All the festivals of the Greeks were religious.  Some were of the seasons, as one in February to Zeus, the giver of good weather; and another in November to Zeus, the god of storms.  There were festivals in honor of the plough, of the threshing-floor; festivals commemorating the victories at Marathon, Salamis, etc.; of the restoration of democracy by Thrasybulus; feasts of the clothing of the images, on which occasion it was not lawful to work; feasts in commemoration of those who perished in the flood of Deucalion; feasts of nurses, feasts of youth, of women, of trades.  Then there were the great national festivals, celebrated every four years at Olympia and Delphi, and every three and five years at Nemea and the isthmus of Corinth.  The Panathenaeic festival at Athens was held every five years in honor of Athene, with magnificent processions, cavalcades of horsemen, gymnastic games, military dances, recitations of the Homeric poems, and competition in music.  On the frieze of the Parthenon was represented by the scholars of Phidias the procession of the Peplos.  This was a new dress made for the statue of Athene by young girls of Athens, between the ages of seven and eleven years.  These girls, selected at a special ceremony, lived a year on the Acropolis, engaged in their sacred work, and fed on a special diet.  Captives were liberated on this occasion, that all might share in the festival.

Such festivals constituted the acme of Greek life.  They were celebrated in the open air with pomp and splendor, and visitors came from far to assist on these occasions.  Prizes were given for foot and chariot races; for boxing, leaping, music, and even for kissing.  The temples, therefore, were not intended for worship, but chiefly to contain the image of the god.  The cella, or adytum, was small and often dark; but along the magnificent portico or peristyle, which surrounded the four sides of the Doric temples, the splendid processions could circulate in full view of the multitude.[257] The temple was therefore essentially an out-door building, with its beauty, like that of a flower, exposed to light and air.  It was covered everywhere, but not crowded, with sculpture, which was an essential part of the building.  The pediments, the pedestals on the roofs, the metopes between the triglyphs, are as unmeaning without the sculpture as a picture-frame without its picture.  So says Mr. Fergusson;[258] and adds that, without question, color was also everywhere used as an integral part of the structure.

Priesthood was sometimes hereditary, but was not confined to a class.  Kings, generals, and the heads of a family acted as priests and offered sacrifices.  It was a temporary office, and Plato recommends that there should be an annual rotation, no man acting as priest for more than one year.  Such a state of opinion excludes the danger of priestcraft, and is opposed to all hierarchal pretensions.  The same, however, cannot be said of the diviners and