f different states whom we do not know to have ever
before cooeperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common
interest--is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a
decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as
interfering--a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both
her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the
Delphian oracle--while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through
the greatest and best of their citizens. The credit of a large-minded
patriotism rests prominently upon them.

But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic spirit
was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced
that spirit still farther. The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the
victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival
hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other
competition except in the harp and the paean, was expanded into
comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only
of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots--celebrated, not at Delphi
itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha--and under the
direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves. I have already
mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained
victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his
sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting
Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the
foundation of the new games on the Cirrhaean plain, in commemoration of
the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to
him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third
Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible _Agonothets_ or
administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their
names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards
were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing
was conferred but wreaths of laurel--the rapidly attained celebrity of
the games being such as to render any further recompense superfluous.
The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes himself, once the leader in the
conquest of Cirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second
Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as
competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity secon