Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/73

 OLYMPIC FESTIVAL. 5^ ^Egean. But though it continued to be ostentatiously celebrated under her management, it never regained that commanding sanctity and crowded frequentation which we find attested in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo for its earlier period. Very different was the fate of the Olympic festival, on the banks of the Alpheius 1 in Peloponnesus, near the old oracular temple of the Olympian Zeus, which not only grew up unin- terruptedly from small beginnings to the maximum of Pan- Hellenic importance, but even preserved its crowds of visitors and its celebrity for many centuries after the extinction of Greek freedom, and only received its final abolition, after more than eleven hundred years of continuance, from the decree of the Christian emperor Theodosius in 394 A.D. I have already recounted, in the preceding volume of this history, the attempt made by Pheidon, despot of Argos, to restore to the Pisatans, or to acquire for himself, the administration of this festival, an event which proves the importance of the festival in Pelopon- nesus, even so early as 740 B.C. At that time, and for some years afterwards, it seems to have been frequented chiefly, if not exclusively, by the neighboring inhabitants of central and wes- tern Peloponnesus, Spartans, Messenians, Arkadians, Triphy- lians, Pisatans, Eleians, and Achasans, 2 and it forms an important link connecting the Etolo-Eleians, and their privileges as Agonothets to solemnize and preside over it, with Sparta. From the year 720 B.C., we trace positive evidences of the grad- ual presence of more distant Greeks, Corinthians, Megarians, Boeotians, Athenians, and even Smyrnoeans from Asia. We observe also another proof of growing importance, in the increased number and variety of matches exhibited to the specta- tors, and in the substitution of the simple crown of olive, an hon- orary reward, in place of the mure substantial present which the Olympic f'estivid and all other Grecian festivals began by confer- ring upon the victor. The humble constitution of the Olympic games presented originally nothing more than a match of runners 1 Strabo, viii, p. 353; Pindar, Olymp. viii, 2; Xcnophon, Hcllen. iv, 7, 2, iii, 2, 22. a See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechisch.cn Staats-Altcrthunief sect. 10.