Posted on 11/17/2008 8:54:43 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Apart from the running events and the combat events, which took place on or around the main stadium at Olympia, there were also equestrian events which were held in a separate hippodrome (literally, a course for horses, its location recently identified by infrared photography). The chief of these was the superelite four-horse chariot race. In these events alone could women enter - though by proxy only, as owners of the chariots and teams of horses, not as the drivers (who were always men or boys). And so in 396 Cynisca entered her four-horse chariot-team - and won. And she did so again in 392 - and won again.
We happen to know quite a lot about these two victories of hers because they caught the imagination of a much later traveller, Pausanias from Magnesia in Asia Minor, who visited Olympia about the middle of the second century CE. Still visible and legible then (as it is today in the marvellous Olympia Museum) was the inscription chiselled into the black-stone base of the monument that Cynisca had had erected to commemorate her first, unprecedented success, and this is what it said:
My fathers and brothers were Spartan kings, I won with a team of fast-footed horses, and put up this monument: I am Cynisca: I say I am the only woman in all Greece to have won this wreath.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanchronicle.com ...
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Anti-gun / pro-homosexuality author Paul Cartledge neglects to mention that Cynesca wasn't in either race that "she won". Women weren't allowed at the Olympian games. |
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Equestrian events?
That’s NOT what I pictured happening in a Hippo-drome.
Those things ARE mean and probably hard to ride, though.
Mediocre writing, to be kind to it.
A woman for the ages.
Nickname: Pauly The Spleen
Figures that MrEdd would weigh in with a topic involving horses. ;’) ;’) ;’)
That rumor that the Spartans practiced pederasty was already common in ancient Greece but the best ancient source on Sparta, Xenophon, explicitly said it wasn’t true. There is no eyewitness report of it happening or any archeological or literary evidence. Their women alone among the Greeks received an education, managed the estates while the men concentrated on war, and married men of basically their own age, unlike elsewhere where young girls were passed off to lechers. Sparta by the way is the only country with which Judea made a blood brother pact.
Us horses need to stick together.
I hoof heard that before.
Not only was pederasty practiced in Sparta, it was compulsory from late childhood on. The comic book based movie “300” bears no resemblance to the historical Sparta.
:’)
try reading it in Greek
actually not so.
Among the CREDIBLE research for the period, it was actually frowned upon. Much like the athens stone you to death.
You should also take note that Freerepublic.com’s own Victor David Hansen was the historical consultant to 300.
Much of the homosexual push of the spartans comes not from ancient greece but from modern 20th century homo-advocates who seek to “steal the dead” to justify their own modern day deviance.
Essentially, for sparta the modern day historians mistranslate mentor / mentee as sexual lovers. It would be analogous to some future archeologist saying “big brothers/big sisters” was about initiating children into homosexual behavior because the word mentor had something to do with sex.
In ancient Greece, pederasty wasn’t unique to Sparta — but Sparta did indeed practice it compulsorily. It was considered normal in that society, even though we now know it isn’t. It isn’t a modern invention. And the attempt to deny it is just revisionism, regardless of who does it. The Spartan society was hideous, but silly cartoonish movies about their suicidal PR stunt at Thermopylae is held up as the only true picture of it.
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