Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/76

 58 HISTORY OF GREECE. fill expulsion of the Persian invaders from Greece, when th Pan-Hellenic feeling had been keenly stimulated by resistance to a common enemy ; and we may easily conceive that this was a suitable moment for imparting additional dignity to the chief national festival. "We are thus enabled partially to trace the steps by which, during the two centuries succeeding 77G B.C., the festival of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragment.-; of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century U.C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalized, the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia, near Cor- inth, the Nemea near Kleonae, between Sikyon and Argos. In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution and enlargement were brought about, a notice the more inter- esting, inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a mani- festation of something like Pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation except distinct city-interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B.C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers " the counsels of the immortals." Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings ; but while the god delighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pneans, he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot- races in the neighborhood, nay, this psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be " a nuisance," the drinking of mules n desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine- built chariots objectionable, 1 as tending to divert the attention ^t spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. 1 Horn Hymn. Apoll. 262. TIjjfiavfEi a 1 aiel K-v-bf ZTTTTUV UKEIUUV, 'Apdofitvoi T' oiprjFf eft&v lepCv unb mjyeuv