Notes on the Greek Foot Race

Abstract

The recent discoveries at Olympia, Epidaurus, and Delphi have forced us to modify the old idea of the Greek race course based on the stadium of Athens and the Roman circus. It may perhaps be useful shortly to state the evidence which we now possess.Running is the most universal, the oldest of all forms of sport, and the primitive form of a race is that which the competitors run from one point to another—the germ of the stadium or straight race—or where they race round some distant object and back to the starting place—the germ of the diaulos and other turning races, as the Greeks call them (κάμπειοι) This simple type of race, which we may see to-day at school treats and rustic meetings, requires no apparatus but two posts, stones, or other objects to mark the starting point, and the finish, or turning point; and it is this primitive type that we find in Homer.