A greek jumper just before landing, drawn on a pitcher (London, British Museum, GR 1847.8-6.26, sixth century B . C .). 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... Greek pentathletes jumped from a take-off board in wood or stone, called the bater ( bat»r ). From the bater on, a landing pit or skamma ( sk£mma ) was prepared by digging up the sand and levelling it up over a length of 50 feet (Harris, 1964). After his jump, the athlete placed a wooden peg, called semeion ( shme ... on ), in the sand to mark his performance (Patrucco, 1972). Such semeia are seen below the athlete in Figure 1. Long jumpers used hand-held weights or halteres ( ¡lt»rej ) made of stone or metal. In the vicinity of ancient Greek competition facilities, at least a dozen of pairs of halteres have been found – although some were damaged or incomplete - and described. The mass of each piece ranges from 1 to 4.6 kg, with about 70% of the specimens weighing between 1.5 and 2.5 kg (Gardiner, 1955; Harris, 1964: J uthner, 1896). Arguments for and against the credibility of Phayllos’s record jump can be organized around four themes: the figure of Phayllos; the style, content and aetiology of the epigram; similar performances by Phayllos’s contemporaries; and the dimensions of the landing pit. Did Phayllos exist? The Greeks did not only know Phayllos of Kroton, born in southern Italy, in his time for his athletic prowess. There might even have been two athletes with the name Phayllos (see Harris, 1960). The Greek writer Herodotos reports that he supported the Greek army in the battle of Salamis against the Medes in 480 B . C . (Herodotus, VIII, 48). Pausanias, the travelling writer, reports of Phayllos’s statue in Delphi, where he won the running contest in addition to two victories in the pentathlon (Pausanias, X, 9; Plutarch, Alexander, 34). Phayllos was also mentioned in the writings of Aristophanes (Acharnians, 213 and Wasps, 1203), who refers to him as an athlete and to his efforts in the Persian wars as well. However, in spite of the frequent ancient references to the athlete Phayllos, none of these writers specifically mentions his jump or refers to the epigram itself, which is rather unusual since his jump must have been extraordinary at that time. The base of Phayllos’s statue at Delphi on which this epigram might possibly have been written has been found, but without any trace of an epigram (Gardiner, 1955). Pausanias, who reports seeing Phayllos’s statue at Delphi, does not mention anything about the epigram either. Although there is little doubt that Phayllos lived in the period to which the record epigram is attributed (Ebert, 1963; Harris, 1960; Hyde, 1938), it cannot be denied that several links between Phayllos and the record jump are not clear at this time. Is the epigram a joke? Most authors agree that the epigram dates back to the fifth century B . C ., although not unanimously so (Ebert, 1963; Gardiner, 1955). Gardiner (1904a, 1955) suggests that the epigram is probably of a much later date, and points to the fact that it cannot be traced back further than the second century A . D . It has to be noted here that this issue does not necessarily provide arguments in favour of or against the trustworthiness of the epigram, which is why we do not discuss it in detail (see Gardiner, 1904a, for further comments on the date of the epigram). Gardiner (1904a, 1955; see also Robertson, 1988) considers the epigram as an artificial product of the poet’s mind for several reasons. First, the repetition of the number five and its derivatives is too much of a coincidence to represent an exact athletic performance. Second, and related to this argument, is that about half of the words in the epigram begin with the letter ‘‘ p ’’ (pi). Such an alliteration was one of the favourite figures of speech to the Greeks. Third, there is a striking symmetry between ‘‘50 + 5’’ and ‘‘100 – 5’’. These stylistic features of the epigram lead Gardiner to the rejection of the epigram. Finally, the hyperbole was a popular stylistic feature in many ancient Greek writings, and Phayllos’s 55- feet jump may be considered as such an extreme exaggeration. Several other passages in the Anthologia Palatina have a doubtful aetiology or refer to extraordinary performances that are not to be taken literally. It cannot be denied that the author of the epigram has been looking for effect by using the alliteration and the symmetry. However, this does not necessarily damage the reliability of the message. Phayllos’s jump was an extraordinary performance worth mentioning in a more than ordinary way. For example, the author could easily have used a synonym for the word ‘‘ phd»se ’’ ( pedese – ...

Context 2

... implicitly excludes that the halteres were thrown away during the flight as suggested by several authors (see Gardiner, 1955). The hypothesis of throwing the halteres away is not supported by pictorial evidence either: in all vase paintings showing a jumper just before the landing, the weights are still in the athlete’s hands (e.g. Figure 1). It has recently been reported that the arms contribute significantly to maintaining balance during the flight and landing phase in the standing horizontal jump (Ashby & Heegaard, 2002). The backward arm swing during the flight phase enables the jumper to remedy excessive forward rotation about his centre of mass by creating a local angular momentum in the same direction (Hay, 1978). As the hand-held halteres increase the moment of inertia of the arms, it is very likely that they made the compensating role of the arm swing even more prominent in the ancient jump. Furthermore, Philostratos explicitly states that the halteres made the jump easier (‘‘ tù £ltÁri proselafrÚnousi ’’). The most significant and ex- plicit information concerning the effect of the halteres is found in Aristotle’s work Progression of Animals (3, 705a, 17 – 19; translated by Peck, ...