SOLON 
It is only natural, Anacharsis, that what they are
doing should have that appearance to you, since it is
unfamiliar and very much in contrast with Seythian
customs. In like manner you yourselves probably
have much io your education and training which
would appear strange to us Greeks if one of us
should look in upon it as you are doing now. But
have no fear, my dear sir; it is not insanity, and it is
not out of brutality that they strike one another and
tumble each other in the mud, or sprinkle each other
with dust. The thing has a certain usefulness, not
unattended by pleasure, and it gives much strength
to their bodies. As a matter of fact, if you stop for
some time, as I think you will, in Greece, before long
you yourself will be one of the muddy or dusty set ;
so delightful and at the same time so profitable will
the thing seem to you.
 ANACHARSIS 
Get out with you, Solon! You Greeks may have
those benefits and pleasures. For my part, if one of
you should treat me like that, he will find out that
we do not carry these daggers at our belts for
nothing!

 

But tell me, what name do you give to
these performances? What are we to say they are
doing?
 SOLON 
The place itself, Anacharsis, we call a gymnasium,
and it is consecrated to Lyceian Apollo; you see his
statue—the figure leaning against the pillar, with the
bow in his left hand; his right arm bent back above

 

his head indicates that the god is resting, as if after
long exertion.

 

As for these forms of athletics, that
one yonder in the mud is called wrestling, and the
men in the dust are wrestling too. When they stand
upright and strike one another, we call it the pancratium. Solon’s statement is not quite full enough. The pancratium included not only boxing, but kicking and wrestling, and was practised not only upright but on the ground. fi was a rough and tumble affair, in which only gouging and biting were barred. Some, at least, of the wrestlers in the mud were engaged, strictly speaking, in the pancratium, as the choking and striking show. . We have other such athletic exercises,
too—boxing, throwing the discus, and jumping—
in all of which we hold contests, and the winner is
considered best in his class and carries off the prizes.

 ANACHARSIS 
And these prizes of yours, what are they?

 SOLON 
At the Olympic games, a wreath made of wild
olive, at the Isthmian one of pine, and at the
Nemean one of parsley, at the Pythian some of the
apples sacred to Apollo, and with us at the
Panathenaea, the oil from the holy olive. The one planted on the Acropolis by Athena. As to the prize in the Pythia, it may have been apples before the reorganization of the games in 586. But in that year the competition had prizes “in kind,” spoils of the Crisaean war (χρηματίτης ἀπὸ λαφύρων: Marmor Parium) ; and from 582 it was orepavirns, like the other three Panhellenic Festivals, with a wreath of laurel. What
made you laugh, Anacharsis? Because you think
these prizes trivial ?
 ANACHARSIS 
No, the prizes that you have told off are absolutely
imposing, Solon; they may well cause those who
have offered them to glory in their munificence and
the contestants themselves to be tremendously eager



 

to carry off such guerdons, so that they will go
through all these preliminary hardships and risks,
getting choked and broken in two by one another,
for apples and parsley, as if it were not possible for
anyone who wants them to get plenty of apples
without any trouble, or to wear a wreath of parsley
or of pine without having his face bedaubed with
mud or letting himself be kicked in the belly by
his opponent !

 SOLON 
But, my dear fellow, it is not the bare gifts that
we have in view! They are merely tokens of the
victory and marks to identify the winners. But the
reputation that goes with them is worth everything
to the victors, and to attain it, even to be kicked is
nothing to men who seek to capture fame through
hardships. Without hardships it cannot be acquired ;
the man who covets it must put up with many unpleasantnesses in the beginning before at last he can
expect the profitable and delightful outcome of his
exertions,
 ANACHARSIS 
By this delightful and profitable outcome, Solon,
you mean that everybody will see them wearing
wreaths and will applaud them for their victory after
having pitied them a long time beforehand for their
hard knocks, and that they will be felicitous to have
apples and parsley in compensation for their hardships !
 SOLON 
You are still unacquainted with our ways, I tell
you. After a little you will think differently about

 

them, when you go to the games and see that great
throng of people gathering to look at such spectacles,
and amphitheatres filling that will hold thousands, and
the contestants applauded, and the one among them
who succeeds in winning counted equal to the gods.