3 e (Alcibiades and Leophron). The contributions of the Ephesians, Chians, and Lesbians to Alcibiades’ parties: Plut. Alc. 12.1; Athen. 12. 534 d, where it is the Cyzicenes who make the contribution; cf. Isoc. 16.34. Anaxilas: Heracleides Ponticus, FgH ii 219 (Müller). Empedocles: Athen. 1.3 e. For the responsibility of the archetheoroi see And. 1.132 and Maidment’s note on pp. 428-39. Feasting at the Isthmia: Cantharus, Fr. 1 (Meineke); scholium on Ar. Pax 883; Pi. Ol. 8. 52; Robinson 90 on the passage: “it appears likely that Pindar’s phrase…may have reference to the common practice of cult banquets at the Isthmia…” The view that Xenocrates was dead has been defended by, e.g., Bury 31; Farnell 344. Household ware, dining rooms, kitchens, etc.: Caskey 168-176; Clement and MacVeagh Thorne 401-411; Broneer (1973) 33-44. Banquets in tents only: Sokolowski (1955) 140, # 54 and the commentary.
[16] Symposia at the Isthmia: Pi Pyth. 4.294; Nem. 9.48 ff.; Isthm. 6.1 and scholium; scholium on Ol. 10.55; Dem. 19.195.
[17] Corinthian women dissolute: Athen. 8.351 c and Gulick’s note in Athenaeus IV p. 91. The tavern: Morgan 131-140. Income for Corinth from visitors to the Isthmia: Strabo 8.6.20; Snodgrass 117. According to the scholium on Pi. Ol. 10. 55, people attending the Olympic Games also adjourned to the nearby city of Pisa for grand dinners. The representation of Corinthian ladies of the night in Attic plays is the theme of W. S. Anderson’s valuable and interesting study, especially pp. 44-49. The lady Isthmias: [Dem.] 59.19; Athen. 13.587 e; 593 f; cf. Gulick’s note in Athenaeus VI, p.167: “…the name Isthmias is derived from the Isthmian Games…” For a certain amount of reflection of reality in Aristophanes, see Dover 136-139. The fragments from Ladies Living in Tents are those in Hall and Geldart. kasalbas is one of the words for prostitute listed in Poll. Onom. 7.201-202, a section listing numerous other such terms. That the women were probably spectators at some public event like a procession or games is also the view of Ehrenberg 201.
[18] For Iuventianus’ activities see IG IV 207; Geagan (1989) 349-360; Frazer 14-15. For the expansion of the festival after Actium see Kent 29-31. Kent, loc. cit., Biers and Geagan 79, and Geagan (1975) 398 say that there was only one president. However, the inscription published by Broneer (1959) 326 records the existence of co-presidents, which, as Broneer observed, can only mean that there were more than two. The resolution of the matter is probably to be sought in the fact that the inscriptions mention only the eponymous official. Athletic contests for women: Kent 29. Child actors (and child musicians): Biers and Geagan p. 80, lines 41-42 and the commentary; the correct interpretation of the children’s roles is given by Robert (1966) 752. Performances by all artists: Biers and Geagan p.81, line 58 and the commentary; Robert loc. cit. Eulogies: Meritt 28; Robert (1938) 22-23; Kent 29; Biers and Geagan p.80, line 20. Dramatic performances: Biers and Geagan pp. 80-81, passim; Robert (1966) 752. Musical events: Robert (1938) 34. Painting contests: Biers and Geagan p. 81, line 49 and the commentary. Aelius Themison: Broneer (1952) 192-93; Pfohl # 77, pp. 69-70. M. Ulpius Heliodorus: IG IV 591. Pantokles: IG IV 682. The first president of the Games under Colonia Julia: Kent p. 70, # 153. Aurelius Athenaeus and Quintus Samiarius: Robert (1938) 23; 28. For the term periodoneikes see Geagan (1984) 97-99. The garrulous Nicias: Broneer (1959) 324-26. Diogenes the Cynic: Finley and Pleket 27. Wild animals: Schmitz 646.
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