For a moment they wag their sharp black beards at each other defiantly, and poise and edge around.  Then the poet, more daring, rushes in, and instantly the two have grappled—­each clutching the other’s left wrist in his right hand.  The struggle that follows is hot and even, until a lucky thrust from the orator’s foot lands the poet in a sprawling heap; whence he rises with a ferocious grin and renews the contest.  The second time they both fall together.  “A tie!” calls the long-gowned friend who acts as umpire, with an officious flourish of his cane.

The third time the poet catches the orator trickily under the thigh, and fairly tears him to the ground; but at the fourth meeting the orator slips his arm in decisive grip about his opponent’s wrist and with a might wrench upsets him.

“Two casts out of three, and victory!”

Everybody laughs good-naturedly.  The poet and the orator go away arm in arm to the bathing house, there to have another good oiling and rubbing down by their slaves, after removing the heavily caked sand from their skin with the stirgils.  Of course, had it been a real contest in the “greater games,” the outcome might have been more serious for the rules allow one to twist a wrist, to thrust an arm or foot into the foeman’s belly, or (when things are desperate) to dash your forehead—­bull fashion—­against your opponent’s brow, in the hope that his skull will prove weaker than yours.

152.  Foot Races.—­The continued noise from the stadium indicates that the races are still running; and we find time to go thither.  The simple running match, a straight-away dash of 600 feet, seems to have been the original contest at the Olympic games ere these were developed into a famous and complicated festival; and the runner still is counted among the favorites of Greek athletics.  As we sit upon the convenient benches around the academy stadium we see at once that the track is far from being a hard, well-rolled “cinder path”; on the contrary, it is of soft sand into which the naked foot sinks if planted too firmly, and upon it the most adept “hard-track” runner would at first pant and flounder helplessly.  The Greeks have several kinds of foot races, but none that are very short.  The shortest is the simple “stadium” (600 feet), a straight hard dash down one side of the long oval; then there is the “double course” ("diaulos”) down one side and back; the “horse race”—­twice clear around (2400 feet); and lastly the hard-testing “long course” ("dolichos”) which may very in length according to arrangement,—­seven, twelve, twenty, or even twenty-four stadia, we are told; and it is the last (about three miles) that is one of the most difficult contests at Olympia.