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As for these forms of athletics, that one yonder in the mud is called wrestling, and the men in the dust are wrestling too. When they stand upright and strike one another, we call it the pancratium.Solon’s statement is not quite full enough. The pancratium included not only boxing, but kicking and wrestling, and was practised not only upright but on the ground. fi was a rough and tumble affair, in which only gouging and biting were barred. Some, at least, of the wrestlers in the mud were engaged, strictly speaking, in the pancratium, as the choking and striking show. . We have other such athletic exercises, too—boxing, throwing the discus, and jumping— in all of which we hold contests, and the winner is considered best in his class and carries off the prizes.
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ANACHARSIS And these prizes of yours, what are they?
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SOLON At the Olympic games, a wreath made of wild olive, at the Isthmian one of pine, and at the Nemean one of parsley, at the Pythian some of the apples sacred to Apollo, and with us at the Panathenaea, the oil from the holy olive.The one planted on the Acropolis by Athena. As to the prize in the Pythia, it may have been apples before the reorganization of the games in 586. But in that year the competition had prizes “in kind,” spoils of the Crisaean war (χρηματίτης ἀπὸ λαφύρων: Marmor Parium); and from 582 it was orepavirns, like the other three Panhellenic Festivals, with a wreath of laurel. What made you laugh, Anacharsis? Because you think these prizes trivial?
