Ancient Athletics Part Five: Big Track

The stadion at Olympia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%CE%91%CF%81%CF%87%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BF_%CF%83%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%BF_%CE%9F%CE%BB%CF%85%CE%BC%CF%80%CE%AF%CE%B1%CF%82_01a.jpg

Track events were immensely prestigious in the Greek world, and runners were widely admired for their speed, technique, and physical beauty. Unfortunately, the Greeks had no way to time races, so we don’t know how fast the athletes could run. We have the names of many winners, but no statistics. The Games at Olympia were the most prestigious in the whole of the ancient Mediterranean, but they began with a single footrace.

Stadion (στάδιον)

Introduced: 776 BCE (adult) 632 BCE (youth)

Races were the oldest events at the Olympic Games. In fact, the first 13 Olympics consisted of a single foot race called the stadion. It simply involved sprinting from one end of the track to the other. The length was standard across all Greek games and was set at 600 feet (mythically determined by Herakles.) The length of a foot varied from region to region; the tracks at Olympia and Isthmia are 192 modern metres long. At Nemea the track is a more gentle 178 metres and competitors in the Pythian Games at Delphi had a mere 177 metres to run. The word stadion not only referred to the track but as a standard of measurement for 600 feet, and it was not uncommon for Greeks to describe landmarks as being a certain number of stades away. At the Olympics the winner of the stadion gave his name to the entire Games and of that Olympiad period of four years. Everyone in the Greek world knew that Coroebus of Elis was the first Olympic victor (776 BC.) If you were to ask an ancient Greek when the Battle of Thermopylae took place, he would tell you it was the year when Astyalus of Croton won the stadion race for the third time in a row at the 75th Olympiad (480 BC.) Even late into antiquity a Greek would think that dating everything by the birth of an obscure eastern preacher would be a bizarre idea. As such, the stadion was a huge deal. 

Diaulos (Δίαυλος)

Introduced: 724 BCE

Eventually, a second event was introduced. The diaulos race was twice the length of the stadion at 1,200 feet, requiring a turn around a post at the far end of the stadium. Each runner had a lane with their own post at the end. Despite being longer and requiring slightly different strategies, athletes were keen to succeed in both races to prove their prowess. The diaulos sapped stamina more than the stadion, and athletes hoping to clinch the double victory had to compete in both on the same day (not forgetting semi-finals, also held that day.) 

Dolichos (Δόλιχος)

Introduced: 720 BCE

Not content with a 600ft and 1,200ft race, a third race was quickly added. The dolichos was the long distance race. Scholars aren’t sure exactly how long the race was, or even if the dolichos had the same standard number of laps from festival to festival. It was perhaps 20 to 24 stades long, i.e the length of 10-12 diaulos races, or 12,000-14,400 feet (3,840-4,608 metres at Olympia.) This made the doubling of the stadion to the diaulos look like child’s play. Distance running required entirely different skills and training, so it was rare for sprinters to succeed. We know from watching modern Games that such versatility is incredibly rare. Pausanias mentions one athlete who managed to pull this off: Polites of Ceramus (in Caria) managed to win the stadion, diaulos and dolichos all on the same day, and is the only athlete recorded to have done so.

Hoplitodromos (ὁπλιτόδρομος)

Introduced: 520 BCE

The hoplitodromos translates to ‘a race wearing armour,’ and is the strangest ancient race from our modern perspective. At Olympia, its length was the same as the diaulos, though at other festivals was sometimes doubled. Runners were naked but for some hoplite equipment; they wore helmets, metal greaves on their legs and carried the round shield called an aspis. These would have been instantly recognisable as the equipment of a hoplite warrior, only the metal or linen chest armour and spear was missing. The race was designed to promote agility, speed and endurance whilst moving at speed in armour, which makes sense if we take Pausanias and Philostratus at their word that the race was invented as a component of military training.

The shields were stored in the Temple of Hera, according to Pausanias. No doubt this was to ensure that all were of standard weight, to prevent cheating. The shields were heavy, weighing around 16lbs, and the helmet and greaves added at least another 7lbs. Eventually greaves were eliminated, and artworks indicate that the types of helmet used changed over time to become lighter and lighter. In time helmets were ditched too, until the athletes ran naked whilst carrying the shields. Even with less gear, the hoplitodromos was a tough race. The festival was held at the height of summer, and the stadium gave no shade. The stamina required to run as fast as possible carrying that much weight is considerable, but at least at Olympia the race was 1 full lap of the track, elsewhere it was 2 full laps. At games in Plataea, the hoplitodromos was even longer than that, and athletes were in full gear, which would weigh around 70lbs.

Philostratus of Athens tried to pin down the invention of the hoplitodromos with little luck, for he says that multiple cities claim to have created the race after one of their soldiers ran into the stadium to announce a victory during some battle with a neighbour.