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We are at a loss to explain how the boy, killed while still a baby,
came to be known as "wrestler" and shared honors with Poseidon as
patron of the Isthmian Games. His temple was a small circular structure»
underneath which there was a crypt where - Pausanias tells us - men
descended to take their oaths; and so sacred was this ritual that no
perjurer could ever escape punishment. Here we may be sure the athletes
had to descend and take a second oath before they were admitted to
the games. The arrangements within the crypt were designed to strike
terror in the minds of those who went down to swear in the name of
Palaimon. In a narrow channel, which curved so as to shut out all
light, the athletes and the priests administering the oath would stand
in total darkness in the presence of the deified hero. For Pausanias
tells us that Palaimon's tomb was in the crypt beneath the temple.
This was a pious belief based on no actual remains. Since the temple
is built over the Earlier Stadium, no grave is likely to have existed at
this point, nor have we found anything resembling a burial. But the
awesomness of the place was apparantly emphasized by filling the
passage to a certain height with water. This we know from the fact that
its floor and walls are covered with a thick watertight stucco such as
is commonly used only for water proofing cisterns. We can picture the
athletes standing in water up to their knees in the murky crypt listening
to the priests as they repeated the archaic formulas of the oath and the
punishments that would follow upon perjury.
The area in the front of the temple had been devoted to the nightly
ceremonies in honor of Palaimon. Here we found hundreds of lamps,
some of them small clay vessels carried by the worshippers in their
hands; others large bowls, with a wick holder in the center of the lamps,
unlike any found in any other sanctuary of Greece. Lamps of the same
type in considerable numeers came out of the sacrificial pits described
above. Together with the lamps we discovered in the largest of the three
pits the fragments of more than 600 coarse pottery containers, a little
larger than a modern water glass. Being so numerous, their presence
in the pit is not accidental; they would have been thrown in on purpose
as part of the ritual. They were probably used as containers for offerings
of olive oil, which the participants brought as fuel for the flames.
Here we have the evidence for an impressive ceremony held during
the night. The sanctuary of Palaimon and the surrounding area would
have been lit up by numerous lamps, set out on the ground or carried
in the hands of the worshippers, and by the fire in the sacrificial pits,
the flames of which were fed by wooden logs and by the olive oil which
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