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The Starting-Gate for Chariots at Olympia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

H. A. Harris
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Extract

In 1797 Ennius Quirinus Visconti declared that the starting-gate (aphesis) at Olympia, described by Pausanias, had caused more crashes among modern antiquaries than ever the turning-posts did among the charioteers whom in its heyday it launched on their course; the intervening 170 years have lengthened the tale of academic disasters. But even at the risk of adding to the pile-up of reputations it seems legitimate to attempt another investigation of the subject. The moment is opportune, now that experiments are being made in the use of starting-stalls for horses on British race-courses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , October 1968 , pp. 113 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 113 note 1 Museo Pio Clementina V, p. 81.Google Scholar

page 113 note 2 vi. 20. 10.

page 113 note 3 The evidence for ancient chariot-racing, with the exception of modern archaeological discoveries, of which there are very few, is admirably assembled in two articles in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités, s.v. Circus (by A.-C. Bussemaker and E. Saglio) and Hippodrome (by A. Martin).

page 114 note 1 Dobosi, Al in Eph. Dacoromana, vi (1935).Google Scholar

page 114 note 2 Romanelli, P., Lepcis Magna (Rome, 1925), 154.Google Scholar

page 114 note 3 Laborde, A., Description d'un pavé dans l'ancienne ville d'Italica (Paris, 1802).Google Scholar

page 114 note 4 Fabia, , Mosaïques romaines des Musées de Lyan (Lyons, 1923).Google Scholar

page 114 note 5 Goodchild, R., Cyrene and Apollonia (Libya, 1959), 73.Google Scholar

page 115 note 1 Kraeling, C. H. (ed.), Gerasa, City of the Decapolis (New Haven, 1938).Google Scholar

page 115 note 2 Poinssot, C., Les Ruines de Dougga (Tunis, 1958).Google Scholar

page 116 note 1 Saglio airily gives agger, axis, and χῶμα as synonyms of spina. He offers no evidence for any of them, and as Thesaurus and Lexicon are alike silent on the subject, it may safely be concluded that no such evidence exists.

page 116 note 2 Var, iii. 51.7.Google Scholar

page 116 note 3 The scholium, which is found in two ninth-century manuscripts, is in itself a curiosity. It is on vi. 588, ‘Plebeium in circo positum est et in aggere fatum’ (Juvenal is denouncing women who consult fortune-tellers in the Circus Maximus, which seems to have been one of their haunts). The scholium reads: ‘In circo, in spina.’ It is true that ancient scholiasts, no less than modern editors, were much given to writing notes explaining the obvious by the obscure, but this carries the practice to incredible lengths. Probably the original scholiast wrote, ‘In aggere, in spina’, and a copyist, assuming like all subsequent editors that by agger Juvenal meant the Agger of Servius Tullius (as in viii. 43 and in Horace, , Sat. i. 8. 15Google Scholar), transferred the note to ‘in circo’. If so, here is at least evidence for one of Saglio's synonyms.

page 116 note 4 Inscr. Pergamon 10.Google Scholar

page 118 note 1 How insensitive even the best modern authorities can be to the practical problems of racing is exemplified by Martin's comment on this arrangement in the Circus of Maxentius. He suggests that it was ‘peut-être accidentelle’.

page 120 note 1 The usual translation is ‘altar’. But Pausanias is clearly using the word βῶμος here in its original sense of a solidly constructed base. This is not a ἱερὸς βῶμος.

page 122 note 1 In a manuscript at Istanbul. Text in Jahrb. des arch. Inst. xii (1897), 153.Google Scholar

page 122 note 2 Thuc. vi. 16.

page 125 note 1 In Aristophanes' Clouds 25Google Scholar, Pheidippides, dreaming that he is driving in a chariotrace, calls out in his sleep: ‘You're cheating, Philon, stick to your own lane’—ἔλαυνε τὸν σαυτοῦ δρόμον.

page 125 note 2 Greek Athletes and Athletics (London, 1964), 66.Google Scholar