Page:Pindar (Morice).djvu/69

Rh general public. Merchants came to traffic, poets and even prose-authors to recite their compositions before the largest audiences that they could ever hope to address. We are told that Herodotus, "the Father of History," recited his great work to an audience of assembled Greeks at Olympia; and that the young Thucydides, who was present, was inspired by the scene with the first conception of his own yet greater work. "If," says a modern scholar, "we could suppose all the best horse-races, foot-races, prize-fights, and wrestling-matches, all the May meetings and musical festivals, to be fixed for the same place at the same time, and then conceive not merely that the Houses of Parliament should adjourn to attend, but that even in time of war a truce should be proclaimed during their celebration—imagine the assemblage of men of English blood from the furthest corners of the known world, to all of whom, and to their children, the name of the victor in the principal race would form an epoch and a date never to be forgotten, superseding that of the monarch or the president,—if, I say, we can form such a picture as this, we shall have some idea of what the festival of Olympia was to the old Hellenic world."

The moral and social influences of the great games are dilated upon by Greek rhetoricians in terms which to a modern reader may seem exaggerated, but which, at least, serve to illustrate ancient ideas on the subject.

"The Panegyreis," says one of these authors, "were