Ancient Athletics Part Eight: Courses for Horses
Horses were an important part of ancient athletic festivals, and winning horses could become very famous. Equestrian events feature in the Iliad, and to be honest were introduced far later to the Olympics than other athletic festivals. Breeding pedigree horses was serious business, and they could be incredibly expensive to purchase and maintain. For this reason, the equestrians were very, very posh and ownership was a clear symbol of status and wealth. That is to say, the owners of the horses who claimed the victories were loaded; equestrian events could be incredibly dangerous to compete in and so the toffs purchased people to do the riding on their behalf. Chariot driving and jockeying were the only events wherein enslaved people had a role, purely to prevent a rich person getting hurt.
Breeding and training horses was known as hippotrophia, and had little practical use. For the leisure class it was a hobby, and even in prize Games away from the stephanitic circuit, cash prizes wouldn’t make a dent in maintenance costs. There is an inscription from Athens (because Athenians loved nothing more than a bit of epigraphy) listing the prizes given in a Panathenaic Games of around 400-350 BCE. The prize for the 4 horse chariot race (the most prestigious) is lost, but the prize for the 2 horse chariot race is listed as 140 amphorae of sacred olive oil. That’s not worth the financial outlay, but the bragging rights were more important than recouping cash. Some cities had polis teams with multiple investors, but chariot racing was dominated by fabulously wealthy individuals. So equestrian events should mainly be considered the realm of those with money to burn and a reputation to gild.
Alcibiades was one such toff; he owned several chariots, horses and drivers. At the 416 BCE Olympics (during the Peace of Nicias - the pause between the two halves of the Peloponnesian War,) Alcibiades entered seven chariots in the 4 horse chariot race. It was a deliberate display of wealth and power to the whole of the Greek world, right in the place where it would have the most impact. Alcibiades commissioned an Athenian named Diomedes to purchase a chariot team from Argos, then promptly entered it into the Olympic race as his own without giving Diomedes the credit nor the money back. Thanks to a subsequent law suit, we can make some educated guesses about how much a chariot team cost, in this case the stated price is 5 talents. Another source suggests eight talents. At a time when a manual labourer might earn a drachma a day, one chariot team was the equivalent of between 82 and131 year’s wages for a normal Athenian, and that doesn’t even include maintenance, training, stabling, feeding, transporting... Seven chariots was a very ostentatiously deliberate political message, and one scholar believes Alcibiades may have invested around a third of his capital in making such a splash. And splash he did, his chariots placed first, second and fourth. Politically, it should have been worth it; Alcibiades used his history-making Olympics experience to convince the Athenians that they should not only invade Sicily, but let him lead the expedition. I’ll not recount that whole debacle here, but let’s just say he should have stuck to the stables.
The hippodrome had a starting gate mechanism (the hysplex) to prevent false starts, and the start of the race and the final lap was signalled by a blast on a trumpet. In Roman racing in the Circus Maximus, a maximum of 12 chariots ran per race. It’s unknown whether a maximum number was set at Olympia, but even if it was the track would have been very crowded and collisions were frequent. Greek hippodromes had no central barriers (spina) and so nothing protected riders from opponents who had turned around the posts (kampteres) and were hurtling back in the opposite direction.
Part of the victory statue of Polyzalus of Gela, chariot victor at Delphi in 478 and 474 BCE. It originally had four horses and a chariot, now lost. This doesn’t depict Polyzalus, but his enslaved driver. Delphi Archaeological Museum. Photo: author’s own.
Tethrippon
Introduced: 680 BCE and for colts: 384 BCE
This was the most prestigious equestrian event. This was a race for a 4 horse chariot. The length of the race was 12 laps for adult horses and 8 laps for colts. The hippodrome at Olympia has been lost, and other hippodromes were not exactly standardised, but a lap of the hippodrome may have been between 6-8 stadions, i.e 3,600-4,800 Greek feet or 1,152-1,536 metres per lap. One race was therefore between 8.5 and 11.5 miles in length for adult horses and 5.7-7.6 miles for colts. The two inner horses were called zygioi and were harnessed to the chariot’s pole. The outer pair were called seiraphoroi.
Synoris
Introduced: 408 BCE and for colts: 264 BCE
This was a race for 2 horse chariots, and the length was 8 laps for adult horses and 3 for colts.
Keles
Introduced: 648 BCE and for colts: 256 BCE
The keles was a horseback race. The race was 6 laps, and jockeys had no saddles or stirrups. As such, they needed superlative balance just to stay on the horse. It one race, a rider did indeed fall off, but the horse completed the race riderless and still won their owner the wreath. It’s sad that we know the name of the horse (Aula) and the owner (Pheidolas of Corinth) but not the rider, who was probably enslaved. Just as with modern horseback racing, small and light jockeys were favoured, and some were children who may have even been younger than the youngest track stars in the youth category (aged 12.)
‘The Jockey of Artemision’ - a Hellenistic bronze found of a shipwreck, depicts a keles horse and jockey. National Archaeological Museum Athens, photo author’s own.
Apene
Introduced: 500 BCE (abandoned 444 BCE)
This race was fairly short-lived at Olympia, though it was very popular elsewhere. Rather than horses, it used two mules, and instead of driving a chariot, the driver was seated on a wagon. This race wasn’t as prestigious as horse races. One winner, Anaxilaus the tyrant of Rhegium, commissioned Simonides of Ceos to write an epinikion ode to his victory, as other victorious tyrants were wont to do for their chariot victories. Simonides refused, because he thought mules beneath his poetic talent, but after Anaxilaus offered to increase the fee Simonides suddenly found enough inspiration to compose “Hail, daughters of storm-footed steeds!”
Kalpe
Introduced 496 BCE (abandoned 444 BCE)
Even shorter-lived was this horseback race wherein on the final lap, the rider had to dismount from his horse and sprint the final lap beside her. Because they must keep their hand on the reins, Kalpe jockeys needed to be incredibly fast runners in order to keep up. Perhaps the danger involved in this race contributed to it being dropped from the programme.