Scholion on Pindar, Olympia 7.1: Pherenike/ Callipateira breaking the Olympic ban

Scholion on Pindar, Olympia 7.1: Pherenike/ Callipateira breaking the Olympic ban

2nd century CE (?)

Scholion

Literary source

According to E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, Oxford 2007, 39, the old scholia to Pindar have been reliably transmitted from a second-century CE epitome that summarized the extensive Alexandrian commentaries on Pindar. The anecdote is considered part of a quotation of Aristotle, who is cited at the beginning of the scholion; it has been edited amongst the fragments of Aristotle in the edition of V. Rose (Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, Leipzig 1886) as fr. 569.

The same anecdote is also transmitted, though with several minor and major differences, by Pseudo-Aeschines, Epistulae 4.5; Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 5.6.7-8 and 6.7.2; Flavius Philostratus, De Gymnastica 17; Claudius Aelianus, Varia Historia 10.1; Plinius Maior, Naturalis Historia 7.133; Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 8.15.12 ext. 4.

His (i.e. Diagoras') daughter, whose name was Callipateira, came to the Olympic Games. She was prevented from being a spectator at the Olympic Games by the Hellanodicae, as she was a woman. But she retorted that she was not like the other women because her father, Diagoras, and her three brothers, Damagetus, Dorieus and Acusilaus, and furthermore the son of her sister, Eucles, and her own son, Peisirodus, were Olympic victors and their statues were in Olympia. The Hellanodicae, then, were pleased to allow her to be a spectator.

translation by Alexander Meeus for the Cynisca project

ἡ θυγάτηρ δὲ τούτου ἦλθεν εἰς τὰ Ὀλύμπια· ᾗ ὄνομα Καλλιπάτειρα. ἐκωλύετο δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλανοδικῶν γυνὴ οὖσα θεωρῆσαι τὰ Ὀλύμπια. ἡ δὲ οὐχ ὁμοία ἔφη εἶναι ταῖς ἄλλαις γυναιξίν· ἔχειν γὰρ καὶ τὸν πατέρα Διαγόραν καὶ τοὺς τρεῖς ἀδελφοὺς Ὀλυμπιονίκας, Δαμάγητον, Δωριέα, Ἀκουσίλαον, καὶ πέμπτον ἀδελφῆς παῖδα Εὐκλέα καὶ αὐτῆς υἱὸν Πεισίρροδον, καὶ τούτων εἰκόνας εἶναι ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ. οἱ Ἑλλανοδίκαι δὲ ἡσθέντες συνεχώρησαν αὐτῇ θεωρεῖν.

A.B. Drachmann (ed.), Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina, vol. 1, Leipzig 1903.