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THE HISTORY OF THE TURF.

ITS ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND PRESENT CONDITION:

WITH NOTICES OF THE LEADING CHARACTERS CONNECTED WITH IT FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS: PORTRAITS OF CELEBRATED HORSES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN DAYS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MOST INTERESTING EVENTS IN THE ANNALS OF RACING.

BY "CRAVEN."

CHAPTER THE SECOND: THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

THIS renowned Festival is of an antiquity so remote as to have defied all attempts to ascertain the era of its origin. By many it has been considered contemporary with the golden age, while others attribute its institution to Pelops, about two hundred years previous to the Trojan war. Our business with it, however, does not commence for many centuries later. Subsequent to the destruction of Troy, all traces of the great ceremonial of Olympia are lost, until its restoration by Iphitus, about eight hundred years B. c. By him it was reduced to a regular system by the establishment of the Olympiad, thus giving it a principle of life and duration, which enabled it to survive the laws, customs, and liberties of Greece. Still we do not find either chariotracing, or horse-racing forming part of these games till a century after their re-institution, a singular fact, from the great celebrity of those exercises in the traditional history of that country. It was not until the 25th Olympiad that the chariot-race was revived, as part of the Olympic ceremonies; the horse-race being of still later adoption, namely in the 33rd Olympiad.

Without any actual knowledge of the cause of such delay, we may fairly attribute it to a scarcity of horses which, if it did not exist all over the civilized world at that period, certainly prevailed in the whole commonwealth of Greece. At the siege of Troy, where the Greeks had an army of 100,000 men, they were either so scarce of horses, or so ignorant of the use of them, that they had no cavalry-a few chariots, more instruments of ostentation than engines of war, being the sum of that force brought by them to the banks of the Scamander. Indeed long after the Trojan war, and the restoration of the great Olympic Festival, we find Greece almost without horses. Pausanias tells us that neither the Lacedæmonians nor the Peloponnesians made any use of them till after the second Messenian war-when first horsemanship became a portion of the education of their youth. The Athenians were also in a similar condition. To remedy this evil, Solon instituted an order in Athens, which consisted of such as were able to "furnish out a horse," to whom he allotted the second rank in the state. Still so little was effected by this, that at the battle of Marathon, where they were opposed to an enemy chiefly consisting of horse, they were utterly destitute of cavalry; and in the most glorious era of their commonwealth, that in which the expulsion of the Persians was accomplished, they could only boast a cavalry force of three hundred horse.

Thus, while there is just reason to assign, to this scarcity, the tardy introduction of horse-racing among the exercises of the Olympic

VOL. II.

B

games-so was the proverbial wisdom of that people eminently evinced by the manner in which it was introduced. Greece needed horses; it was therefore essential to adopt and promote some scheme that might give an impulse to the production of them. To this end no efforts were spared to invest the chariot-races, upon their institution, or revival in the great national Festival at Elis, with unusual pomp and circumstance. They at once assumed the place of honour, and such was the glory which attached to those imperial contests, that to be vanquished in them was esteemed more honourable than to be the victor in less noble triumphs :

"non tam

Turpe fuit vinci, quam contendisse decorum."

The prize offered was one that appealed alone to spirits of a generous and exalted ambition. It was the chaplet of wild olive, to be contended for in the presence of all Greece, that drew within the Olympic Hippodrome the most renowned of all her citizens. The simple wreath, twined from the green emblem of peace, saw Athens sending forth her Alcibiades, Macedon her Alexander, to an arena whose conquests were valued beyond all price--whose spoils were the soul-breathed offerings of assembled nations.

As with us, so among the Greeks, the business of the course was principally executed by deputy, a proof of the excellence of their policy. None were prohibited from driving their own chariots, neither were any required to contend in person. All the exercises, introduced into the ceremonies observed on the return of each Olympiad at Elis, were instituted for the purpose of assisting some civil object. The chariot-races had for their end the improvement and extended production of the horse in all the Grecian states. There was excellent wisdom, therefore, in exempting the great and powerful from the necessity of exposing themselves personally to the risk of those encounters. That some idea may be formed of the manner in which these races were conducted, and the nature of the course over which they were run, I subjoin, from Pausanias, a description of the Olympic Hippodrome at Elis.

"As you pass out of the Stadium, by the seat of the Hellanodicks, into the place appointed for the horse-races, you come to the barrier, where the horses and chariots rendezvous before they enter into the course. This barrier, in its figure, resembles the prow of a ship, with the rostrum or beak turned towards the course: the other end is very broad. At the extremity of the rostrum or beak, over a bar that runs across the entrance, is placed a figure of a dolphin in brass. On the two sides of this barrier, each of which is above four hundred feet in length, are built stands or lodges, as well for the riding horses as for the chariots, which are distributed by lot among the competitors in those races; and before all these lodges is stretched a cable, from one end to the other, to serve the purpose of a barrier. About the middle of the prow is erected an altar, built of unburnt brick, which every Olympiad is plastered over with fresh mortar; and upon the altar stands a bronze eagle, which spreads out its wings to a great length. This eagle, by means of a machine which is put in motion by the president of the horse-races, is made to mount up at once into the air to

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