THE AGE OF GYMNASTICS. 131 



and Corinth, emulated the Spartan legislator in founding palaestrae, 

 gymnasia, and international race-courses, and devising measures for 

 popularizing these institutions. Four different localities Olympia, 

 Corinth, Nemea, and the Dionysian race-course near Athens were con- 

 secrated to the " Panhellenic games," at which the athletes of all the 

 Grecian tribes of Europe and Asia met for a trial of strength at inter- 

 vals varying from six months to four years, the latter being the period 

 of the great Olympic games which formed the basis of ancient chro- 

 nology. The honor of being crowned in the presence of an assembled 

 nation would alone have sufficed to enlist the competition of all able- 

 bodied men of a glory-loving race, but many additional inducements 

 made the Olympic championship the day-dream of youth and man- 

 hood, and served to increase the ardor of gymnastic emulation. The 

 victors of the Isthmian and Nemean games were exempt from taxa- 

 tion, became the idols of their native towns, were secured against the 

 vicissitudes of fortune and the wants of old age, by a liberally-endowed 

 annuity fund, and enjoyed all the advantages and immunities of the 

 privileged classes. 



Egenetus, a humble citizen of Agrigentum, won three out of the 

 five prizes of the ninety-second Olympiad, and was at once raised from 

 poverty to opulence by the magnificent presents which the enthusiasm 

 of the spectators forced upon him before he had left the arena. His 

 return to his native city was attended by a procession of three hundred 

 chariots, each drawn, like his own, by two white horses, and all belonging 

 to the citizens of the town. All international quarrels and family feuds 

 were suspended when the preparatory interval of forty-eight months 

 approached its close, and even prisoners of war and political culprits 

 were released on parole if they wished to contest the laurel wreath of 

 any championship, for to deprive them of the chance of winning such 

 a distinction was thought a penalty too severe for a merely political 

 offense. The ecstatic power of an Olympian triumph is well illus- 

 trated by the story of Diagoras, the Rhodian, who had been a famous 

 champion in his younger days, and was present when his two sons 

 won the entire pentathlon, i. e., carried off the five prizes for which 

 the athletes of all Greece had been training during the four years pre- 

 ceding the sixty-first Olympiad. When the boys lifted their father up 

 and carried him through the arena, the shouts of the assembled multi- 

 tude were heard in the harbor of Patras, at a distance of seven leagues, 

 but Diagoras himself had heard nothing on earth after the herald's voice 

 had proclaimed the names of the victors ; " the gods," as Pindar says. 

 " had granted that the happiest moment of his life should be his last." 

 Would Diag-oras have exchanged that moment for a week of those 

 "beatific visions" which rewarded St. Dominic for his seven years' 

 penance ? 



If any athlete received more than one prize of the same Olympiad, 

 his victory was commemorated by a statue executed by the best con- 



