sides. Seeds blew in and shrubs and trees took the place of columns.
Soon the flowers and the animals had Olympia to themselves. A few gray
stones thrust up through the soil. So it was for hundreds of years.
Greece was conquered by the men of Venice and then by the Turks. But
Olympia, in its far corner, was forgotten and untouched except when a
Turkish officer or farmer went there to dig a few stones out of the
ground. And they knew nothing of the ancient gods and the ancient
festival and the old story of the place, for they were foreigners and
new people.

But about a hundred years ago Englishmen and Germans and Frenchmen began
to visit Greece. They went to see, not her new Turkish houses or her
Venetian castles or the strange dress of her new people, but her old
ruins and the signs of her old glory. These men had read of Olympia in
ancient Greek books and they knew what statues and buildings had once
stood there. They wrote back to their friends things like this:

"I saw a piece of a huge column lying on top of the ground. It was seven
feet across. It must have belonged to the temple of Zeus."

"To-day I saw a long, low place in the ground where I think must have
been the stadion in ancient days."

At last, about thirty years ago, Ernst Curtius and several other Germans
went there. They were men who had studied Greek history and Greek art
and they planned to excavate Olympia.

"We will uncover the sacred enclosure again. Men shall see again the
ancient temples and altars, the stadion, the statues."

Germany had given them money for the work, and at last Greece allowed
them to begin. In October they started their digging. Workmen up-rooted
shrubs and dug away dirt. Excavators watched every spadeful. They were
always measuring, making maps, taking notes. They found a few vases,
terra cotta figures, pieces of bronze statues, swords and armor. They
cleared off temple floors and were able to make out the plans of the old
buildings. They found the empty pedestals of many statues. Yet they were
disappointed. Olympia had been a beautiful place, a rich place. They
were finding only the hints of these things. The beauty was gone. Of the
three thousand statues that had been there should they not find one?

Then they uncovered the fallen statues of the pediments of Zeus' temple.
Thirty or more there were--Apollo, Zeus, heroes, women, centaurs,
horses. Arms were gone, heads were broken, legs were lost. The
excavators fitte