The Method of Deciding Victory in the Pentathlon

Extract

At the beginning of the renewed German excavations at Olympia in 1936, a jumping-weight was found with an inscription cut round the edge; epigraphists assign it to the end of the sixth century b.c.: Ακματίδας Λακεδαιμόνιος νικ⋯ν ⋯νέθηκε τ⋯ Πέντε ⋯σσκονικτεί. ‘Akmatidas of Sparta dedicated me after winning the pentathlon “without dust”.’ The last word of the inscription is obviously a variant of the later ⋯κονιτί. Philologically it is interesting because it is the only evidence in antiquity so far found of a form σκόνις for κόνις, which accounts for the Modern Greek σκονή, ‘dust’. The second K may be no more than a slip by the stone-cutter, wrongly connecting the unfamiliar adverb with νίκη), ‘victory’. There is some justification for this belief. The inscription starts with a hexameter. If we possessed the other weight of the pair, we should expect the inscription to be completed on it metrically. As it stands, this is impossible. But if we omit the second K, then τ⋯ Πέντε ⋯σσκονιτεί (with lengthening of τά in arsi) can begin a pentameter or another hexameter.