When the Macedonian princes claimed this right, it was not until satisfactory proof of their Hellenic ancestry had been demanded and furnished that their claim was allowed. Greek princes in distant colonies, like Arcesilas of Cyrene, were careful to retain their position as members of the Hellenic family, by occasional "entries" at one or other of the four great games. Thus these contests reminded the Greeks of their nationality; and every emotion which the thought of that nationality could excite, at a moment when foreign invasion was threatening it with destruction and calling on all who valued its existence to maintain it against the common foe, was aroused by the recurrence of these festivals in the bosom of a patriotic Greek like Pindar, and finds continual expression in his poetry.
But, quite apart from their antiquarian interest, and the religious and patriotic associations which surrounded them, the great games were in their mere external aspect the most magnificent spectacles known to the Greeks. And on this account alone they might well excite the imagination of a people so keenly alive to all the influences of external pomp and splendour. If we may consider Pindar as at all a typical Greek of his own day, it is clear that magnificence for itself, and irrespective of any further associations connected with it, was to them a source of the keenest admiration and pleasure.
It is true that in Pindar's day the magnificent creations of architecture and sculpture, which at a later period were among the chief glories of Olympia, were
