The Great Events by Famous Historians

We thus perceive that the interval between B.C. 600-560, exhibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea—the first expansion of all the three from local into pan-Hellenic festivals. To the Olympic games, for some time the only great centre of union among all the widely dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred Agones

of the like public, open, national character; constituting visible marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism, and insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, a safe and inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic states. These four, all in or near Peloponnesus, and one of which occurred in each year, formed the period or cycle of sacred games, and those who had gained prizes at all the four received the enviable designation of Periodonices. The honors paid to Olympic victors, on their return to their native city, were prodigious even in the sixth century B.C., and became even more extravagant afterward. We may remark that in the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most illustrious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was wanting. All the three more recent

Agones

included crowns for exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, chariots, and horses.

It was not only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these four great festivals, that the gradual increase of Hellenic family feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of Grecian history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and accessible, attracting guests as well as competitors from beyond the border. The comparative dignity of the city, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, were measured by the numbers, admiration, and envy, of the frequenting visitors. There is no positive evidence indeed of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Pisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæ to the ancient annual or lesser Panathenæa. Nor can we trace the steps of progress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiæ, Megara, Sicyon, Pellene, Ægina, 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—victories sometimes so numerous as to prove how widespread the habit of reciprocal frequentation had become: though we find, even in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timæus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preëminence of the Olympic games by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at the same time—a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet 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 before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.

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 recurring, 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 herself alone, and her general rudeness toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at the Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopædiæ. On the other hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by song, dance and revelry of various kinds, into costly and diversified performances, first by a trained chorus, next by actors superadded to it.