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Images on pottery show that chariot racing existed in thirteenth century BC Mycenaean Greece. [a] The first literary reference to a chariot race is in Homer's poetic account of the funeral games for Patroclus, in the Iliad, combining practices from the author's own time (c. 8th century) with accounts based on a legendary past.
The Funeral Games of Patroclus is a 1778 fresco by Jacques-Louis David.It shows the funeral games for Patroclus during Trojan War.. In epic poetry, athletics are used as literary tools to accentuate the themes of the epic, to advance the plot of the epic, and to provide a general historical context to the epic.
Diomedes first place prize is, "a woman skilled in all useful arts, and a three-legged cauldron". The chariot race is considered as the most prestigious competition in the funeral games and the most formal occasion for validating the status of the elite. [19] In this way Diomedes asserts his status as the foremost Achaean hero after Achilles.
King Oenomaus decides the only way for him to marry his daughter is to take part in a chariot race that has killed many other suitors. Pelops asks a favor of Poseidon to bestow upon him a chariot fast enough to bring him victory. Poseidon granted him a golden chariot and winged horses. With this chariot, Pelops won the race and was able to ...
A supposed epithet Zeus Moiragetes, meaning "Zeus Leader of the Moirai" was inferred by Pausanias from an inscription he saw in the 2nd century AD at Olympia: "As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription to the Bringer of Fate.
At the two ends of the spina were the two curves of the course (called metae), and there, as in Greek races, spectacular collisions and accidents occurred. Accidents that resulted in the destruction of chariots and serious injuries to horses and charioteers were called naufragia, the same term for shipwrecks. The course of the race was also ...
This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', explaining the concept of agon(y) in tragedy by its fundamental characters, the protagonist and antagonist.
Procession of two-horses chariots on a loutrophoros, c. 690 BC. The earliest reference to a chariot race in Western literature is an event in the funeral games of Patroclus in the Iliad. [4] In Homeric warfare, elite warriors were transported to the battlefield in two-horse chariots, but fought on foot; the chariot was then used for pursuit or ...