How the Pentathlon Was Won: Two Pragmatic Models and the Evidence of Philostratus (original) (raw)

F-A THOUS.HO ? ? MO?,, a? d.?F?-helW teM. ,nd ? numerous lesser games, the ancient Greeks held competitions in the pentathlon. There is nowhere even a hint of a suggestion that they had any difficulty determining winners in the event. By contrast, many modern scholars have demonstrated, or confessed to, bewilderment on that point as new theories or mutations on theories have proliferated over the past several generations without leading to any definitive answer.1 At the present time continuing attempts at solution seem to vie with an attitude of resigned agnosticism over this "perennial puzzle of Greek sport history," as Mark Golden has recently called it.2 Stephen Miller echoes with the concession that "We shall probably never know how the pentathlon victor was determined."3 Ancient informants, to be sure, are not very helpful, having left only a scattering of vague data which, if not inherently inconsistent, has been inconsistently interpreted, as the accumulating recent bibliography on the subject shows.4 Much of the theorizing to date supplements the sparse ancient testimony with speculation based on modern contests such as the decathlon, but unknown and hardly plausible in an ancient context. There is, for instance, no ancient evidence to suggest that the Greeks ever employed a point system such as some scholars attribute to them, nor is there any ancient basis for the hypothesis that they had something like the modern rep?chage, a procedure whereby non-winners in a first attempt are allowed a second attempt in order to qualify for victory. From everything we know, second-place finishers in Greek athletic contests usually got nothing better than dishonorable mention.5 In general, moreover, some of the currently competing theories involve procedures that seem intrinsically improbable in their complexity. Theories based on such "accounting operations" were already rife eighty years ago when E. Pavlinis inveighed against them, unsuccessfully.6 A full review of such theories will not be undertaken now, but a couple of relatively 1In Kyle's (1990: 291) gruesome metaphor, "extensive bibliography has been feeding off itself." 2 Golden 2004:130.