Olympic Games

The exiles urging him to march against the Athenians, and saying that, when he was proclaimed victor in the Olympic games, these alone hissed;

When Alexander ordered by public proclamation in the Olympic games, that all exiles whatever, except the Thebans, had free liberty to return to their own country, Eudamidas said:

Seeing the racers in the Olympian games very solicitous at starting to get some advantage of one another, he said, How much more careful are these racers to be counted swift than just!

Do you think, fellow citizens, that any man would ever have been willing to train for the pancratium or any other of the harder contests in the Olympic games, or any of the other games that confer a crown, if the crown were given, not to the best man, but to the man who had successfully intrigued for it?

For he will say that Philammon the boxer was crowned at Olympia, not as having defeated Glaucus, that famous man of ancient days, but because he beat the antagonists of his own time;

For if he were rich, how is it that, when he himself holds the Olympic games, where he gathers all the Greeks together every fifth year, he proclaims the victorious athletes and crowns them with a crown of wild olive?

the Olympian from the Isthmian games—either as a man comes from a child as it develops, or as air comes from water.

And just as at the Olympic games the wreaths of victory are not bestowed upon the handsomest and strongest persons present, but on men who enter for the competitions—since it is among these that the winners are found,—so it is those who act rightly who carry off the prizes and good things of life.

For instance, to prove that Dorieus was the victor in a contest at which the prize was a crown, it is enough to say that he won a victory at the Olympic games;

Beside the sacred precinct of the son of Cronus, child, you and Polytimidas were deprived of two Olympic garlands by a sudden drawing of lots.

That is much more appropriate for me than for any of you who has won a race at the Olympic games with a pair of horses or a four-in-hand.

For as compared with the life that aims at a Pythian or Olympian victory and is wholly lacking in leisure for other tasks, that life we speak of—which most truly deserves the name of life —is doubly (nay, far more than doubly) lacking in leisure, seeing that it is occupied with the care of bodily and spiritual excellence in general.

for since I began to contend at the Olympic games, I never yet met anyone better than myself in anything.

You said that once, when you went to Olympia, everything you had on your person was your own work;

You are in a state of blessedness, Hippias, if at every Olympiad you come to the sanctuary with fair hopes concerning your soul and its wisdom;

For the Greeks considered our state to be greater than they had ever done, even beyond its actual power, through the splendour of my display as its deputy to the Olympic games;