Olympian and Pythian Odes

futile rivalry will be attempted here with what has helped so many to a clearer image of the great scene. Yet, after all that has been said by word-painter and by archaeologist, the poet must give the poet's meaning to the whole. Reconstruct Greek life and we shall better understand Pindar. With all my heart; but after the reconstruction we shall need the poet's light as much as ever, if not more.

It is only in accordance with the principle of the organic unity of Hellenism that the acme of Greek lyric art should have embodied the acme of Greek festal life. The great games of Greece are as thoroughly characteristic of her nationality as the choral poetry which was the expression of them and the crown of them. Choruses we find everywhere, games we find everywhere, but despite all recent advance in athleticism, the Greek games were superior in plastic beauty to their modern analogues, as superior as were the Greek choruses to the rude dance and the ruder song of May-pole and vintage. The point of departure may have been the same, but the Greeks alone arrived.

Origin of games.

Delphic influences.

The origin of the great games of Greece is to be sought in the religion of Greece,¹ and the influence of Delphi,—centre of the religious life of the people,—was felt in every regulation that controlled these famous contests. The times of the performance were in the hands of the priests, the cycle was a religious as well as an astronomical cycle. Eight years, the great year of expiation, the great lykabas year/course of light, the hecatomb of months, the period of the great pompe procession from Tempe to Delphi, was subdivided into shorter periods for the performance of the games.

Prizes.

The contests themselves may have come over from Asia, as Thukydides says, but a marked point of difference was the absence of intrinsically valuable prizes, which so astonished the attendants of Xerxes. At other games prizes of value were bestowed, and lists are given in Pindar, but at the great games the prize was a simple wreath. It is

¹ This section follows Curtius closely.