e huge stadium
began to reveal itself: line above line, thousand above thousand of
bright-robed spectators, a sea of faces, tossing arms, waving garments. A
thunderous shout rose as the athletes came to view,--jangling, incoherent;
each city cheered its champion and tried to cry down all the rest:
applause, advice, derision. Glaucon heard the derisive hootings, "pretty
girl," "pretty pullet," from the serried host of the Laconians along the
left side of the stadium; but an answering salvo, "Dog of Cerberus!"
bawled by the Athenian crowds opposite, and winged at Lycon, returned the
taunts with usury. As the champions approached the judges' stand a
procession of full twenty pipers, attended by as many fair boys in flowing
white, marched from the farther end of the stadium to meet them. The boys
bore cymbals and tambours; the pipers struck up a brisk marching note in
the rugged Dorian mode. The boys' lithe bodies swayed in enchanting
rhythm. The roaring multitude quieted, admiring their grace. The champions
and the pipers thus came to the pulpit in the midst of the long arena. The
president of the judges, a handsome Corinthian in purple and a golden
fillet, swept his ivory wand from right to left. The marching note ceased.
The whole company leaped as one man to its feet. The pipes, the cymbals
were drowned, whilst twenty thousand voices--Doric, Boeotian, Attic--chorused
together the hymn which all Greece knew: the hymn to Poseidon of the
Isthmus, august guardian of the games.

Louder it grew; the multitude found one voice, as if it would cry, "We are
Hellenes all; though of many a city, the same fatherland, the same gods,
the same hope against the Barbarian."

"Praise we Poseidon the mighty, the monarch,
Shaker of earth and the harvestless sea;
King of wide AEgae and Helicon gladsome
Twain are the honours high Zeus sheds on thee!
Thine to be lord of the mettlesome chargers,
Thine to be lord of swift ships as they wing!
Guard thou and guide us, dread prince of the billows,
Safe to their homeland, thy suppliants bring;
Faring by land or by clamorous waters
Be thou their way-god to shield, to defend,
Then shall the smoke of a thousand glad altars,
To thee in reverent gladness ascend!"

Thus in part. And in the hush thereafter the president poured a libation
from a golden cup, praying, as the wine fell on the brazier beside him, to
the "Earth Shaker," seeking his blessing upon the contestants, the