greatly surpasses Virgil in this spirit of seriousness. The divine interventions and machines of the latter are poetic conveniences, -those of the former are personal convictions: Tues de 858! Grecians could not have sat without disgust and horror in the Circus. We might presume that manners and feelings would be corrected by these Rules, as Horace sings: "Qui feros cultus hominum recentum, decoræ More palæstræ."+ In connection with this design, it may have been purposed to maintain and establish this purer Mythology. A common temple and object of worship must have checked the propensity for new gods which belonged to small and more ignorant tribes. Beneath the flattering title of the Patron Deity of the whole of Greece, the people were united by the patriotism of religion: Пalegos E2λaviou. His name was, indeed, Panhellenius! A high morality, considering its standard, was promoted by these Games. So severe was the law of marriage, that a doubt of legitimate descent debarred from the ordeal. Any disgrace of character was disqualifying.—Idleness and luxury were, by the necessary discipline, put under strict restraint. Chrysostom states, that in the Olympic contests there stands a herald crying with a loud voice, Does any one accuse this man of being a slave, a thief, or open to the proof of any evil deed? The candidates were led round the whole line of spectators, their fathers, brothers, and relatives, to see whether any imputation rested on pedigree, station, or character. Quick-sighted envy there took its place, and every vindictive feeling had there its scope: an equivocal repute had consequently little chance of evasion. Who among the poets is so pure as Pindar? The scene was, withal, reputed as most holy and the virtues were consecrated by the sanctions of religion. Somewhat of a selfdefence might be operative: and Olympia was set up as a counterpoise by the Peloponnesians against the attraction and influence of Eleusis. They were intended to assist the liberty and general Il: lib. ii. 485. Carm lib. i. 10. + Nem: V. equality of that people. Dedicated to Jupiter Eleutherius, all "good men and true" were equally welcome. Glaucus the ploughman may use his iron-hand, which drove in the coulter, as undisputedly as any sceptred palm.* Aristotle copies an epigram on an Olympian conqueror, who utters his own surprise at being turned into one from a travelling fishmonger.† The crowd can vent loud execrations against a Hiero, and Themistocles denounces him. But we must distinguish here. Whoever contended must be disciplined according to the terms already stated. Now the poor man could not afford this. In the Memorabilia, Socrates says of a master, who complains that he could not go through his lacquey's fatigues, "What a shame for a man, who has gone through all his exercises, not to be able to bear as much fatigue as his servant!" This implies that the servant had not so been trained. Sometimes, however, a poor man was sent by a state: if he succeeded, he obtained a little independence. Solon fixed the pension at five hundred drachmas about sixteen pounds sterling yearly. The chariotrace was the most aristocratical distinction. Its expensiveness confined it to the wealthy. Aristophanes speaks of it as showing the pride, and proving the ruin, of the Athenian youth.‡ These Games were of the greatest use for the purpose of Chronology. Until this Calendar was invented, secular history continued an entangled web. This gives a great precision. Only one omission occurred of the victor's name in eight hundred and forty-four years. All this was notable. It depended on no mysterious tablets, like the private registers of the Roman pontiffs. It may seem strange to date from the hard blows of the stadium, to call the world to time at the moment you thus call the boxer. A frolic mind might find amusement in its improbability, as the poor plaintiff at a London Police Office lately exclaimed that the blow which he received from the prisoner, had almost knocked him into the next week: Scaliger,§ Usher, and Newton, however, are profuse in acknowledging their importance. And in Olympia were the rolls of all treaties and Paus: vi. 10. + Rhet: 192. histories. They were also engraven on pillars raised for that purpose. In the peace between the Athenians, Argives, and Mantineans, while its articles were inscribed in the capital of each state, "they were to erect jointly, by way of a memorial, a brazen column at Olympia, at the then approaching games."* These Games sent back to their own countries many a man who would never have been appreciated but for this high stamp of approval. Greatness owes much to occasion, and wants a theatre. Here was test which had often elicited the master-mind. Here a fame might be acquired which was reflected upon others, and upon posterity. Cities were proud of the hero, and his associated name flung around them a newer splendour. Ortygia, Himera, Agrigentum, were so ennobled. Olympia, thus, stood related to the civilised world, -a thousand eyes brightened, and a thousand hearts beat quick, at its sound,-and it seemed every where present, just as Alpheus was fabled by submarine passage to spring up in Arethusa. "Quos Elea domum reducit Palma cœlestes pugilemve equumque Munere donat."+ These Games were of the greatest value in restraining and directing ambition. In a country comparatively small, and among its many rival states, the presence of so much heroic spirit might have proved fatal to liberty, and been tempted to war against itself. Here was always the staff and skeleton of a mighty army, and here might have idled its proper chiefs. But here, too, was constant muster and emprise. To stand well among his compatriots, and still more to surpass them, the ablest general must continue his exercises of skill and strength. And to win the peaceful olive of the course was almost as honourable as to gather the laurels of the field. Ambition, therefore, fretted not, nor did treason lurk. The fiercest martial temper was ready to strike the invader, and in the meanwhile found ample scope and reward in the competitions of • Thucyd: lib. v. + Hor: Carm: iv. 2. peace. Thus were the greatest captains ever prepared, "straining upon the start," and ever saved from intestine feud, "guiltless of their country's blood." How Tully warms when he speaks of Athens and her rewards! "Quæ ego vidi Athenis! quæ aliis in urbibus Græciæ! quas res divinas talibus institutas viris! quos cantus! quæ carmina! prope ad immortalitatis et religionem et memoriam consecrantur.' In some respects Olympia may fall below the civilization of scenes more contiguous to us. A good deal of information may be collected concerning it. But we read not of its jockey club. It had no betting rooms. Its founder, Hercules, never swore but once in his life. It was annoyed by histories and poems! How inferior in taste to the modern spectacle! They called themselves auroxoves, but thought not that they, like the present generation, belonged to the turf. Much nearer the Levant than ourselves, they little foresaw that levanting was the phrase for shifting every unpleasant obligation. Their faint outline is gloriously completed! Could they look on the dreadly stern morality with which these things are conducted now! It would have done a nobly-sandaled Athenian good to have seen the boot of this age on legs equally black, with it on or off! It is not to be concealed that sixteen centuries have given the recent candidate for fame a great advantage! Some other matters have been considered favourable to knowledge and moral improvement! Yet allowing every exception, may we not, without violation of justice or generosity, scorn the poor attempts of Olympia amidst the lustre of virtue and the blaze of intelligence, -the literature,-the decorum,-the romance, which distinguish a British Course? Alpheus, thy wave was classic once-yield thee at last to the triumphs of the, -DON! When will nations see their policy, and here negociate their disputes; and Chronology, learning her true secret of accuracy, write her epochs by the St. Legers? There was great inconvenience experienced from the heat and consequent thirst. Ælian observes, in the eighteenth chapter of his fourteenth book of the Various History, that "a Chian Pro Annio Milone. + Plutarch.-Roman Questions, 28. threatened not to put a servant with whom he was angry into the mill but to carry him to Olympia; thinking it a greater punishment to stand a spectator there in the excessive heat of the sun than to be employed in the most servile labour." Lucian, in his Life's End of Peregrinus, strongly censures him for abusing the noble Herodes who had constructed an aqueduct to Olympia at his own expense, "that the spectators of the games might no longer perish by thirst." These sports, being Pagan rites, were always most displeasing and abhorrent to the Jews. Antiochus Epiphanes by this means seduced many of that people to idolatry: "whereupon they built a place of exercise at Jerusalem, according to the customs of the heathen."* Josephus reprobates the conduct of Herod in establishing solemn games every five years, in which he imitated whatever was most costly and magnificent in the shows of other nations. The Christians, by absenting themselves from these rites, and similar ones, and protesting against them, often secured their martyrdom. The Romans did not think it honourable to contend in person,-a senator would have been disgraced by an appearance in the scene,the Eternal city wept to witness Nero,-that butcher-mime,— returning in the chariot which had borne the form, and signalised the triumph, of Augustus, crowned as a pugilist: and Hadrian, the renovator of Greece, gained no favour with his patrician peers and valiant fellow-soldiers, when it was reported that he had walked, in the habit of an Agonothetes, along the Olympic course. Cicero, with the keen observation which distinguishes him, treats very doubtingly the boasted claims of the athlete to valour and endurance. He compares such rude virtues with his native gladiators, and appears to give them the preference. "Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit? Quis vultum mutavit unquam ? Quis non modo stetit, verum etiam decubiit turpiter? Quis, cum decubuisset, ferrum recipere jussus, collum contraxit ?"+ |