Games & Sport in the Epics of Homer & Vergil

 

Games & Sport in the Epics of Homer & Vergil

            In his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, English writer James Hilton tells the story of the remote and mythical Shangri-La, a lamasery located in a lush and verdant valley hidden away in the frozen wilderness of the Kuen-Lun mountain range in Tibet. An elderly monk named Chang tells Conway, the leader of a group of plane crash survivors, that the people of the valley live in peace and harmony and that they embrace moderation in all things. They would not, for example, consider taking to the field and engaging in team sports like the English, for they would find such an activity barbarous and a depiction and glorification of warfare. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were a warlike society and embraced sports and games for just those very reasons. In the epics of Homer and Vergil we find several examples of sports and games bring presented in all their glory and sometimes in all their brutality. Man could achieve ‘kleos’ (honour & glory) by performing great acts in warfare and he could also do so by excelling in the combat of sports. In this context, sports and athletic games in the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid are more than recreational endeavours. They are acts of simulated warfare and a platform for demonstrating the skills that are essential for winning battles.

            Using sports as a metaphor for warfare is as old as sports and warfare are themselves. We see the push and shove of opposing teams on the sports field in the same light as the clash of opposing armies on the battle field. We often find high school and university athletic teams named Trojans, Spartans, Knights, Raiders, Rangers, Warriors or Guardians. In some sports like ice hockey, Irish hurling or certain martial arts, the players even carry simulated weapons. In other sports like curling or bocce ball, team members attempt to lob simulated cannon balls or rocks into the opponent’s territory. Coaches are viewed as generals and team captains lead the charge against the ‘enemy’ squad. Boxing and wrestling and the martial arts are not dissimilar to the hand-to-hand fighting that we see when warriors clash. Sports have often been used as a means to prepare young men for military service. They are taught valuable team fighting strategies through serving on both the offensive and defensive sides and they develop personal fighting skills by engaging in one-on-one athletic competitions.

            In this paper we wish to focus primarily on the organized sports games and competitions that are presented in the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid, but it should be noted that there are several instances of personal hand-to-hand fighting featured in all three epics. The major one-on-one duels fought in the Iliad include the battle between Achilles and Hector and the subsequent death of Hector is central to the story that Homer tells. The fight between Menelaus and Paris over the return of Helen, is interrupted by the intervention of the goddess Aphrodite, who snatches Paris from the fight just as Menelaus is about to defeat him. Hector and Ajax agree to a contest of strength before the main battle, but night comes and they agree to a temporary truce. Patroclus slew Sarpedon, the great Trojan warrior, and Homer tells us that when Patroclus withdrew the spear that was embedded in his body, his spirit flew out with it. All of these personal fights in the Iliad are viewed as tests of prowess and strength and therefore can be seen as sporting in nature.

            Personal duels in the Odyssey take on a different light. They are seen not so much as athletic tests of strength and therefore somewhat sporting in nature, but rather as examples of rage and revenge displayed by the perpetrators. The slaughter of the arrogant suitors by Odysseus, his son Telemachus and his cattle-herder Philoetius are all described in vivid and lurid detail by the author and sportsmanship is the last thing that would come to mind when reading the accounts. Likewise the blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus by Odysseus is a brutal attack, and having the hero brag openly about the deed and taunt the victim can in no way be seen as sporting.

            Most of the one-on-one combats presented by Vergil in the Aeneid serve to highlight the heroic qualities of the hero Aeneas and his superiority, and therefore to give credence to the rationale for choosing him to become the founder of the new Roman civilization, the successor to the Trojan dynasty. There are many personal duels related in the epic but the central battle is the final one between Aeneas and Turnus. Vergil leads us to this point through the twelve books of the political propaganda that is the Aeneid. Aeneas kills Turnus in one-on-one fighting, the war is concluded, and the destiny of the Trojan hero Aeneas is fulfilled as he is solidified as the founder of Rome.

            Both individual and team athletic events are featured in the funeral games held by Achilles in honour of his friend Patroclus which we find in Book XXIII of Homer’s Iliad. The same is true of the games which the Phaeacian King Alcinous hosts for Odysseus that are described in Book VIII of the Odyssey. In Book V of Vergil’s Aeneid, we find the hero Aeneas organizing similar games in honour of his deceased father Anchises. Unlike the games hosted by King Alcinous, which were held to showcase the prowess of the Phaeacians for the travelling hero Odysseus, the other two sets of games presented in the epics of Homer and Vergil were funeral games. The celebration of a deceased person’s life by holding funeral games was a common occurrence in many ancient societies. The purpose of such games was twofold. In the first place, the games were meant to honor the dead and secondly, they were intended to propitiate the spirit of the deceased and to ensure that it was safely escorted to the underworld and freed from roaming the world and potentially doing harm to the living.

            Achilles and the Myrmidons treated the body of the slain Patroclus with much respect by purifying it and then placing it on a specially built funeral pyre. After his body had been consumed by the flames, the bones of Patroclus were placed in a golden urn and sealed with fat. The men then erected a barrow to honour their slain comrade and moved in sadness back towards their encampment.

“But Achilles restrained the men and had them sit down in a wide assembly and from his tents he gathered prizes for contests, cauldrons and tripods and horses and mules and strong oxen and well-girdled women and grey iron.”

            The funeral games in honour of Patroclus, which were hosted by Achilles, were about to begin. The hero offered rich prizes to all who participated in the events with the most magnificent prizes being allocated to the winners. There were eight events in all, including chariot races, boxing, wrestling, foot races, sword fighting, weight throwing, archery and javelin throwing. Homer gives us a lengthy description of the chariot race in Book XXIII of the Iliad, spanning almost 60% of the 700 lines that he devotes to the funeral games in total. This is a story of a competition filled with action and excitement, divine intervention, intimidation as well as trickery and accusations of cheating. It is one of the author’s finest pieces of writing and the tale told would have kept Homer’s audience on the edge of their seats. Just think of the excitement that was generated when we watched the chariot race in the movie Ben Hur and multiply it threefold.

            The other seven events featured in the funeral games of Patroclus pale in comparison to the chariot race and Homer devotes far less attention to each of them. However, all the contests do serve to highlight the skills of each of the contestants and to paint a picture of all of them as heroes on the playing field and therefore also on the battlefield. Homer describes all the entrants in glowing terms and points out their stature, skill, braggadocio, heroism and bravery. We watch in awe as the best of the best compete with each other for the glory of achieving great honours, while their comrades-in-arms watch on from the sidelines as their companions engage in boxing and wrestling matches, foot races, sword fighting, archery, shot-putting and javelin throwing. The contestants display physical strength, endurance, speed, accuracy, strategy and other skills essential for winning on both the sports field and the battlefield.

            Homer includes the gods in the funeral games of Patroclus, thereby positioning the contests and the prowess of the participants on an even higher level. The involvement of the gods is far from being nonpartisan. During the chariot race, Apollo knocks the whip out of the hands of Diomedes and Athena gives it back to him. She then shatters the yoke on the chariot being driven by Eumelus. Athena then helps Odysseus win the footrace by causing Ajax to stumble. Finally, Teucer is relegated to second place in the archery contest because he failed to offer a prayer to Apollo before the match. The point that Homer makes by having the gods interfere with the games, is that the Achaean heroes are so strong, mighty and skillful that only the intervention of the gods themselves can overcome their abilities.

            In Book VIII of the Odyssey, Homer describes the Phaeacian games hosted by King Alcinous of Scheria. This island kingdom was the last stop in the ten year journey that Odysseus undertook before his final return to his home in Ithaca. These were not funeral games but instead were conducted by the Phaeacians to demonstrate to Odysseus their people’s excellence in a number of areas, so that the travelling hero could spread the word about their prowess after he returned home. The Phaeacians engage in far fewer games than those that were featured at the funeral games of Patroclus. Homer does not devote nearly as much attention to the games in Scheria as he did in the Iliad to those conducted at Troy. King Alcinous tells his people,

“Listen to me leaders and counsellors of the Phaeacians now that we have sated ourselves equally with a banquet and the lyre that has accompanied our great feast. So now let us go and make a contest of all kinds of games, so that this stranger can tell all his friends when he returns home how superior all of us are in boxing, wrestling, jumping and foot races.”

            After the games were concluded, Laodamus, the son of King Alcinous, challenges Odysseus to participate and through his words Homer reveals the true purpose of games and sport to the Greeks.

“Come now father stranger and try out our contests if you know any of them. You must know about contests for there is no greater glory that a man can achieve than what he is able to do with just his hands and his feet. So just give it a try and disperse the cares from your heart.”

            Odysseus accepts his challenge and amazes the Phaeacians with his performance and as he engages is the various sports, he also reminds them of his prowess on the battlefield. The challenge issued by the king’s son has touched him deeply and he must perform well to maintain his honour in his own eyes as well as in those of his hosts.

“You have stirred up the soul in my breast by speaking out of turn, for I am not unpractised in sports, as you have said, but I was always among the best when I trusted in my youthfulness and my hands. But now I am constrained by evils and by pain for I have endured much, passing through the wars of men and grievous waves. But despite this, though I have suffered much, I will attempt your contests, for your words have bitten my heart and your speech urges me on.”

            The most significant competition comes at the end of the Odyssey. Penelope’s arrogant suitors face the challenge of first stringing an ancient bow belonging to Odysseus and then shooting an arrow through the holes in the heads of twelve axes that are lined up. It would require a person of incredible strength to string the bow and only the most skilled archer would be able to accomplish the outstanding feat of shooting through the twelve axes. Of course the suitors fail miserably at the task at hand and it takes the likes of the hero Odysseus to perform the feat. He is cleverly disguised as a wretched beggar and this places even greater shame on those who have failed in the competition.

The much-enduring godlike Odysseus rejoiced greatly that the son of Cronos of the crooked counsel had sent him a sign and he quickly took an arrow which was sitting there on the table alone, while all the others were stored in the hollow quiver, even those that were soon to be destined for the Achaeans. He set the arrow on the hand grip and drew back the notched arrow and the string while still seated in his chair and he let fly the arrow with sure aim and it did not miss the hole in the handle of the first axe and it went through all of them and the arrow tipped with bronze came out the other side.

But the crafty Odysseus stripped off his tattered garments and sprang to the great threshold with the bow and the quiver full of arrows and poured out the arrows onto the ground by his feet and then spoke to the suitors. “So now this decisive contest has been concluded, but there is one more target to hit, and no man has ever done it, but I will try and if I happen to be successful, then Apollo grant me the object of my prayer.”

His first arrow strikes Antinous in the throat as he brings down black doom on those who would rob him of his wife, his son and his kingdom. The winner of the contest wins the battle and once more sport is a metaphor for warfare.

About 700-800 years after Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, Vergil penned his epic Latin poem the Aeneid. It tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas who escapes from burning Troy and travels over the seas to found Rome. It is comprised of twelve books with the first six describing the wanderings of Aeneas from Troy to Italy, and the final six detailing the war which Aeneas and the Trojans wage on the Latins in their victorious attempt to found their new Roman realm. At the risk of offending the world’s Vergil scholars, let me say that, in my opinion, the Aeneid is for the most part pure political propaganda and its author Vergil was a sycophant of the Emperor Augustus.

Augustus commissioned Vergil to create a work to help unite the country after a period of civil war, to build pride in the nation, to glorify its past and its future and to bring a sense of legitimacy to the reign of Augustus. The empire and the emperor were new and Augustus needed a way to position himself firmly with the Roman people as the rightful ruler heading up a new form of government, formed after the abolishment of the Republic. Vergil was an established writer, having already created the Eclogues and the Georgics, and from within these works Augustus saw the leanings of the sort of writer who he felt could create the epic needed to position himself and his rule favorably with the Roman people.

The Romans admired the Greeks greatly and copied their art, architecture, philosophy and literature. Many regions of the Roman domain, principally southern Italy and Sicily, had first been settled by Greek colonists. Southern Italy had been called Magna Graecia and ruins of some of the finest Greek temples can still be found there. Homer’s famous epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were widely known and were considered two of the basic texts to be studied for a good education. They were culturally and morally significant to the Romans and Vergil must have felt that he need look no farther than Homer for inspiration when contemplating a national epic for Augustus.

Vergil was more than inspired by Homer, he outright copied him. The first six books of the Aeneid deal with the fortunes and misfortunes of a wandering hero who has just taken part in the Trojan War. That sounds awfully similar to Homer’s Odyssey. The final six books cover the wars fought between competing peoples. Remind you of the Iliad perhaps?

But let us return to the subject of this paper, Games & Sport in the Epics of Homer & Vergil. We have looked closely at the funeral games of Patroclus in the Iliad and the Phaeacian games in the Odyssey. Did Vergil also include sports games and contests in the Aeneid? Of course he did, and the likely reason that he did so was because Homer included them in his works. In Book V of the Aeneid we are presented with the funeral games that Aeneas held to honour his dead father Anchises. He had died the year before and was buried on the slope of Mount Eryx in Sicily. In many respects, the funeral games of Anchises mirror the funeral games of Patroclus but with a few differences. Vergil has fewer events in his games than Homer and all contestants in both works receive prizes, no matter their order of finish.

The first contest that Homer presents is a chariot race, but Vergil substitutes a boat race since Aeneas had a fleet of ships but no chariots. Similar mishaps occur in both contests. The next event that Vergil covers is a footrace and once again, as was the case with Homer’s race, we see a runner stumble. Vergil’s third competition is a boxing match and it is described in much the same way as the boxing match in the Iliad. The most profound similarity between the two works is found in Vergil’s description of his final event, the archery contest. The two contests are virtually the same, with a ship’s mast being erected and a fluttering bird tied to the top of it for a target, a marksman hitting the rope and freeing the bird, and another striking it in midair. The final contest in the Aeneid is a display of horsemanship and with this event in particular, one can see the obvious attempt by the author to equate sports and games with war.

Like Homer, Vergil uses the funeral games to highlight the skills and the prowess of the participants. The games are symbolic and Vergil uses them to connect the Romans with the ancient Greeks and to build a sense of pride among the people for the Roman nation and its leader. It is clear throughout the Aeneid that the emperor Augustus is foreshadowed by the character Aeneas. Aeneas is referred to throughout the text as the ‘pious’ Aeneas and as ‘father’ Aeneas and Vergil makes solid the link between both of Rome’s ‘founders’, Aeneas and Augustus. Vergil has rewritten history and has used Homer to help him do so.

The sports and games that are featured in the three epics go on to become integral parts of both the Greek and Roman societies. In Greece, the Panhellenic Games were held in a number of different locations and sacred sites in honour of various gods. The Olympic Games in Olympia were held in honour of Zeus, as were the Nemean Games held in Nemea. The Pythian Games in Delphi honoured Apollo and the Isthmian Games in Isthmia were sacred to Poseidon. These were the major games of ancient Greece but there were countless others held in many locations. Perhaps Homer included games in the Iliad because they were the talk of the town when he composed the Iliad. It is generally thought that the Iliad was written sometime between 700-800 B.C. The first known Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C. and one can assume that they were big news at the time. A general truce was declared throughout the whole country and athletic heroes were celebrated everywhere. Perhaps Homer simply plucked a story from the daily headlines and included it in his narrative.

The tradition of holding sports games also persisted in Roman society but not to the same extent as with the Greeks. The tradition of holding games like the Panhellenic Games was never established there and Roman games became more brutal than sportsmanlike. Games held in the early years of the Republic held some religious significance but their place was soon taken over by secular games that were held purely for entertainment and spectacle. Chariot races, mock naval battles, gladiator games, animal slaughter and public executions all served the increasing bloodlust of the attendees in ancient Rome. The ancient Greeks expanded their games to include poetry and drama competitions. The Romans instead chose to add the killing of Christians by wild animals.