Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/86

68 HISTORY OF GREECE. competitors from beyond the border; the dignity of the state, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, being measured by numbers, admiration, and envy, in the frequenting visitors.- There is no positive evidence, indeed, of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Peisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathencea to the ancient an- nual or lesser Panathenaea ; nor can we trace the steps of prog- ress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiag, Megara, Sikyon, Pellcne, JEgina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believing that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or Isthmian victors whom Pindar and Simonides celebrated, many derived a portion of their renown from previous victories acquired at several of these local contests, 2 victories sometimes so num- erous, as to prove how wide-spread the habit of mutual fre- quentation had become ; 3 though we find, even in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities, in which it is thought necessary to confer this mutual right by express stip- ulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value ; and Timaeus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Kroton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preeminence of the 1 Thucyd. vi, 16. Alkibiades says, nal off a av Iv ry TTO^EI xopiiyiaiq >7 u?J.(J rti hap-pvvo/iai, rolf /J.EV cloroZc Qdoveirai facet, vrpof 6e rorf t;evov; KOI avTTj iaxvf (paiverat. The greater Panathenrca are ascribed to Peisistratus by the Scholiast on Aristeides, vol. iii, p. 323, ed. Dindorf : judging by what immediately pre- redes, the statement seems to come from Aristotle. 8 Simonides, Fragm. 154-158, ed. Bergk; Pindar, Nem. x, 45; Olymp xiii, 107. The distinguished athlete Theagenes is affirmed to have gained twelve hundred prizes in these various agones : according to some, fourteen hundred prizes (Pausan. vi, 11, 2; Plutarch, Prascept. Rcip. Ger. c. 13 p. 811). An athlete named Apollonius arrived too late for the Olympic gamoa, having stayed away too long, from liis anxiety to get money at various agones in Ionia (.Pausan. v, 21, 5). 8 See, particularly, the treaty between the inhabitants of Latus and those of Olfcs in Krete, in Bocckh's Corp. Inscr. No. 2554, wherein this reci- procity is expressly stipulated. Boeckh places this Inscription in the third century E o.