Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

214 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ch.
which ought to be the centre and core of the Olympian tradition,
that tradition is absolutely silent. Pindar 1 dates the Games from
the victory of Pelops over Oinomaos in the chariot-race, which
ended in the death of Oinomaos, not of Pelops. The Elean in-
formants of Pausanias' 2 had no tradition of any funeral games in
honour of that hero ; they traced the origin of the festival to a
higher antiquity, and said that ' Pelops celebrated the Games in
honour of Olympian Zeus in a grander way than all who had gone
before him.'
It is true that Pausanias says, 'the Eleans honour Pelops as
much above all the heroes of Olympia as they honour Zeus above
the rest of the gods'; and that a black ram was annually sacrificed
at his precinct 3 . Pausanias calls the enclosure a 'precinct' (Ve/ie-
vos), not a grave 4 . The German excavators have dug down to the
neolithic stratum, and no trace of any real interment, except a
neolithic baby, has been found 5 . Thus,
although the mound in this
precinct was, as early as Pindar's time, regarded as the barrow of
Pelops, there is no material evidence that any real chieftain was
ever buried there at all. The case of Pelops at Olympia is, more-
over, exceptionally favourable to the funeral theory. The 'dead
who were connected with the festivals at the other three centres of
panhellenic games 6 were not chieftains whose warlike deeds could
be commemorated. At Nemea the 'dead' who was honoured was
Archemoros, an infant; at the Isthmus, Glaukos, a sea-daemon;
at Pytho, a snake.
Further, whereas the games were held once in every four
years, the hero-sacrifices at the supposed tomb of Pelops were
annual, and we have no reason to believe that they were even held
at the same time of year.
It thus appears that the funeral theory, which would have the
whole Olympic festival originate in the obsequies of an actual
man called Pelops, is contradicted by the more ancient traditions
of Elis and unsupported by any monumental evidence. The field
is clear for an alternative theory which will take account of the
fact that the Games were believed to be older than the time of
1 01. i.
2 Paus. v. 8. 2.
3 Paus. v. 13. 1.
4 Cf. Schol. ad Pind. 0/. i. 149, rw&t