, and considerable dissatisfaction to very
many, since but few could obtain the prize. It was chiefly agreed upon,
that the orators and poets should be removed; and this determination
did not proceed from any hatred to learning, but forasmuch as such
contenders are the most noted and worthiest men of all, therefore they
reverence them, and were troubled that, when they must judge every one
very deserving, they could not bestow the prize equally upon all. I,
being present at this consult, dissuaded those who were for removing
things from their present settled order, and who thought this variety
as unsuitable to the solemnity as many strings and many notes to an
instrument. And when at supper, Petraeus the president and director
of the sports entertaining us, the same subject was discoursed on, I
defended music, and maintained that poetry was no upstart intruder, but
that it was time out of mind admitted into the sacred games, and crowns
were given to the best performer. Some straight imagined that I intended
to produce some old musty stories, like the funeral solemnities of
Oeolycus the Thessalian or of Amphidamas the Chalcidean, in which they
say Homer and Hesiod contended for the prize. But passing by these
instances as the common theme of every grammarian, as likewise their
criticisms who, in the description of Patroclus's obsequies in Homer,
read [Greek omitted] ORATORS, and not [Greek omitted], DARTERS,
("Iliad," xxiii, 886.) as if Achilles had proposed a prize for the best
speaker,--omitting all these, I said that Acastus at his father Pelias's
funeral set a prize for contending poets, and Sibylla won it. At this,
a great many demanding some authority for this unlikely and incredible
relation, I happily recollecting myself produced Acesander, who in his
description of Africa hath this relation; but I must confess this is no
common book. But Polemo the Athenian's "Commentary of the Treasures of
the City Delphi" I suppose most of you have diligently perused, he being
a very learned man in the Greek Antiquities. In him you shall find that
in the Sicyonian treasure there was a golden book dedicated to the god,
with this inscription: Aristomache, the poetess of Erythraea, dedicated
this after she had got the prize at the Isthmian games. Nor is there any
reason, I continued, why we should so admire and reverence the Olympic
games, as if, like Fate, they were unalterable, and never admitted any
change since the first instit