download - IOA

crificial purposes. Here we find far larger quantities of pebbles of the
same kind, always present wherever there is ash and burnt animal
bones from the sacrifices.
At the altar of Poseidon the Hellanodikai, the governing board,
as well as the athletes, had to sacrifice and swear an oath to the god
at the opening of the Isthmian Games. We know the device which the
Hellanodikai at Olympia used to prevent athletes from breaking the
oath to Zeus. Here at the entrance to the stadium stood a row of images
called Zanes, gleaming with gold and erected from fines imposed upon
errant athletes. We do not know whether there was any such deterrent
in use at Isthmia, but our excavations have revealed the vestiges of
other precautions which may have made fines unnecessary. These we
find in the Temple of Palaimon, a building of Roman times at the curved
end of the Earlier Stadium and constructed over the balbides, the complicated
starting gates that I described in my former lecture.
The cult of Palaimon may well have existed in some form in early
times, but all the material remains uncovered in our excavations are of
Roman date. Palaimon, which means wrestler, was the name given to
Melikertes, the son of Ino and grandson of Kadmos. According to the
myth he was drowned in the Saronic Gulf when his mother fled with
the baby in her arms to escape from her maddened husband Athamas.
After her leap into the sea Ino became deified and received the name
Leukothea, white goddess; and Melikertes' body was brought on the
back of a dolphin to the Isthmus and deposited on the shore. There
Sisyphos, then ruler of Corinth, found the dead body and in his honor
instituted the Isthmian Games as part of the funeral celebrations. Such
is the story of the Corinthians. The Athenians attributed the founding
of the games to their own hero Theseus who, on his memorable journey
from Troizen to Athens, slew Sinos, the Pithokamptos, (Pine Bender)
at the Isthmus and instituted the games in honor of his victory.
The earliest indications that we have of the cult of Palaimon comes
from three sacrificial pits which we discovered filled with ash, animal
bones, and pottery. Osteological analyses of the bones from these pits
have revealed that the animals were all young cattle, probably bulls.
The worship of Palaimon was in the nature of a funeral cult, and we
know from ancient writers that black bulls were offered to the hero.
And, unlike the sacrifices offered to the Olympic gods, the victims in
a cult of this king were burned whole (holocaust); none of the flesh was
consumed by the participants.
195