The uses of these games were threefold;--1st, The uniting all Greeks by one sentiment of national pride, and the memory of a common race; 2dly, The inculcation of hardy discipline--of physical education throughout every state, by teaching that the body had its honours as well as the intellect--a theory conducive to health in peace--and in those ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength and skill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, and principally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, as a motive, as an irresistible incentive--the desire of glory! That desire spread through all classes--it animated all tribes--it taught that true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions.
The ambition of the Altis established fame as a common principle of action.

What chivalry did for the few, the Olympic contests effected for the many--they made a knighthood of a people.
If, warmed for a moment from the gravity of the historic muse, we might conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke the imagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with the profusest triumphs of Grecian art--all Greece assembled from her continent, her colonies, her isles--war suspended--a Sabbath of solemnity and rejoicing--the Spartan no longer grave, the Athenian forgetful of the forum--the highborn Thessalian, the gay Corinthian-- the lively gestures of the Asiatic Ionian;--suffering the various events of various times to confound themselves in one recollection of the past, he may see every eye turned from the combatants to one majestic figure--hear every lip murmuring a single name [120]-- glorious in greater fields: Olympia itself is forgotten.

Who is the spectacle of the day?
Themistocles, the conqueror of Salamis, and the saviour of Greece! Again--the huzzas of countless thousands following the chariot-wheels of the competitors--whose name is shouted forth, the victor without a rival!--it is Alcibiades, the destroyer of Athens! Turn to the temple of the Olympian god, pass the brazen gates, proceed through the columned aisles [121], what arrests the awe and wonder of the crowd! Seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, of gold and gems--the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand the statue of Victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, the cloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of Phidias, the Homeric dream imbodied [122]--the majesty of the Olympian Jove! Enter the banquet-room of the conquerors--to whose verse, hymned in a solemn and mighty chorus, bends the listening Spartan--it is the verse of the Dorian Pindar! In that motley and glittering space (the fair of Olympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), join the throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnt traveller;--now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, or of temples whose awful deity no lip may name--now, with clinched hands and glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhausted rivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea--what moves, what hushes that mighty audience?
It is Herodotus reading his history! [123] Let us resume our survey.
XX.

Midland, in the Peloponnesus, lies the pastoral Arcady.

Besides the rivers of Alpheus and Erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomy stream of Styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerable brooks, is the land of Pan.