The Isthmian Games were the same as those at Olympia, of which we furnish a brief outline for the information of those who feel an interest in the sporting annals of antiquity.
During the first thirteen Olympiads, the only game was the foot-race, of which the spectators and the competitors, but especially the latter, if they selected it as their walk of life, must have been at last thoroughly tired. Wrestling was next introduced under the name of πάλη, or Lucta; and though wrestlers have for centuries been endeavouring to throw each other, they have not yet fallen to the ground, for they still maintain a footing in the sports and pastimes of our own people. Next came the Pentathlon, a sort of five-in-one, which comprised, in addition to the foot-race and wrestling, the practice of leaping, in which much vaulting ambition was displayed; and throwing of the discus, as well as of the spear--an exercise that required the utmost pitch of strength and dexterity. Subsequently boxing was introduced, under the name of Pugilatus, and it seems to have resembled pretty closely our own pugilistic encounters; for in ancient works of art we find the boxers represented with faces whose indentures witness their apprenticeship to the degrading trade they followed. The physicians of the period are said to have recommended boxing as a remedy for headache;[46] but this application of the theory of counter irritation is not adopted in modern practice. Another feature of the Olympian and Isthmian Games was the Pancratium, a contest calling for all the powers of the combatant. In this exercise biting and scratching were allowed--a disgraceful license which leaves us in no doubt as to the classical source whence the vulgar phrase of "going at it tooth and nail" is derivable. Horse and chariot races were also introduced, as well as contests of trumpeters, who dealt out blows of the most harmless description against each other.
[Illustration: Early Roman Gladiator and his Patron.]
Such were the games in which the Roman visitors to Corinth were allowed to take part; and we will now proceed to confer on the reader the privilege once peculiar to the inhabitants of Athens, by initiating him into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Their celebration lasted several days, the first of which was occupied in getting together the mystæ, or initiated, whose qualification consisted in their having sacrificed a sow--an act less worthy of a priest than of a pork-butcher. On the second day the mystæ went in solemn procession to the sea-coast, where they took a bath, by way of wetting the public curiosity. On the third day they went through the interesting ceremony of a fast, which, to the looker-on, must have been a somewhat slow process. The fourth day was devoted to the carrying about of a basket containing poppy seeds; and this literally seedy procession was closed by a number of women, each holding in her hand a mystic case, the contents of which were in no case allowed to be visible. On the fifth day the mystæ went, with lighted torches, to the temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, where they spent the night; but the torches throw no light upon what they were looking for. The sixth was the grandest day of all, and was employed in carrying about a statue of the son of Demeter; in whose honour the mysteries were held; because, when wandering about in search of her daughter, she had supplied corn--though nobody can say how she carried it about with her--to the inhabitants of Athens. During the night of this important day the mystæ were taken, in the dark, to see what nobody appears to have seen at all; and we are therefore spared the trouble of describing it. On the seventh day the initiated returned to Athens, and stopped on their way at a bridge over the Cephisus, from which they indulged in jests at the passers-by; and the obscurity of the jokes would, no doubt, if they had come down to us, have been thoroughly in keeping with the mysteries they were intended to celebrate.