Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/44

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE ATHLETES OF ANCIENT GREECE.
19

statue to him, receive him in triumph, and care for him the rest of his life.

The actual prizes offered at the Greek national games were of no intrinsic value. The highest reward was the sense of having done well. At the Olympian games the victor was crowned with olive; at the Pythian games, with laurel; at the Nemean games, with parsley; and at the Isthmian games with pine.

But though the Greek games, in this respect, favorably compare with the gambling and greed of our modern race-course or other contest, the reward of the victor was not wholly comprised in his olive crown, or his sense of glory. The successful athlete received splendid rewards. At the Olympic games, a herald proclaimed to the multitude the winner's name, his parentage, and his country; the priests took from a table of ivory and gold the olive crown and placed it on his head, and in his hand a branch of palm; as he marched in the sacred procession to the Temple of Zeus, his admirers showered flowers in his path, and costly gifts, and sang the old victor song of Archilochus. His name was then inscribed in the Greek Calendar. "Fresh honors and rewards awaited him on his return home," says F. Storr. "If he was an Athenian, he received, according to the law of Solon, five hundred drachmæ, and