14 EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES. 
who would convene to see the games. While some of these games 
were destined never to transcend local importance, others developed 
into the Panhellenic festivals. As the worship of ancestors became 
metamorphosed into that of heroes, the games became part of hero 
cults, which antedated those of the Olympian gods. But as the gods 
gradually superseded the heroes in the popular religion, they usurped 
the sanctuaries and the games held there, which had long been a part of 
the earlier worship. We are not here concerned, however, with the 
difficult question of the origin of funeral games. ‘They may have taken 
the place of earlier human sacrifices, which would explain the armed 
fight at the games of Patroklos and its appearance on archaic vases 
and sarcophagi; or they may have commemorated early contests of suc- 
cession, which would explain many mythical contests like the chariot- 
race between Pelops and Oinomaos for Hippodameia, or the wrestling 
match between Zeus and Kronos. In any case such games would 
never have attained the importance which they did attain in Greece, 
if it had not been for the athletic spirit and love of competition so char- 
acteristic of the Hellenic race. Whatever their origin, therefore, there 
is little doubt that out of them developed the great games of historic 
Greece. The constant relationship Behera Greek religion and Greek 
athletics can be explained in no other way.! 
EARLY HISTORY OF THE FOUR NATIONAL GAMES. 
By the beginning of the sixth century B.C. the athletic spirit dis- 
played in the Homeric poems had given rise to the four national festi- 
vals—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus. On these four, 
many lesser games were modeled.?. ‘The origin of all these, as we have 
already remarked, is lost in a mass of legend. The myths of the origin 
of Olympia are particularly conflicting. We are practically certain, 
however, that Olympia as a sanctuary preceded the advent of the 
Achzeans into the Peloponnesus, and that the foundation of the games 
preceded the coming of the Dorians, but was probably later than that 
of the Achzans. The importance of the games dates from the time 
after the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus, when the warring 
peoples finally became pacified.*? For centuries Olympia was over- 


1Cf. on this topic, Gardiner, pp. 31-2; cf. B. S. 4., XXII, 1916-18, p. 86, where, in speaking 
of the disputed origin of the custom of funeral games, he says: ‘‘It is at least conceivable that 
it originated from different causes in different places and among different peoples.” 
*See a list of twenty-five local Olympia in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities? 1891, II, pp. 273 f., 
s.v. Olympia, taken from Krause, Olympia, pp. 202 f. Most of these lesser lpm are ert 
to us only from inscriptions and coins. Peisistratos appears to have founded annual Olympia 
at Athens, when he began to build the Olympieion; Pindar seems to allude to them in Nem. II, 
23 (cf. schol. ad loc.); they were reorganized magnificently by Hadrian in A. D. 131: Spattagus, 
Vit. Hadriani, 13. Cf. Gardiner, p. 229. 
’Lysias, Paneg., notes this fact, when he says that Herakles restored peace and unity by insti- 
tuting the games. Pausanias speaks similarly of the restoration of the games by Iphitos and 
Lykourgos: V, 4.5 f. 
