hough we find, even
in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities
in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express
stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or
musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timaeus even asserted,
as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these
cities tried to supplant the preeminence of the Olympic games by
instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated
at the same time--a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet
nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among
the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded
games. At the time when the Homeric hymn to Demeter was composed, the
worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis. But
before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every
year, in honor of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities
to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.

It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the
primitive religious festival among the greater states in Greece
gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recurring,
into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions not merely
admitting, but soliciting, the fraternal presence of all Hellenic
spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to
the remaining states. Her festivals were for herself alone, and her
general rudeness toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at
the Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopaediae. On the other hand, the Attic
Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous
outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by
song, dance and revelry of various kinds, into costly and diversified
performances, first by a trained chorus, next by actors superadded to
it.

And the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the
perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a
pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity.
The dramatic literature of Athens however belongs properly to a later
period. Previous to the year B.C. 560, we see only those commencements
of innovation which drew upon Thespis the rebuke of Solon; who however
himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic festival a more solemn
a