Olympia

For you are the rulers and leaders of this festival, the overseers and guardians of the deeds and words done here.

the size of the river, the nature of the country, the temper of its seasons, the race of the men, and, I suppose, their numbers and their armament — or rather that I should take in hand the older and greater inquiry concerning this god, in whose presence we now are?

For this song befits the goddesses far more than the numbering of those who came against Ilium, themselves and the benches of their ships in order, of whom the greater part were foolish;

"Even if they should take some of the funds at Olympia or Delphi, and endeavour, by higher pay, to rob us of our foreign sailors, that would be alarming, if we were not a match for them, by going on board ourselves and our resident aliens;

Now the ambassadors of the Mytilenaeans sent out in the first ship, being told by the Lacedaemonians to come to Olympia, in order that the rest of the confederates also might hear and consult upon their case, accordingly went thither.

And when after the festival they came to a conference, the envoys spoke as follows:

It was the time of the Olympian games, and when he was victor there with a four-horse chariot, Cleisthenes made a proclamation that whichever Greek thought himself worthy to be his son-in-law should come on the sixtieth day from then or earlier to Sicyon, and Cleisthenes would make good his promise of marriage in a year from that sixtieth day.

Alcmeon came to keep four-horse chariots and won with them at Olympia.

second, for what he did at Olympia, where he won a horserace, and was second in a four-horse chariot, after already winning a Pythian prize, and was the cynosure of all Hellas for the lavishness of his spending;

Thereupon he went to Olympia and offered sacrifices to Olympian Zeus, and this time no one undertook to prevent him.

When the Arcadians were no longer occupied with Cromnus, they occupied themselves again with the Eleans, and they not only kept Olympia more strongly garrisoned, but also, since an Olympic year was coming on, prepared to celebrate the Olympic games in company with the Pisatans, who say that they were the first to have charge of the sanctuary.

And having captured them, with the exception of Thraustus, they arrived at Olympia, and after building a stockade around the hill of Cronus, kept guard there and were masters of the Olympian mountain;

I imagine that Alcibiades will make no reply to this, but will talk instead of his victory at Olympia, and that he will seek to defend himself on any grounds rather than those on which he has been charged.

Then again, look at the arrangements which he made for his stay at Olympia as a whole.

Indeed, so different is he from the Spartans that whereas the Spartans accept defeat even at the hands of their allies, when they compete against them, Alcibiades will not endure it even at the hands of his fellow-citizens;

Yet so far from prosecuting, they actually proposed me for public services, first as Gymnasiarch at the Hephaestia, then as head of the state deputation to the Isthmus and to Olympia, and finallyas Treasurer of the Sacred Monies on the Acropolis.

for the matter is combined and “cofated”—so he calls it, because it is so fated both that Laius will lie with his wife and that he will beget Oedipus by her—' just as, if it had been said, “Milo will wrestle at Olympia,” and someone should rejoin, “Therefore, whether he has an adversary or has not, he will wrestle,” he would be in error;

and the Olympic games, the libations of Pelops, the Zeus of Pheidias appropriates.

" Hephaestus, whom Zeus hurled from Olympus "from the divine threshold," fell in Lemnos and worked as a smith, lamed in both feet, "and his slender legs moved nimbly beneath him.

That Pheidias made the Zeus at Olympia and the Athena Polias at Athens of gold and ivory is doubtless clear to all;

a certain athlete, no mean man, in the days of old, having for a long time trained his poor body well toward manliness, went up to Olympia, and, looking toward the statue of Pisaean Zeus, said:

Remember, therefore, men of the jury, the wickedness of these men, and remember also our ancestors, of whom Epichares, my grandfather, was victor in the foot-race for boys at Olympia and won a crown for the city, and enjoyed good report among your ancestors as long as he lived;

Are you like them, Aeschines? Or your brother? Or any other orator of this generation? In my opinion, none. Then, my honest friend— to call you nothing worse—assay a living man by the standard of living men, men of his own time. That is the test you apply to everything else—to dramatists, to choruses, to athletes.

About the same time my father, seeing that the festival assembly at Olympia was beloved and admired by the whole world and that in it the Greeks made display of their wealth, strength of body, and training, and that not only the athletes were the objects of envy but that also the cities of the victors became renowned, and believing moreover that while the public services performed in Athens redoun …

for Alcmeon was the first Athenian to win at Olympia with a team of horses, and the goodwill which they had toward the people they displayed in the time of the tyrants.

second, if I shall lose my civic rights by reason of my father’s victory at Olympia, when I see other men richly rewarded for such a victory;

From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of the victors at Olympia.

But he too, who before had come to the Tirynthian — the boxer Cleomachus, after at Olympia, with an incredibility of change, he had melted from male, cut within the skin and beyond, now to be crowned among the Novian Fullers, and deservedly commemorated by the mime-writer Lentulus in his Catinensians — surely, just as he occupied the tracks of the boxing-thongs with bracelets, so too he thrust out …

In the time of Xenophon’s exile and while he was living at Scillus, near Olympia, where he had been established as a colonist by the Lacedaemonians, Megabyzus came to Olympia to attend the games and returned to him his deposit.

The place is situated on the road which leads from Lacedaemon to Olympia, and is about twenty stadia from the temple of Zeus at Olympia.

When someone was afraid of the journey to Olympia, he said:

Just as much as the competitors entered for Olympia, he retorted.