In the diaulos and hippios the style must have been less violent. Perhaps some of the existing vases represent these events, but owing to the absence of any inscription we cannot say for certain. One fragment found at Athens bears the inscription “I am a diaulos runner”; and the style, as we should expect, is a compromise between that of the sprinter and that of the long-distance runner. The arms are swung, but not as violently as in the sprint, while the stride is long and even, the knees not raised unduly.[500] On another fragment found at Athens we find the position of the arms typical of the dolichos combined with the high action of the sprinter. Unfortunately this fragment is uninscribed.[501]
[Illustration: Fig. 53. Panathenaic amphora. Fourth century. (Stephani, _C. R. Atlas_, 1876, Pl. i.)]
The physical types represented on these vases vary considerably. On the earlier vases a short, thick-set, bearded type prevails, with powerful shoulders and thighs. On the later vases we see greater length of limb. The thinness of the sprinters is sometimes exaggerated to the point of emaciation. On the other hand, some of the long-distance runners, in spite of their length of limb, seem too heavy in build for the distance. They are of the type of the Apoxyomenos, who, though he might be excellent over 200 yards or quarter of a mile, is too heavy for a three-mile race.
A peculiarity ascribed in our text-books to the Greek runner is the habit of encouraging himself to greater efforts by shouting as he ran, with all the strength of his lungs. The only evidence for so absurd and improbable a practice is a rhetorical passage in Cicero,[502] who can hardly be regarded as an authority on Greek athletics, even on those of his own day, when athletics were at their lowest ebb. Nor need we credit the statement that the Greeks raced in deep sand. Lucian, it is true, describes the youths in the gymnasium practising running in the sand as a severe form of exercise,[503] but the account preserved of the careful preparation of the stadium at Delphi proves that the racing track was something very different.
It is difficult to form any estimate of value as to the respective merits of different districts in different branches of athletics. The evidence is too fragmentary and extends over too vast a period. Many of the extraordinary performances which Pausanias records belong to the time of the Empire. For the period of Greek independence it seems safe to say that in the Peloponnese the Spartans and Arcadians were most successful in the foot-race, and outside the Peloponnese, the Crotoniats and Cretans.[504] The excellence of the latter in long-distance running is illustrated by Xenophon’s account of the games held by the remnant of the ten thousand at Trapezus, at which no less than sixty Cretans competed in the dolichos.[505] Most of the celebrated runners have been mentioned in the course of our history. To these we may add the names of Phayllus of Croton, a stadiodromos and pentathlete, of whom we shall have more to say, and Ladas of Sparta, a long-distance runner of the fifth century, who must not be confused with a later Ladas of Achaea, who won the stade-race in Ol. 125. The popular idea that Ladas died as he reached the goal, in the very moment of victory, is hardly creditable to the training of the most famous runner of his day. It seems to be a myth, derived from a misunderstanding of the epigram which describes the statue of the runner made by Myron.[506] Pausanias merely tells us that he died shortly after his victory, on his way home. We have no means of comparing the performances of Greek runners with those of our own. We hear of a sprinter who could outrun and catch hares,[507] of another runner who raced a horse from Coronea to Thebes and beat it.[508] Pheidippides, as we all know, ran from Athens to Sparta in two days; Ageus, who won the long race at Olympia in Ol. 113, is reported to have carried the news of his victory to Argos on the same day; and a still better performance is recorded in a fourth-century inscription found at Epidaurus of one Drumos, who records as an “example of manliness,” that he brought the news of his Olympic victory from Elis to Epidaurus on the same day. The distance as the crow flies is nearly ninety miles.[509] All this is too vague for comparison. Such scanty evidence suggests that the Greeks obtained a generally high standard of excellence in running, and that such superiority as they may have possessed was shown rather in long races than in short.