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

228 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ch.
Olympia, the sun drove in his chariot and the moon rode her
horse : she is Hippodameia, the horse-rider 1 .
The chariot-drive of Pelops and Hippodameia, itself a flight
rather than a race, was however connected by tradition with the
historic chariot-races at Olympia. We have evidence too that the
chariot-races of the Roman circus were associated with the courses
of the heavenly bodies.
Cassiodorus 2 , a sixth century writer, tells us that the Roman
Circus represented the change of seasons, and the courses of the
Sun and Moon. The two-horse chariot-race represented the
course of the moon, the four-horse chariot-race that of the sun.
Lydus 3 mentions that the Circus Maximus at Rome contained
altars of the planet gods. Below the pyramid of the Sun stood
altars of the Moon, Mercury and Venus ; above it, altars of Saturn,
Jupiter, and Mars. Tertullian 4 says that the whole circus was
dedicated to the Sun.
So, at Olympia itself, the twelve rounds of the chariot-race
— 5
SaySeKdyvafiTrTos as Pindar calls it—may well have represented
the course of the Sun through the twelve signs. In the hippo-
drome the pillar which marked the starting-point had beside it an
altar of the Heavenly Twins". At the starting-point of the foot-
races in the Stadium stood the tomb of Endymion, the sinking
Sun who married Selene the Moon 7 . The most cautious scholars
accept Boeckh's view that the fifty daughters of this marriage are
the fifty moon months of the Olympiad.
We have thus disentangled two elements in the complex story
of Pelops and Oinomaos, as told by Pindar. The marriage of the
sun and moon must clearly be coeval with the reconstitution of the
Games '
on a grander scale ' associated with ' Pelops ' ; and pre-
sumably this reconstitution meant the reform of the calendar by
1 Paus. v. 11. 8. Stone images of the Sun with rays and the Moon with horns
stood in the market-place of Elis, Paus. vi. 24. 6.
2 Var. Ep. iii. 51 Biga quasi lunae, quadriga solis imitatione reperta est...
Obeliscorum quoque prolixitates ad caeli altitudinem sublevantur; sed potior soli,
inferior lunae dicatus est.
3 De mensibus 1, pp. 4 and 12.
4 De sped. 8 Circus Soli principaliter consecratur, cuius aedes in medio spatio
et effigies de fastigio aedis emicat...quadrigas Soli, bigas Lunae sanxerunt. See
Roscher, Lex., s.v. Mondgottin, col. 3182.
5 01. n. 50.
6 Pind. 01. in. 36. Paus. v. 15.
" Paus. vi. 20. 9.