Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/90

 72 HISTORY OF GREECE. who furnished magistrates and generals to their native city, e.ip plied a still greater number of successful boxers and pankrati<isl, at Olympia, while other instances also occur of generals named by various cities from the lists of successful Olympic gymnasts ; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were found in that list. 1 The perfect popu- larity and equality of persons at these great games, is a feature not less remarkable than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd to a hand- ful of servants armed with sticks, 9 who executed the orders of the Eleian Hellanodikae. The ground upon which the ceremony took place, and even the territory of the administering state, was pro- tected by a " Truce of God," during the month of the festival, the commencement of which was formally announced by heralds sent round to the different states. Treaties of peace between differ- ent cities were often formally commemorated by pillars there erected, and the general impression of the scene suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks. 3 And I may Respecting the extreme celebrity of Diagoras and his sons, of the Rho- dian gens Eratidac, Damagetus, Akusilaus, and Dorieus, see Pindar, Olymp. vii, 16-145, with the Scholia; Thucyd. iii, 11; Pausan. vi, 7, 1-2; Xeno- phon, Hellenic, i, 5, 19: compare Strabo, xiv, p. G55. 1 The Latin writers remark it as a peculiarity of Grecian feeling, as dis- tinguished from Roman, that men of great station accounted it an honor to contend in the games : see, as a specimen, Tacitus, Dialogus de Orator, <j 9. "Ac si in Graecia natus esses, ubi ludicras quoque artes excrcere hones- tarn est, ac tibi Nicostrati robur Dii dedissent, non paterer immanes illos c t ad pugnam natos lacertos levitate jacnli vanescerc." Again, Cicero, pro Flacco, c. 13, in his sarcastic style: " Quid si etiam occisus est a piratis Adramyttenus, homo nobilis, cujus est fere nobis omnibus nomen auditum, Atinas pugil, Olympionices ? hoc est apud Graecos (quoniam de corum gravitate dicimus) prope majus et gloriosius, qnam Romoe triumphasse" received actual chastisement on the ground, from these staff-bearers, for an infringement of the regulations (Thucyd. v, 50). 3 Thucyd. v, 18-^17, and the curious ancient Inscription in Bocckh's Cor- rns Inscr. No. 11. p. 28, r?:ording the convention between the Eleians end lac inhabitants of the Arcadian town of Heraea. The comparison of Tirious passages referring to the Olympia, Isthmia, SJil Noaea (Thucydides iii, 1 '., viii, 9-10, v, 49-51, and Xenophon, Heller-i.:, IT, 7, 5J; v, 1, 29) shows that ;5rious political business was often discussad
 * Lichas, one of the chief men of Sparta, and moreover a chariot-victor,