Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/87

 GROWTH OF THE ELEUSINIAN FESTIVAL. G3 Olympic games, by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes, to be celebrated at the same time, 1 a statement in itself not worthy of credit, but nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among the Grecian cities, in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded games. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis ; but bcf'cre the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor jf the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them. 2 It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the primitive religious festival, among the greater states in Greece, gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recur- ring, into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions, not merely admitting, but soliciting the fraternal presence of all Hellenic spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to the remaining states : her festivals were for her- eelf alone, and her general rudeness towards other Greeks w r as not materially softened even at the Karneia, 3 or Hyakinthia, or Gym^ nopsediae. On the other hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous outburst of village 1 Timceus, Fragm. 82, ed. Didot. The Krotoniatcs furnished a great number of victors both to the Olympic and to the Pythian games (Herodot. viii, 47 ; Pausan. x, 5, 5-x, 7, 3 ; Krause, Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen, vol. ii, sect. 29, p. 752). UVElTdl. The exclusion of all competitors, natives of Lampsakus, from the games celebrated in the Chersonesus to the honor of the cekist Miltiades, is mentioned by Herodotus as something special (Herodot. vi, 38). 3 See the remarks, upon the Lacedaemonian discouragement of stranger- visitors at their public festivals, put by Thucydides into the mouth of Perikles (Thucyd. ii, 39). Lichas the Spartan gained great renown by treating hospitably tha strangers who came to the Gymnopaxlia; at Sparta (Xenophon, Meraorab. 5, 2, tl ; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 10), a story which proves that some strangers ?ame to the Spartan festivais, but which also proves that they weie not many in number, and that to show them hospitality was a striking distinc- tion from the general character of Spartans.
 * Herodot. viii, 65. /cat avrtiv 6 (3ov?*.6/xevo; Kai TUV u7i7..uv ''E'X7.f l vui>