Ancient Athletics Part Ten: Infamous Olympians

Winning crowns at Olympia was a deep source of pride for athletes, but also from their hometowns. But not every athlete brought glory home with them from the Games…

Astylos of Croton was a track star. I don’t know what was in the water in Calabria, but Croton had a sterling record at the Olympics, winning 12 stadion races out of 27 between 588 and 484 BCE. For the last of those two victories, their champion was the same man: Astylos. He didn’t just win the stadion race in 488, he won the diaulos as well. And in 484, he won the stadion, the diaulos, and the hoplitodromos, all on the same day.  Astylos was one of the all-time greats. His adoring hometown erected a statue of him right next to the Temple of Juno Lacinia. He was only the second man to win those three races in a single festival (the first being Phanas of Pellene). In the run up to his third Olympics in 480, the crowds were excited: if Astylos could pull off another triple, he would officially be the most decorated Olympic runner in history with 8 crowns (beating the previous record holder, Chionis of Sparta, who had won the stadion and diaulos three festivals in a row.) Astylos rocked up ready to win, and he did. Another triple win in the bag, and Astylos entered Olympic superstardom. The only thing is, he’d switched allegiance. Astylos of Croton was, all of a sudden, running for Syracuse. Pausanias, in his guidebook of the sanctuary, suggests Astylos defected to ‘please’ the future Syracusan tyrant, Hiero I (6.13.2). That seems odd, particularly since Astylos doesn’t seem to have had a meaningful connection to Syracuse. Given that victors at Olympia weren’t awarded prizes beyond their laurel crown, was it a big pile of cash that tempted Astylos away from Croton? Hiero definitely had money to spare and apparently didn’t have much faith in his own athletes. Astylos set an Olympic record that stood for three centuries, Hiero got some reflected glory, but Croton lost out. Heartbroken, they tore down Astylos’ statue and turned his house into the city prison. Croton never produced another victor.

Similarly, Sotades of Crete also annoyed his compatriots. In 384 BCE, he won the long-distance dolichos race. Some citizens of Ephesus decided to slip him a bribe if he agreed to become an Ephesian citizen instead. Sotades took the cash and ran, literally; at the next festival in 380 BCE he won the dolichos for a second time, and this time for Ephesus. The Ephesians congratulated themselves on their wise investment, and the furious Cretans forbade Sotades from ever stepping foot on their island again.

Kallias of Athens should have been famous for being the first Athenian periodonikes (winner of all four Panhellenic festivals,) winning 4 Nemean titles, 5 Isthmian, 2 Pythian and 1 Olympic pankration victory in 472 BC. He also won in front of an ecstactic home crowd at the Great Panathenaia. Unfortunately he was better known for his disastrous political career which saw him ostracised from the city for a decade (banished by a popular vote of male citizens.) 

As a wrestler, Chaeron of Pellene already had quite a lot in common with the philosopher Plato. Chaeron was the better wrestler, winning at Olympia on four occasions. But he did study under Plato, and was radicalised after reading the Republic and the Laws. When Alexander the Great made him the tyrant of Pellene, the first thing Chaeron did was exile the aristocrats (much to the horror of writers like Athenaeus), free their enslaved servants, and set up the new freedmen as owners of the confiscated estates (as well as marry the freedmen to the aristocratic wives, whose previous marriages were dissolved.) Depending on your politics, Chaeron is a menace or a hero. Most Greeks chose the former, and we’re told that his name was never spoken out loud in his hometown again.

Cheating

As you’d expect from the most important athletics festival in the ancient world, cheating was taken very, very seriously. Don’t forget, these festivals were religious; it wasn’t mortal spectators who disapproved of cheats. We know of some of the brave idiots who did attempt cheating because the festival officials made sure to immortalise them to deter future brave idiots from trying the same thing. Firstly, cheaters were fined a considerable amount of money, which was used to erect bronze statues of Zeus, called zanes. That they resembled Zeus is important, as it reminded everyone who looked at them that cheating at Olympia was sacrilegious. The statues were placed near the stadium entrance so that everyone could see them, and inscriptions on their bases explained exactly how each cheat had broken the rules. Here’s the story of the two worst cheating scandals:

The bases of the zanes statues, in situ. The statues are long gone. Image: A Sills

The first zanes were erected in 388 BCE, and it’s remarkable that Pausanias says that nobody had been charged with cheating until that point (or perhaps, simply nobody had been caught?). A boxer named Eupolos from Thessay was desperate to win. He bribed three of his competitors, including Phormio of Halicarnassus who had won the boxing four years before. The fame and glory earned with an Olympic victory were considerable, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would agree to throw a match. All matches were fought on the same day, so we can make a guess that he only had to bribe the competitors he was up against in each round. Maybe Agenor of Arcadia and Prytanis of Cyzicus didn’t think they’d get past the knockout rounds anyway, so didn’t have much of a dilemma about accepting the money. But Phormio was a victor, and with that came a glittering reputation. Eupolos was either very persuasive, or was able to make a cash offer that Phormio simply couldn’t refuse. Eupolos did end up winning, but just as he thought he’d gotten away with it, the bribery was exposed. He and his three opponents were heavily fined. That money paid for six bronze statues, and the inscriptions admonished Eupolos for trying to win with cash rather than strength and skill. Eupolos was disgraced, but Phormio, who had once won on merit, was arguably even more embarrassed.

It would be 66 years before anyone else tried to cheat. Callippus of Athens wanted to win the pentathlon really badly, so he bribed his opponents to let him win. Again, it wasn’t until he was crowned that the truth came out. Callippus was humiliated, and ordered to pay for more statues. However, the bribes had emptied Callippus’s coin purse and he had nothing left with which to pay the fine. The Elean officials ordered his hometown to cough up the money, and the embarrassed Athenians sent their very best orator, Hyperides, to try and convince the Eleans to drop the fine (or at least not make them pay it.) Unimpressed by celebrity, the Eleans told Hyperides to pass on the message: if Callippus couldn’t pay, his hometown would. Already furious that one of their own would bring them into disrepute, the Athenians refused. They even declared that Athens wouldn’t send any more athletes to compete at Olympia. Eventually, the gods got involved. The officials at Delphi declared that the Oracle was closed to Athenians for as long as the fine went unpaid. Apollo was not amused with them. Loathe to annoy a second potential deity, Athens meekly paid up at long last, and up went six more statues. The Elean officials made sure to state in the inscription that their decisions came with Apollo’s seal of approval.

1. In retaliation, Chionis’ fans added a line to the inscription on his victor statue inscription in Olympia: ‘Chionis competed before the hoplitodromos event was introduced.’ Clearly, the Spartans were annoyed that Astylos’ record was only possible because he had the option to compete in more events than Chionis had.