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[1] Later on there came (they say) from Crete Klymenos, the son of Kardys, about fifty years after the flood came upon the Greeks in the time of Deukalion. He was descended from Hēraklēs of Ida; he held the Games at Olympia and set up an altar in honor of Hēraklēs, his ancestor, and the other Kouretes, giving to Hēraklēs the surname of Parastates [‘the one who stands by’]. And Endymion, the son of Aethlios, deposed Klymenos and set his sons a race in Olympia with the kingdom as the prize.
[2] And about a generation later than Endymion, Pelops held the Games in honor of Olympian Zeus in a more splendid manner than any of his predecessors. When the sons of Pelops were scattered from Elis over all the rest of Peloponnesus, Amythaon, the son of Kretheus and cousin of Endymion on his father’s side (for they say that Aethlios too was the son of Aeolus, though he was supposed to be a son of Zeus), held the Olympian Games, and after him, Pelias and Neleus in common.
[3] Augeias too held them, and likewise Hēraklēs, the son of Amphitryon, after the conquest of Elis. The victors garlanded by Hēraklēs include Iolaos, who won with the mares of Hēraklēs. So of old a competitor was permitted to compete with mares which were not his own. Homer,
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at any rate, in the Games held in honor of Patroklos, has told how Menelaos drove a pair, of which one was Aithra, a mare of Agamemnon, while the other was his own horse.
[4] Moreover, Iolaos used to be charioteer to Hēraklēs. So Iolaos won the chariot-race, and Iasios, an Arcadian, the horse race; while one of the sons of Tyndareus won the foot race and Polydeukes the boxing match. Of Hēraklēs himself, it is said that he won victories at wrestling and the pankration.
[5] After the reign of Oxylos, who also celebrated the Games, the Olympic festival was discontinued until the reign of Iphitos. When Iphitos, as I have already related, renewed the Games, men had by this time forgotten the ancient tradition, the memory of which revived bit by bit, and as it revived, they made additions to the Games.
[6] This I can prove; for when the unbroken tradition of the Olympiads began there was first the foot-race, and Koroibos, an Eleian, was victor. There is no statue of Koroibos at Olympia, but his tomb is on the borders of Elis. Afterwards, at the fourteenth Festival,
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the double foot-race was added: Hypenus of Pisa won the prize of wild olive in the double race, and at the next Festival, Acanthus of Lacedaemon won in the long course.
[7] At the eighteenth Festival, they remembered the pentathlon and wrestling. Lampis won the first and Eurybatos the second, these also being Lacedaemonians. At the twenty-third Festival, they restored the prizes for boxing, and the victor was Onomastos of Smyrna, which already was a part of Ionia. At the twenty-fifth, they recognized the race of full grown horses, and Pagondas of Thebes was proclaimed “victor in the chariot race.”
[8] At the eighth Festival after this, they admitted the pankration for men and the horse race. The horse race was won by Krauxidas of Crannon, and Lygdamis of Syracuse overcame all who entered for the pankration. Lygdamis has his tomb near the quarries at Syracuse, and according to the Syracusans, he was as big as Hēraklēs of Thebes, though I cannot vouch for the statement.
[9] The contests for boys have no authority in old tradition but were established by the Eleians themselves because they approved of them. The prizes for running and wrestling open to boys were instituted at the thirty-seventh Festival; Hipposthenes of Lacedaemon won the prize for wrestling, and that for running was won by Polyneikes of Elis. At the forty-first Festival they introduced boxing for boys, and the winner out of those who entered was Philytas of Sybaris.
[10] The race for men in armor was approved at the sixty-fifth Festival, to provide, I suppose, military training; the first winner of the race with shields was Damaretos of Heraia. The race for two full grown horses, called
synoris (chariot and pair), was instituted at the ninety-third Festival, and the winner was Euagoras of Elis. At the ninety-ninth Festival, they resolved to hold contests for chariots drawn by foals, and Sybariades of Lacedaemon won the garland with his chariot and foals.
[11] Afterwards, they added races for chariots and pairs of foals and for single foals with rider. It is said that the victors proclaimed were: for the chariot and pair, Belistikhe, a woman from the seaboard of Macedonia; for the ridden race, Tlepolemos of Lycia. Tlepolemos, they say, won at the hundred and thirty-first Festival, and Belistiche at the third before this. At the hundred and forty-fifth Festival, prizes were offered for boys in the pankration, the victory falling to Phaedimus, an Aeolian from the city Troas.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .