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The Method of Deciding Victory in the Pentathlon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1972
References
page 60 note 1 SEG xi. 1215 = L. Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche (IAG) 8. Moretti has an excellent discussion of all the points involved. I differ from him only in taking another view of the way in which victory in the event was determined.
page 60 note 2 Luc. Anach. 2.
page 60 note 3 NH xxxv. 40. 139. In the Loeb edition of Pliny this is mistranslated ‘without raising any dust’, and the error is made worse by the unhappy footnote, ‘i.e. without any difficulty’.
page 60 note 4 Syll. 3 36 = IAG 21.
page 61 note 1 Pausanias v. n. 4.
page 61 note 2 Pausanias vi. 21. 13.
page 62 note 1 The sole authority is Julius Africanus sub anno. In his note occurs the word άκόντιον, which is meaningless in this context. άκονιτί seems certain.
page 62 note 2 For an account of Dioxippus see Harris, H. A., Greek Athletes and Athletics (London, 1964), 122 ff.Google Scholar
page 62 note 3 Phil. Gymn. 11.
page 62 note 4 e.g. Thuc. iv. 73; Dem. xv. 31, xviii. 200.
page 62 note 5 Xen. Ages. vi. 3.
page 62 note 6 Hor. Ep. i. 1. 51.
page 62 note 7 IGR iii. 70 = IAG 76.
page 63 note 1 JRS iii (1913), 267, no. 12.
page 63 note 2 Pausanias vi. I. 7.
page 64 note 1 Nem. vii. 72.