download - IOA

a stone sill at the base of the triangle, and at the end of each groove
there is a cutting in the sill for a vertical post to which the starting gate
was hinged. When the starter let go one of the cords, a wooden bar
went down so as to open the gate. This is the type of starting gate called
balbides, and by good fortune one of the ancient commentators on the
Knights of Aristophanes gives us a discription which made it possible
to identify the starting device. What he says is this: "Balbis is the name
of a transverse piece of wood at the beginning of the race-course.
It is also called apheteria, that is starting line.After the runners are ready
for the race they remove it, (in other words, let it down) and permit
the runners to start the race." Nowhere in the many stadia excavated
in Greece had any example of this intricate form of starting gate come
to light until our excavations uncovered part of the Earlier Stadium
at Isthmia. It is somewhat reminiscent of the starting gates in the Olympic
Hippodrome, which Pausanias compared to the prow of a ship.
How does this type of starting gate relate to the torch races? Since the
sixteen gates could be operated individually, they cannot have been
intented always to be opened simultaneously. The only known type of
race in which the runners started individually is the relay race,and
for such contests the balbides which I have described, admirably served
the purpose. The starter standing in the pit would operate all the gates.
Perhaps the strings were somehow attached to a type of trap, called
hysplanx, so that all he had to do was to push the trigger in the trap
by which the cord was held taut. At stated intervals he would spring
one of the traps on either side of the starting pit until all sixteen runners
were in the field. This would permit teams of eight or fewer athletes to
compete in a body against each other. Possibly the runners had to come
back to the starting gates after running the length of two stades, or
approximately 400 yards. The stadium with the balbides is the earlier
of two stadia at Isthmia, and only one end of it is preserved. In its
earliest form it probably goes back to the sixth century B. C. It was
rebuilt, most likely in the fifth century B.C., and it was probably at
that time that the balbides were installed. At a later period, we do not
know just when, this elaborate form of starting gates was abandoned
and the stone pavement covered over with a hard layer of white clay,
the leukege used for surfacing the race course. At that time a more common
form of starting line, but with a single groove, was inserted.
We now come to the Later Stadium at Isthmia, which is one of
the best preserved and most interesting buildings of its kind in Greece.
The Earlier Stadium at Isthmia, as here at Olympia, was partly within
the sacred precinct, very close to the altar and Temple of Poseidon.
183