The starting blocks helped runners take the crouching position developed in the late 19th century by American and Australian sprinters. They required all runners to direct their energy horizontally—instead of vertically—at the race’s start. But today, they do more than just help runners get off the line. They also detect false starts, putting the race behind the feet of the sprinter as much as in front of them. As a technology of fairness, the starting blocks helped turn foot racing into an ideal for egalitarian citizenship.

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Ancient Greek stadiums show continual upgrades to the starting line of the race. The Greeks ran from a stone starting gate along a central rectangular track. Ropes stretched in front of the runners fell in unison onto the track, releasing them to begin the race. The precursor to the starting block, called a balbis, was redesigned at several stadiums to accommodate a starting gate, even when it meant reducing the number of runners or the width of the track to provide room for the starting gate. The perpetual reworking of the stone balbis is one indication of how seriously the Greeks took these athletic events.

Most contemporary knowledge of the hysplex comes from four tracks at Epidauros, Isthmia, Nemea, and Corinth. At both ends of the track, engineers placed stone support bases for a starting gate. These bases were filled in with wood, which was removed, oiled, and stored when games were not being held. Since the wood and ropes of the starting gate have not been preserved in the archaeological record, historians make guesses based on textual and artistic representations.

The art on one jar from Athens shows the start of the hoplite race. Two horizontal cords act as barriers. One grazes the knees, the other the waist. The cords stretch from one end of the stone starting block to the other. The cords connect to two posts, which were held up under tension by rope. Officials kept the posts upright while the athletes positioned themselves. At the start of the race, they released both posts simultaneously. The weight of the gate and the tension of the ropes brought both crashing to the floor, providing a visual and auditory signal that the race was afoot.

Starting blocks built into the field make foot races a permanent part of the city. That gave blocks symbolic meaning as much as competitive utility. In Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, first performed in 411 BC, the starting gate serves as a metaphor for releasing women onto the political field, where they run an antiwar campaign. War might have helped inspire technological improvements to the device, too. The ropes and wooden base of the starting gate correspond with the development of the catapult, first mentioned in Athens in 355 BC. Some stadia constructed in this period seem to have been caught up with the interest in ropes and pulleys demonstrated by engineers of Philip II of Macedon.