less inclined to judge of it harshly if we can convince ourselves that it was sincere.
Now Grecian history supplies abundant proof that equestrian and athletic successes in the four great games of Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and the Isthmus, were esteemed even by statesmen and philosophers as events of serious importance, and that not merely to the individuals who obtained them, but to the states whom these individuals represented. Solon, the great Athenian reformer, offered the enormous reward of 500 drachmas, equivalent to one year's income of an Athenian citizen of the wealthiest class, to the winner of a prize at Olympia, and 100 for a victory at the Isthmus. And it is actually stated that this was a reduction, and that before Solon's time the public rewards of victors were even larger.[1] We hear also that a certain Cylon, who made an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself as tyrant of Athens, backed by a powerful array of kinsmen and admirers, owed much of his influence to an Olympic victory; and that he selected the recurrence of the Olympic festival as a suitable opportunity for his attempt, trusting to the associations which this festival would recall, as likely to influence in his favour the Athenian public. So Alcibiades, when at a particular period in his tortuous political career he desired to produce among the Greeks a feeling of respect for Athens and a weakening of Spartan influence, saw in the Olympic games his best opportunity for effecting this result. Seven four-horse chariots entered in the name of the ambitious Athe-
- ↑ Grote's Hist. of Greece, Part II., chap. xi.
