The very emulation between the several states stimulated their jealousy of each other: and still, if the Greeks found their countrymen in Greeks they found also in Greeks their rivals.
We can scarcely conceive the vast importance attached to victory in these games [115]; it not only immortalized the winner, it shed glory upon his tribe.

It is curious to see the different honours characteristically assigned to the conqueror in different states.

If Athenian, he was entitled to a place by the magistrates in the Prytaneum; if a Spartan, to a prominent station in the field.

To conquer at Elis was renown for life, "no less illustrious to a Greek than consulship to a Roman!" [116] The haughtiest nobles, the wealthiest princes, the most successful generals, contended for the prize [117].

And the prize (after the seventh Olympiad) was a wreath of the wild olive! Numerous other and similar games were established throughout Greece.
Of these, next to the Olympic, the most celebrated, and the only national ones, were the Pythian at Delphi, the Nemean in Argolis, the Isthmian in Corinth; yet elsewhere the prize was of value; at all the national ones it was but a garland--a type of the eternal truth, that praise is the only guerdon of renown.