The Historians' History of the World 03

At the Olympian festival, as established by Iphitus, the foot-race, distinguished by the name of stadion, is said to have been the only game exhibited; whether the various other exercises familiar in Homer’s age had fallen into oblivion, or the barbarism and poverty, superinduced by the violent and lasting troubles which followed the return of the Heraclidæ, forbade those of greater splendour.

Afterwards, as the growing importance of the meeting occasioned inquiry concerning what had been practised of old, or excited invention concerning what might be advantageously added new, the games were multiplied. The diaulos, a more complicated foot-race, was added at the fourteenth Olympiad; wrestling, and the pentathlon or game of five exercises, at the eighteenth; boxing at the twenty-third; the chariot-race was not restored till the twenty-fifth, of course not till a hundred years after the institution of the festival; the pancration and the horse-race were added in the thirty-third.

So much Pausanias has asserted; apparently from the Olympian register, which on other occasions he has quoted. Originally the sacrifices, processions, and various religious ceremonies apparently formed the principal pageantry of the meeting. Afterwards perhaps the games became the greater inducement for the extraordinary resort of company to Olympia; though the religious ceremonies continued still to increase in magnificence as the festival gained importance. The temple, like that of Delphi, became an advantageous repository for treasure. A mart or fair was a natural consequence of a periodical assembly of multitudes in one place; and whatever required extensive publicity, whatever was important for all the scattered members of the Greek nation to know, would be most readily communicated, and most solemnly, by proclamation at the Olympian festival. Hence treaties by mutual agreement were often proclaimed at Olympia; and sometimes columns were erected there at the joint expense of the contracting parties, with the treaties engraved.

Thus the Olympian meeting to a not inconsiderable degree supplied the want of a common capital for the Greek nation; and, with a success far beyond what the worthy founder’s imagination, urged by his warmest wishes, could reach, contributed to the advancement of arts, particularly of the fine arts, of commerce, of science, of civilised manners, of liberal sentiments, and of friendly communication among all the Grecian people. Such was the common feeling of these various advantages, it became established as a divine law that, whatever wars were going forward among the republics, there should be a truce, not only during the festival, but also for some days before and after; so that persons from all parts of Greece might safely attend it.

The advantages and gratifications in which the whole nation thus became interested, and the particular benefits accruing to the Eleans, excited attempts to establish or improve other similar meetings in different parts of Greece. Three of these, the Delphian, Isthmian, and Nemean, though they never equalled the celebrity and splendour of the Olympian, acquired considerable fame and importance. Each was consecrated to a different deity. In the Delphic, next in consideration to the Olympic, Apollo was honoured; the Delphian people were esteemed his ministers; the Amphictyonic council were the allowed protectors and regulators of the institution. The Isthmian had its name from the Corinthian Isthmus, near the middle of which, overlooking the scene of the solemnity, stood a temple of the god Neptune, venerated by the Corinthian people, administrators of the ceremonies, as their patron.

At the Nemean, sacred to Juno, the Argives (who esteemed her the tutelary deity of their state) presided. All these meetings, like the Olympian, were, in war as in peace, open to all Grecian people; the faith of gods as well as of men being considered as plighted for protection of all, under certain rules, going to, staying at, and returning from them. All were also, like the Olympian, held at intervals of four years; so that, taking their years in turn, it was provided that in every summer, in the midst of the military season, there should be a respite of those hostilities among the republics which were otherwise so continually desolating Greece; and though this beneficial regulation was under some pretences occasionally overborne by powerful states, yet the sequel of history shows it to have been of very advantageous efficacy.c

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