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 Sport and Spectacle
in the Ancient World
Ancient Cultures
These enjoyable, straightforward surverys of key themes in ancient culture are
ideal for anyone new to the study of the ancient world. Each book reveals the
excitement of discovering the diverse lifestyles, ideals, and beliefs of ancient
peoples.

Published
Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture
Marilyn B. Skinner
Ancient Babylonian Medicine
Markham J. Geller
The Spartans
Nigel Kennell
Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World
Donald G. Kyle
Food in the Ancient World
John M. Wilkins and Shaun Hill
Greek Political Thought
Ryan K. Balot
Theories of Mythology
Eric Csapo
Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture, second edition
Marilyn B. Skinner
Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, second editon
Donald G. Kyle

In preparation
Science in the Ancient World
Daryn Lehoux
Ethnicity and Identity in the Ancient World
Kathryn Lomas
Roman Law and Society
Thomas McGinn
Economies of the Greek and Roman World
Jeremy Paterson
Economies of the Greco-Roman World
Gary Reger
The City of Rome
John Patterson
 Sport and Spectacle
in the Ancient World
Second Edition

Donald G. Kyle
This edition first published 2015
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Registered Office
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in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kyle, Donald G.
Sport and spectacle in the ancient world / Donald G. Kyle. – Second edition.
  pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-61356-6 (pbk.)
1. Sports–History. I. Title.
GV573.K95 2015
796.093–dc23
2014024694
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Bronze statue of boxer from the Thermae of Constantine, 3rd–2nd
centuries BC. Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, Italy. Photo © Corbis
Set in 11/13pt Dante by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

1 2015
 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

List of Figures xii
List of Maps xv
List of Tables xvi
Introduction: Ancient Sport History 1
Why Sport History? 4
Word Games: Conceptualizing Sport and Spectacle 7
Challenges: Evidence, Chronology, and Modernism 9
Sports and Spectacles as Cultural Performances 14
Greece and Rome: Positive and Negative Classicism 15
Sports as Spectacle, Spectacles as Sport 16

1 Origins and Essences: Early Sport and Spectacle 22

Mesopotamian Combat Sports and Running 24
Egypt: Hunting and Sporting Pharaohs 26
Royal Hunts as a Near Eastern Tradition 32
States and Sports, Empires and Spectacles 33

2 Late Bronze Age Minoans, Hittites, and Mycenaeans 37

Minoan Performances: Rites, Contests, or Spectacles? 37
Hittite Contests? 44
Mycenaean Contests? 46
A Sporting Mediterranean World 49

3 Sport in Homer: Contests, Prizes, and Honor 53

Homer and His World 54
Values and Competition 55
Prizes and Spectatorship 56
Funeral Games for Patroklos: Prizes and Reconciliation 56
The Odyssey: Sport and Returning Home 63
Epic Sport as Spectacle 67
vi Contents

4 Archaic Greece: Athletics in an Age of Change 70

Athletic Festivals: Types and Terms 72
Factors and Features in the Growth of Athletics 73
Gymnasiums, Hoplites, and Society 81
Nudity, Status, and Democracy 82
Men, Boys, and Erotic Pursuits 85
The Coming of Age of Greek Sport 87
5 In Search of the Ancient Olympics 91
The Olympics of Allusion and Illusion 92
Modern Myths and Invented Traditions 95
The Quagmire of Olympic Origins: Explanations and Excavations 97
6 Ancient Olympia and Its Games 107
The Physical Context: Sanctuary and Facilities 108
The Olympic Festival: Operation and Administration 111
The Program of Contests 114
Olympia and Spectacle: Politics, Problems, and Performances 123
7 Panhellenic Sacred Crown Games and More 132
Pythian Games 133
Isthmian Games 136
Nemean Games 138
Variations: Local or Civic Games 143
8 Athens: City of Contests and Prizes 147
The Panathenaic Games: Sacred and Civic Athletics 148
More Athletic Festivals and Athletic Facilities 159
The Sociopolitical History of Athenian Sport 161
Contestation, Critics, and Popular Attitudes 165
9 Spartan Sport and Physical Education 175
Problematic Evidence 176
Physical Education: Building the Body Politic 176
Spartan Athletics 181
Kyniska: Gender, Politics, and Racing Chariots at Olympia 184
Not So Strange Greeks 185
10 Athletes in Greek Society: Heroes, Motives, Access 190
Athletic Stars and Stories 191
Pindar on Victory and Glory 194
Athletes, Social History, and Democratization 197
The Lower Half of Society: Not Excluded But Not Competing? 202
Meritocratic Athletics in Practice 203
Conclusion204
 Contents vii

11 Females and Greek Sport 209

The Ancient Evidence: Problems and Perspectives 210
Early Greece: Epic and Myth 211
Spartan Female Sport 211
Athenian Girls’ Races or Rites 212
The Heraia at Olympia 212
The Olympic Ban on Women 214
Hellenistic Females and Competition 215
Female Athletics in the Roman Empire 217
Conclusion: from Rites to Athletics 219
12 Macedon and Hellenistic Sport and Spectacle 222
Greeks and Persians 223
Philip II: Proclaiming Greekness through Games 224
Alexander The Great: Conquests and Spectacular Games 227
Hellenistic Sport and Spectacle 232
The Hellenistic Legacy 239
13 The Roman Republic: Festivals, Celebrations, and Games 243
Etruscan Sport and Spectacle: Ethnicity, Greek Gifts, Roman Roots? 244
Roman Festivals and Entertainments 247
Chariot Racing at Rome 248
Triumphs: Spectacles of Military Victory 249
Hunts and Beasts: Conquests and Games 253
Gladiators: Roman Rites and Combats 257
Early Romans and Greek Sport 261
Roman-Hellenistic Spectacular Discourse 263
14 Late Republic and Augustus: Spectacles, Popular
Politics, and Empire 268
The Meaning of Gladiatorial Combat: Infamy and Virtue 269
Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar: Magnificence and Munificence 273
Augustus: Consolidation and Imperial Rule Through Shows 276
15 Spectacle, Sport, and the Roman Empire 289
Emperors, Spectacles, and Scandals 290
Days at the Track: Chariot Racing 292
Imperial Triumphs 297
Gladiators, Arenas, and Empire 298
Beast Hunts: Nature and Empire 309
Spectacular Executions: Criminals, Beasts, and Social Order 312
Greek Games in the Roman Empire 314
Professional Athletes: Guilds, Prizes, and Hadrian 319
Assimilation and Accommodation 322
viii Contents

16 Later Sports and Spectacles: Romans, Christians, and Byzantines 329

Christian Opposition to Pagan Spectacles 329
Roman Reactions to Christians 331
The Waning of Institutionalized Shows in the West 335
Chariot Racing in the Christian Byzantine Empire 338
Conclusion: Ancient Sport and Spectacle 343
Index348
 Preface and Acknowledgments

People often assume that historians of sport must be frustrated former athletes.
Perhaps my youthful passions for sport and for antiquity moved me to study
ancient sport. Perhaps it was useful that I played sports, enthusiastically if not that
successfully. My games certainly taught me things about myself, about life, and
about human nature. I remain convinced of the value of sport, especially team
sports, for the health of individuals and society. Even as a youth, however, I real-
ized that my recreation, my fun, might be on the playground but that my future
lay elsewhere. I never imagined a career applying the life of the mind to the life of
the body.
My generation witnessed Vietnam and the rise of modern terrorism, assassina-
tions of inspiring leaders, the Munich Olympic massacre, Olympic boycotts and
crises, and scandals of corruption and drugs in professional and college sport. We
had to ask ourselves why humans remain aggressive and violent, why sport cannot
be free of politics and economics, and why being the victorious competitor or fan
seems so important. My generation saw sports news grow from the back page to a
whole section of the newspaper. Sports became a larger part of the trinity of the
evening newscast, and sports went from Monday Night Football and Hockey Night
in Canada to whole channels of sport and more sport.
Why not study things that students find interesting and relevant? We have long
followed our interests (e.g., democracy, art, and theater) back to antiquity.
Spectacular sports now are more prominent than ever in our media and society.
Untold millions associate the Modern Olympics, with their invented traditions and
Hellenic trappings, with Ancient Greece. Images of Rome’s Colosseum and Circus
Maximus, of gladiators, beasts, and chariot races, remain pervasive and provoca-
tive, but are such topics beneath academics? Do people want to understand Rome’s
games or just to be shocked by them? History is often ugly or sad, but our actions
and performances, for good or ill, reveal our human nature.
Ironically, the study of ancient sport has moved from the fringes to the main-
stream of ancient studies. Sport and spectacle are ideal subjects for cultural,
x Preface and Acknowledgments

anthropological, and sociological studies of performance, festivals, ethnicity, iden-

tity, body imagery, and eros. Cultural discourse and the construction of social
order unquestionably apply to sport and spectacle. Academics tend to privilege the
mind over the body, but the physicality and passionate competitiveness of the
Greeks and Romans cannot be denied.
When Blackwell invited me to contribute a book to their “Ancient Cultures”
series, I suggested that my Sport and Spectacle (not Sports and Spectacles) should go
beyond Greece and include the Near East and Rome to allow me to investigate
changes and continuities, contrasts, and comparisons. Deriving from my years of
teaching and researching ancient sport, this book contains both new research and
echoes of some of my previous works in reduced or revised forms. I hope that
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
This is definitely not a definitive work but rather an overview with a central
theme and related sub-arguments. The scope is very broad, and this active field is
still unfolding. Though not intended solely as a textbook, the work may have some
value in the now proliferating courses on ancient sport. The notes and bibliog-
raphy are selective, concentrating on reasonably accessible publications in English.
Good bibliographical aids exist, and scholars now can pursue leads electronically. I
want to make a case for the value of studying ancient sport, and I want to help
non-specialist readers and undergraduates think more—or in new ways—about
sport, spectacle, and antiquity.
Abbreviations herein follow the systems of the Oxford Classical Dictionary and
L’Année Philologique unless otherwise indicated (e.g., IJHS for the International
Journal of the History of Sport; JSH for the Journal of Sport History; Nikephoros for
Nikephoros. Zeitschrift für Sport und Kultur im Altertum; Stadion for Stadion.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Sports). Translations of ancient works are
mostly from the Loeb Classical Library and S.G. Miller’s sourcebook (2012).
Ancient Greek names and places generally are transliterated unless there is a
well-known Latin form. For more illustrations, readers can consult books such as
Bergmann and Kondoleon (1999), Köhne and Ewigleben (2000), Gabucci (2000),
Miller (2004), and Valavanis (2004).
Acknowledgements and thanks are in order. I greatly appreciate my colleagues
with similar interests, including S. Brunet, P. Christesen, N. Crowther, W. Decker,
M. Golden, H. Lee, S.G. Miller, J. Neils, H.W. Pleket, D.M. Pritchard, M. Poliakoff,
Z. Papakonstantinou, D.G. Romano, J. Rutter, T. Scanlon, G. Schaus, I. Weiler, and
the late D.C. Young. I thank Anthony Milavic for sharing images of his ancient
coins. I am indebted to the courtesy and diligence of Al Bertrand, Angela Cohen,
Ben Thatcher, and Leanda Shrimpton of Blackwell Publishing. I thank my wife,
Adeline, for her love and support. She tells me that I “see the big picture,” by which
she means that my common touch and (usually) balanced judgment may be the
virtues of a good teacher and not the weaknesses of a pedestrian academic.
This work is dedicated to the late Dr. Daniel J. Geagan for his dedication to
teaching and scholarship.
 Preface and Acknowledgments xi

Addendum to Preface

Why a second edition of this work after relatively few years? Some parts of the first
edition could have been better, certainly, but the work was well received. The
reviewers were kind, disagreeing at times but understanding that ancient sport and
spectacle cannot be exhausted even in 400 pages. The book already is in use in
courses on ancient sport history, and my arguments about the similarities between
Greek sport and Roman spectacles (i.e., as ritualized cultural performances with
emotional intensity) have found some level of acceptance.
The study (and teaching) of ancient sport, however, continues to grow and
change dramatically. New approaches (e.g., comparative and sociological),
continuing debates (e.g., about male and female competitors), new scholarship
(e.g., by M. Carter, P. Christesen, K. Coleman, G. Fagan, D. Potter, D. Pritchard,
and K. Welch), and exciting recent discoveries (e.g., inscriptions about games and
burials of gladiators) all are enriching our understanding of the subject.
In addition, while coediting A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and
Roman Antiquity (2014) with P. Christesen, I realized that a new edition could be
more up to date, broader, and more “student friendly” (e.g., with clearer writing,
chapter references, more images, more transliteration, and less citation of dated or
non-English works).
I remain grateful to my wife Adeline and my sons Cameron and Colin for their
patience and good humor. I earnestly thank P. Christesten for reading and
improving all of my chapters in this second edition. I also thank Haze Humbert,
Ashley McPhee, and Allison Kostka of Wiley-Blackwell, for their courteous
assistance.
 List of Figures

I .1 Torch relay runner in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympiad (1938). 2

1.1 Mesopotamian boxing relief of c. 2000 bce. Tell Asram.
Paris, Musée du Louvre.  25
1.2 Egyptian wrestling scenes, from the tomb of Nomarch Hotep,
Beni Hasan, Egypt, c. 2000 bce.28
1.3 Assyrian lion hunt scene from palace of Ashurbanipal at
Ninevah, c. 645 bce.  33
2.1 Minoan boy boxers, Akrotiri (Thera) c. 1550 bce. Athens,
National Archaeological Museum. 39
2.2 Minoan bull—leaping scene on a gold signet ring, c. 1550–1500. 40
2.3 Mixing bowl (krater) depicting chariot and belt wrestling,
Cypriote, Late Cypriote Period, c. 1350–1250 bce. Ceramic.
Height: 43.6 cm (17 3/16 in.); diameter: 35.5 cm (14 in.). Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 01.8044.  48
3.1 Depiction of funeral games of Patroklos on fragment of
an Athenian black-figure dinos (mixing bowl) by Sophilos,
580–570 bce. Athens, National Archaeological Museum. A 1549.  58
4.1 Young Men and Boys on Athenian red-figure cup. c. 500 bce.
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. Inv. F 2279. 86
5.1 Cover of program for the 1896 Olympic Games. Olympic Museum.  93
6.1 Stadium at Olympia with track, judges’ area, altar of Demeter,
and Krypte tunnel at end.  110
6.2 Athletes in scene of sacrifice, c. 460–440 bce. Red-figured stamnos,
attributed to Polygnotos, painted pottery, Athens 450–430 bce.111
6.3 Men’s stadion race, c. 530 bce, reverse. Euphiletos Painter. New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1914. Inv.14.130.12. 116
6.4 Black-figure Pana­thenaic amphora, showing four athletes, attributed
to Euphiletos Painter, painted incised pottery, c. 530–520 bce.117
6.5 Boxing and wrestling, amphora made by Nikosthenes, painted
incised pottery, c. 550–540 bce.120
 List of Figures xiii

6.6 Scene of boxers and pankratiasts, c. 500–475 bce.  121

6.7 Four-horse chariot (tethrippon) race. c. 410–400 bce.  122
7.1 Stadium at Delphi from the west side with entrance at end.  135
7.2 Stadium at Nemea (c. 330–320 bce), from the southeast with
the starting line and tunnel entrance leading west to the apodyterion.  141
7.3 Vaulted entrance to the Nemea stadium c. 320 bce, with the track at
the far end.  141
8.1 Panathenaic prize amphora by Euphiletos Painter, obverse. Image
of Athena between columns. c. 530 bce. New York, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907. Inv.07.286.79. 150
8.2 Attributed to the Marsyas Painter, Attic Panathenaic Amphora
with Lid, 340–339 bce, Terracotta, Object (body): H: 78.5 × Diam.:
39.2 cm (30 7/8 × 15 7/16 in.) Object (with lid): H: 99.5 cm (39 3/16 in.),
Athens, Greece, Europe. 156
8.3 Athenian red-figure krater showing tribal torch race victor at altar
and Nike nearby, attributed to the Nikias Painter, c. 420 bce.158
10.1 Victory scene: athlete receives prize; on psykter attributed to Oltos.
c. 520–510 bce. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers
Fund, 1910. Inv.10.210.18. 196
11.1 Figurine of a running or dancing girl, c. 520–500 bce.213
11.2 “Bikini Girls” mosaic. Sicily, Piazza Armerina. 350–400 ce.218
12.1 Coins. (a) Tetradrachm from Sicily commemorating Olympic
mule cart race win of Anaxilas of Rhegium, 480 bce; (b) Stater from
Aspendos with belt wrestlers, c. 420–400 bce; (c) Tetradrachm from
Macedon celebrating Olympic win of Philip II in the horse race, 356
bce; (d) Pergamum medallion with prize table, coin purses, and wreath
reading “Olympia,” c. 253–260 ce.225
13.1 Etruscan fresco of wrestlers in the Tomb of the Augurs, Tarquinia,
Italy, c. 520 bce.246
13.2 Athenian youths watch a dog and cat (?) fight; base from Wall of
Themistocles, c. 510 bce. Athens, National Archaeological Museum.  255
13.3 Campanian gladiator fresco of third century bce.259
14.1 Amphitheater at Pompeii. 271
14.2 Amphitheater at Mérida (colony of Augusta Emerita), inaugurated
8 bce, Spain.  280
14.3 Mosaic from Zliten, Libya, showing a defeated gladiator raising his
index figure and appealing for release (missio), third century ce.
Tripoli, Archäologisches Museum. 285
15.1 Bust of Emperor Commodus (180–192 ce) as Hercules, Musei
Capitolini, Rome, Italy. 292
15.2 Relief with scene of chariot race in Circus Maximus, c. second-third
century ce. Museo Archeologico, Foligno, Italy. Scala 0125622c.  294
15.3 Gladiators: retiarius and secutor, Saarbrucken, Germany, second–third
century ce. Scala H500912. 300
xiv List of Figures

15.4 Relief of female gladiators: Amazon and Achillia, from Halicarnassus. 304
15.5 Aerial View of the Colosseum, Rome, 80 ce, Rome, Italy.  307
15.6 “Magerius Mosaic” with scenes of venatio with leopards, third
century ce from Smirat, Sousse Archaeological Museum.  310
15.7 Mosaic from Zliten, Libya showing exposure of victims to beasts,
third century ce. Tripoli, Archäologisches Museum. 313
15.8 Baths of Caracalla; athletes c. 210–216 ce. Vatican,
Museo Gregoriano Profano. 315
15.9 Gafsa athletic mosaic: pankratiast, prize table, and torch race, fourth
century ce. Batten Zamour, Archaeological Museum of Gafsa,
Tunisia.315
16.1 Circus scene on Diptych of Anastasius, Consul in 517 ce; Cabinet
des Medailles, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. 337
16.2 Lampadii Ivory Diptych Chariot scene in Circus, c. 430
ce, Quadriga race in Hippodrome of Constan­tinople, Museo
Civico Cristiano Brescia, Italy. 339
 List of Maps

  4.1 Greece and the Mediterranean. 71

  6.1 Olympia c. 325 bce.109
14.1 Map of the Roman Empire in 27 bce.277
15.1 Imperial Rome. 306
 List of Tables

6.1 The development of the program of contests at Olympia. 116

8.1 Panathenaic prize list (380 bce). 153
 Introduction: Ancient
Sport History

I learned early on that sports is a part of life, that it is human life in microcosm, and
that the virtues and flaws of the society exist in sports even as they exist everywhere
else. I have viewed it as part of my function to reveal this in the course of my pursuit
of every avenue of the sports beat.
Howard Cosell, Cosell (1974) 415

However propagandistic, Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia (1938) about the 1936
Olympics was a triumph of cinematography and an inspiration for later sport doc-
umentaries and photography. With striking camera angles, iconic forms, and age-
less symbols, the film turned athletic intensity into aesthetic delight. With scenes
of misty mythological times, an athletic statue coming to life and hurling a discus,
robust maidens dancing outdoors, and ancient ruins of Athens and Olympia, the
film evokes ancient glory. A torch relay of handsome youths brings the talismanic
fire of Classical Greece across miles and millennia to sanction the “Nazi” Olympics
(see Figure I.1). Almost seamlessly, the film transports the viewer from the suppos-
edly serene pure sport of Ancient Greece to the spectacle of the Berlin Olympics
with its colossal stadium, masses of excited spectators, Roman symbols (e.g.,
eagles and military standards) of the Third Reich, and, of course, the emperor
Hitler as the attentive patron, beaming as athletic envoys of nation after nation
parade through and salute him.
Riefenstahl’s commissioned effort took manipulative myth making to new
lengths; but, instead of recording a triumph of the fascist will, in spite of itself
the spectacle immortalized Jesse Owens as an athletic hero. With its characteristic
element of suspense, of unpredictability despite appearances and agendas,
sport triumphed over despotism and racism. Through the beauty and brutality
of various contests, and the human virtue of athletes of diverse lands, sports-
manship survived on the field of play. The crowd, and in time the world, cheered

Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, Second Edition. Donald G. Kyle.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2 Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World

Figure I.1 Torch relay runner

in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympiad
(1938). © akg-images/Interfoto/
Friedrich.

even as the tyrant and his cultural and propaganda ministers watched. All were
amazed. Everyone knew that something extraordinary, something spectacular,
was taking place.
The 1936 Olympics and Riefenstahl’s film were not the first or last combinations
of sport and spectacle. When talented, determined, and charismatic athletes strive
against each other, athletic competition becomes a spectacle. People want to
watch, and performers want to be watched, to have others appreciate their efforts
and hail their victories. Ancient spectacles similarly incorporated physical perfor-
mances, many of them on a competitive basis with rules, officials, and prizes. It
was the modern world that decided that the activities it differentiated as “sport”
and “spectacle”—and the athletes and performers regarded as “sportsmen” and
“professionals”—were incompatible, even as the competitions and competitors
coalesced in ever-grander and more popular modern games at colleges and in the
Modern Olympics.
With its heroes and hustlers, its victors and victims, sport—the playing, organizing,
and watching of sports—was, is, and will remain undeniably popular and significant.
Ancient and modern civilizations share an obsession with physical contests and public
performances, but just what are “sport” and “spectacle,” and how can they be studied
and understood historically? How and why did sports and spectacles become so
Other documents randomly have
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Title: Poems

Author: Edward Dowden

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***

 POEMS
——
EDWARD DOWDEN

POEMS
BY

EDWARD DOWDEN
MCMXIV. J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
LONDON AND TORONTO
 CONTENTS
PAGE
The Wanderer (Sept. 1872) 1
The Fountain (Sept. 1873) 2
In the Galleries—
I. The Apollo Belvedere 5
II. The Venus of Melos 5
III. Antinous Crowned as Bacchus (Feb. 1873) 6
IV. Leonardo’s “Monna Lisa” (Dec. 1872) 7
V. St Luke Painting the Virgin (April 1872) 7
On the Heights (Feb. 1872) 9
“La Révélation par le Désert” (Feb. 1873) 13
The Morning Star (Aug. 1873) 19
A Child’s Noonday Sleep (Aug. 1872) 22
In the Garden—
I. The Garden (1867) 24
II. Visions (1866) 24
III. An Interior 25
IV. The Singer 26
V. A Summer Moon (1866) 26
VI. A Peach 27
VII. Early Autumn 28
VIII. Later Autumn 28
The Heroines (1873)—
Helena 33
Atalanta 36
Europa 44
Andromeda 47
Eurydice 52
By the Sea—
I. The Assumption (Aug. 1872) 58
II. The Artist’s Waiting (Sept. 1872) 58
 III. Counsellors (May 1872) 59
IV. Evening (July 1873) 60
V. Joy (May 1872) 60
VI. Ocean (May 1865) 61
VII. News for London 61
Among the Rocks (1873) 63
To a Year (Dec. 31, 1872) 66
A Song of the New Day (Sept. 1872) 67
Swallows (July 1873) 68
Memorials of Travel—
I. Coaching (1867) 70
II. In a Mountain Pass (1867) 70
III. The Castle (1867) 71
IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία 72
V. On the Sea-cliff (1873) 72
VI. Ascetic Nature 73
VII. Relics 74
VIII. On the Pier of Boulogne 74
IX. Dover (1862) 75
An Autumn Song (1872) 76
Burdens (April 1872) 77
Song 78
By the Window (May 1872) 81
Sunsets (June 1873) 83
Oasis (1866) 84
Foreign Speech (1868) 85
In the Twilight (1873) 86
The Inner Life—
I. A Disciple 87
II. Theists (April 1872) 87
III. Seeking God (1865) 88
IV. Darwinism in Morals (April 1872) 88
V. Awakening (1865) 89
VI. Fishers 90
 VII. Communion (1862) 90
VIII. A Sonnet for the Times 91
IX. Emmausward (1867) 91
X. A Farewell (Sept. 1872) 92
XI. Deliverance (Oct. 1872) 93
XII. Paradise Lost 93
The Resting Place (Sept. 1872) 95
New Hymns for Solitude—
I. (April 1872) 96
II. (Oct. 1872) 96
III. (May 1872) 97
IV. (May 1872) 98
V. (April 1872) 99
VI. (April 1872) 100
In the Cathedral Close (1876) 101
First Love 103
The Secret of the Universe 105
Beau Rivage Hotel 107
In a June Night 108
From April to October—
I. Beauty 112
II. Two Infinities 112
III. The Dawn (1865) 113
IV. The Skylark (1866) 113
V. The Mill-race 114
VI. In the Wood 115
VII. The Pause of Evening (Aug. 1873) 115
VIII. In July 116
IX. In September 116
X. In the Window (1865) 117
XI. An Autumn Morning 118
Sea Voices (May 1872) 119
Aboard the “Sea-Swallow” (1865) 121
Sea-sighing (1871) 122
In the Mountains (April 1872) 123
“The Top of a Hill called Clear” (May 1872) 126
The Initiation (Oct. 1872) 128
Renunciants (Nov. 1872) 130
Speakers to God (April 1873) 131
Poesia (Feb. 1873) 133
Musicians (Jan. 1873) 134
Miscellaneous Sonnets—
A Day of Defection 139
Song and Silence 140
Love-tokens (Nov. 1872) 141
A Dream (Aug. 1875) 142
Michelangelesque (Oct. 1872) 143
Life’s Gain (Aug. 1872) 144
Compensation 145
To a Child Dead as soon as Born 146
Brother Death 147
The Mage 148
Wise Passiveness (1865) 149
The Singer’s Plea 150
The Trespasser 151
Ritualism 152
Prometheus Unbound 153
King Mob (1865) 154
The Modern Elijah 155
David and Michal (1865) 156
Windle-straws (1872)—
I. 159
II. 159
III. 160
IV. 161
V. 161
VI. 162
VII. 162
VIII. 162
 PREFACE
Goethe says in a little poem[A] that “Poems are stained glass
windows”—“Gedichte sind gemalte Fensterscheiben”—to be seen aright
not from the “market-place” but only from the interior of the church, “die
heilige Kapelle”: and that “der Herr Philister” (equivalent for “indolent
Reviewer”) glances at them from without and gets out of temper because he
finds them unintelligible from his “market-place” standpoint. This
comparison is a pretty conceit, and holds good as a half truth—but not more
than a half: for while the artist who paints his “church windows” needs only
to make them beautiful from within, the maker of poems must so shape and
colour his work that its outer side—the technical, towards the “market-
place” of the public—shall have no lack of beauty, though differing from
the beauty visible from the spiritual interior.
[A] “Sechzehn Parabeln,” Gedichte, Leoper’s edition (p. 180) of Goethe’s
Gedichte.
The old volume of Edward Dowden’s Poems of 1876, which is now
reprinted with additions, has been, to a limited extent, long before the
public—seen from the “market-place” by general critics, who, for the most
part, approved the outer side of the “painted windows,” and seen perhaps
from within by some few like-minded readers, who, though no definite door
was opened into “die heilige Kapelle,” somehow entered in.
But a great many people, to whom the author’s prose works are well
known, have never even heard that he had written poetry. This is due in a
measure to the fact that the published book of poems only got into
circulation by its first small edition. Its second edition found a silent
apotheosis in flame at a great fire at the publisher’s in London, in which
nearly the whole of it perished.
Edward Dowden’s chief work has been as a prose writer. That fact
remains—yet it is accidental rather than essential. In the early seventies he
felt the urge very strongly towards making verse his vocation in life, and he
probably would have yielded to it, but for the necessity to be bread-winner
for a much-loved household. Poetry is a ware of small commercial value, as
most poets—at least for a long space of their lives—have known, and prose,
for even a young writer of promise, held out prospects of bread for
immediate eating. Hence to prose he turned, and on that road went his way,
and whether the accidental circumstances that determined his course at the
parting of the ways wrought loss or gain for our literature, who can say?
But he never wholly abandoned verse, and all through his life, even to
the very end, he would fitfully, from time to time, utter in it a part of
himself which never found complete issue in prose and which was his most
real self.
Perhaps the nearest approaches to his utterance in poetry occurred
sometimes in his College lecturing, when in the midst of a written discourse
he would interrupt it and stop and liberate his heart in a little rush of words
—out of the depths, accompanied by that familiar gesture of his hands
which always came to him when emotionally stirred in speaking. Some of
his students have told me that they usually found those little extempore bits
in a lecture by far the most illuminated and inspiring parts of it, especially
as it was then that his voice, always musical in no common degree,
vibrated, and acquired a richer tone.
In his prose writings in general he seemed to curb and restrain himself.
That he did so was by no means an evil, for the habitual retinence in his
style gave to the little rare outbreaks of emotion the quality of charm that
we find in a tender flower growing out of a solid stone wall unexpectedly.
Not infrequently a sort of hard irony was employed by him, as restraint
on enthusiasm, with occasional loosening of the curb.

In Edward Dowden’s soul there seemed to be capacities which might,

under other circumstances, have made him more than a minor poet. His was
a more than usually rich, sensuous nature. This, combined with absolute
purity—the purity not of ice and snow, but of fire. And, superadded, was an
unlimited capacity for sternness—that quality which, as salt, acts as
preservative of all human ardours. He came from his Maker, fashioned out
of the stuff whereof are made saints, patriots, martyrs, and the great lovers
in the world. His work as a scholar never obliterated anything of this in
him. By this, his erudition gained richness—the richness of vital blood. It
was as no anæmic recluse that he dwelt amongst his book-shelves, and
hence no Faust-like weariness of intellectual satiety ever came to him, no
sense of being “beschränkt mit diesem Bücherhauf” in his surroundings of
his library (which latterly had grown to some twenty-four thousand
volumes). He lived in company with these in a twofold way, keenly and
accurately grasping all their textual details, and at the same time valuing
them for the sake, chiefly, of spiritual converse with the writers.
Besides the spiritual converse he gained thus, he found, as a book-lover,
a fertile source of recreation in the collecting of literary rarities, old books,
MSS. and curiosities. In this he felt the keen zest of a sportsman. This was
his shooting on the moors, his fishing in the rivers. No living creature ever
lost its life for his amusement, but in this innocuous play he found unfailing
pleasure, and many a piece of luck he had with his gun or rod in hitting
some rare bird, or landing some big prize of a fish out of old booksellers’
catalogues or the “carts” in the back streets.
His physical nature was fully and strongly developed, and it is out of
strong physical instincts that strong spiritual instincts often grow—the
boundary line between them being undefined.
His one athletic exercise—swimming—was to him a joy of no common
sort. He gave himself to the sea with an eagerness of body, soul and spirit,
breasting the bright waters exultingly on many a summer’s day on some
West of Ireland or Cornish shore, revelling in the sea’s life and in his own.
And akin to that, in the sensuous, spiritual region of the soul, was his
feeling for all External Nature, his deep delight in the coming of each new
Spring—its blackthorn blossoms, its hazel and willow catkins, its daffodils
—and his response, as the year went on in its procession, to the glory of the
furze and heather glow and to all Earth’s sounds and silences.
And of a like sort was his enjoyment of music which had the depth of a
passion.
Very possibly, if his lot had been cast in early Christian or mediæval
times, all these impulses towards the joy and beauty of the earth might have
been sternly crushed out by the moral forces of his character.
Looking at a picture of St. Jerome one day—not unlike E. D. in feature
—I said to him, “There’s what you would have been if you had lived in
those times.” (The saint is depicted there as lean, emaciated and woefully
dirty!).
It was well for Edward Dowden that he was laid hold of in his early life
by that great non-ascetic soul, William Wordsworth. He was initiated into
the inner secret of Wordsworth. He had experience of the Wordsworthian
ecstasy—that ecstasy which comes, if at all, straight as a gift from God, and
is not to be taught by the teaching of the scribes.
Through kinship a man who is born potentially a poet comes first into
relation with poets, and with E. Dowden’s sensuousness of capacities it was
natural that he should be in his early years attracted to Keats, to the long,
deep, rich dwelling of his verse on the vision and the sounds of Nature. It
was not until he had advanced some way towards middle life that he came
into vital contact with Shelley. He had felt aloof from him; but the
attraction, when once owned, became very powerful, and he yielded to the
delight of the swift motion of the Shelleyan utterances.
He always recognized Robert Browning’s greatness profoundly, and
responded to all his best truths, especially as regards the relation, in love, of
Man and Woman, but he never became pledged to an all-round Browning
worship; his admiration had no discipleship in it.
For Walt Whitman, with whom a personal friendship, strong on both
sides, was formed, he felt the cordial reverence due to the giver of what he
reckoned as a gift of immense value. While condemning whatever was
unreticent in Leaves of Grass, he at the same time saw there the great flood
of spirituality available as a force for emancipation of our hearts from
pressure of sordidnesses in the world.
It is somewhat remarkable that with all his trend towards the great
spiritual and mystical forces in literature he was all along never without a
keen appreciation of the writers who brought mundane shrewdness and
wisdom. The first book he bought for himself in childhood with the hoarded
savings of his pocket-money was Bacon’s Essays, with which as a small
boy he became very familiar. And all through his life he sought with
unfailing pleasure the companionship of Jane Austen again and again. And
amongst the books which he himself made, it was perhaps his Montaigne
that gave him, in the process of making, the delicatest satisfaction—the
satisfaction of witnessing and analysing the dexterous play of human
intellect and character on low levels.
His attraction to Goethe—very dominant with him in middle life—came,
I imagine, from the fact that he saw in that mightiest of the Teutons two
diverse qualities in operation—the measureless intellectual spirituality and
the vast common-sense of mundane wisdom.
 In this attraction there was also the element of the magnetism which
draws together opposites—not less forcible than the attraction between
affinities.
As regards the moral nature, his own was as far as the North Pole is from
the South from that of the great sage of Weimar, whose serenely-wise
beneficence contained no potentialities of sainthood, martyrdom or absolute
human love. He sought gain from Goethe just because of that unlikeness to
what was in himself.
At one period of his literary work he was intending to make as his “opus
magnus” a full study of Goethe’s life and works, and with that intent he
carried on a course of reading, and laid in a great equipment of workman’s
tools—Goethe books in German, French and English. From this project he
was turned aside by a call to write the life of Shelley—a long and difficult
task. But he never lost sight of Goethe. In one of the later years of his life,
as recreation in a summer’s holiday in Cornwall, he translated the whole of
the “West-Eastern Divan” into English verse, and previously, from time to
time, isolated essays on Goethe themes appeared amongst his prose
writings. And yet it is not unlikely that even if the task of Shelley’s
biography had not intervened, no complete study, such as he had at first
planned, might have been ever accomplished by him on Goethe, for with
experience there came to him a growing conviction that his best work in
criticism could only be done in dealing with what was written in his
mother-tongue.
Some of Edward Dowden’s friends, Nationalist and Unionist both, have
felt regret that he, the gentle scholar, gave such large share of his energies to
the strife of politics, as if force were subtracted thereby from his work in
Literature. They are mistaken. The output of energy thus given came back
to the giver, reinforcing his prose writing with a mundane vigour and
virility, exceeding what it might have had if he had kept himself aloof from
the affairs of the nation.
Yet, strangely enough, between his politics and his poetry there was a
water-tight wall of separation. Other men, to take scattered instances,
Kipling, Wordsworth, Milton, fused in various ways their political feeling
and their poetical. This Edward Dowden never attempted. I cannot analyse
the “why.”
 Confining myself to some points which seem left out of sight in most of
the admirably appreciative obituary notices in last April’s newspapers, I
have tried to say here, in a fragmentary way, a few things about a man of
whom many things—infinitely many—might be said without exhausting
the total. He was himself at the same time many and one. He had multiform
aspects—interests very diverse—and yet life was for him in no wise
“patchy and scrappy,” but had unity throughout.
In Shakespeare, whose faithful scholar he was, there are diversities: and
yet, do we not image Shakespeare to our minds as one and a whole?
In the volumes now issued by Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons is contained all
the verse that the author left available for publication, with the exception of
a sequence of a hundred and one lyrics (which by desire is separately
published under the somewhat transparent disguise of editorship). That little
sequence, named A Woman’s Reliquary, is his latest work in verse. Much in
it re-echoes sounds that can be heard in his old poems of the early seventies.
E. D. D.
September 1913.
 THE WANDERER

I cast my anchor nowhere (the waves whirled

My anchor from me); East and West are one
To me; against no winds are my sails furled;
—Merely my planet anchors to the Sun.
 THE FOUNTAIN

(An Introduction To the Sonnets)

Hush, let the fountain murmur dim
Melodious secrets; stir no limb,
But lie along the marge and wait,
Till deep and pregnant as with fate,
Fine as a star-beam, crystal-clear,
Each ripple grows upon the ear.
This is that fountain seldom seen
By mortal wanderer,—Hippocrene,—
Where the virgins three times three,
Thy singing brood, Mnemosyne,
Loosen’d the girdle, and with grave
Pure joy their faultless bodies gave
To sacred pleasure of the wave.
Listen! the lapsing waters tell
The urgence uncontrollable
Which makes the trouble of their breast,
And bears them onward with no rest
To ampler skies and some grey plain
Sad with the tumbling of the main.
But see, a sidelong eddy slips
Back into the soft eclipse
Of day, while careless fate allows,
Darkling beneath still olive boughs;
Then with chuckle liquid sweet
Coils within its shy retreat;
This is mine, no wave of might,
But pure and live with glimmering light;
I dare not follow that broad flood
Of Poesy, whose lustihood
Nourishes mighty lands, and makes
Resounding music for their sakes;
I lie beside the well-head clear
With musing joy, with tender fear,
And choose for half a day to lean
Thus on my elbow where the green
Margin-grass and silver-white
Starry buds the wind’s delight
Starry buds, the wind s delight,
Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude
Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood
Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop,
And in hand-hollow dare to scoop
This scantling from the delicate stream;
It lies as quiet as a dream,
And lustrous in my curvèd hand.
Were it a crime if this were drain’d
By lips which met the noonday blue
Fiery and emptied of its dew?
Crown me with small white marish-flowers!
To the good Dæmon, and the Powers
Of this fair haunt I offer up
In unprofanèd lily-cup
Libations; still remains for me
A bird’s drink of clear Poesy;
Yet not as light bird comes and dips
A pert bill, but with reverent lips
I drain this slender trembling tide;
O sweet the coolness at my side,
And, lying back, to slowly pry
For spaces of the upper sky
Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves;
And, last, while some fair show deceives
The closing eyes, to find a sleep
As full of healing and as deep
As on toil-worn Odysseus lay
Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.
 IN THE GALLERIES
I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

Radiance invincible! Is that the brow

Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped?
Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead
That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou:
For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow
And break us, and at best when we have bled,
And are much marred, perchance propitiated
A little doubtful victory they allow:
We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains
A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less.
O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great
And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains
Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness,
—Even to worship thee I come too late.

II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,
No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas
Shifting and circling past their Cyclades
Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod
First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad
Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,
And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase,
Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.
So thy victorious fairness, unallied
To bitter things or barren, doth bestow
And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;
Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow
Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side,
And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

(In the British Museum)

Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath

And clustered berries burdening the hair?
Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware
O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath,
Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth!
The gods are free, and drink a stainless air,
And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear
A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death
Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine.
O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught
Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see
The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine
Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety,
Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought?

IV. LEONARDO’S “MONNA LISA”

Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair
Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait
Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate
Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?
Secret perfection! Mystery too fair!
Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate
Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate
Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair.
Nay, nay,—I wrong thee with rough words; still be
Serene, victorious, inaccessible;
Still smile but speak not; lightest irony
Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still
O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy
Allure us and reject us at thy will!

V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN

(By Van der Weyden)

It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid,

Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best;
See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest
Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid
On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed
And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed
By soft maternal fingers the full breast
Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed
By her own bosom and half passes down
To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame
Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly
Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town.
Innocent calm! no token here of shame,
A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary.
ON THE HEIGHTS
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