several of these local contests—­victories sometimes so numerous as to prove how widespread the habit of reciprocal frequentation had become:  though we find, even in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express stipulation.  Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value.  Timaeus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preeminence of the Olympic games by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at the same time—­a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded games.  At the time when the Homeric hymn to Demeter was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis.  But before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.

It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the primitive religious festival among the greater states in Greece gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recurring, into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions not merely admitting, but soliciting, the fraternal presence of all Hellenic spectators.  In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to the remaining states.  Her festivals were for herself alone, and her general rudeness toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at the Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopaediae.  On the other hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by song, dance and revelry of various kinds, into costly and diversified performances, first by a trained chorus, next by actors superadded to it.

And the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity.  The dramatic literature of Athens however belongs properly to a later period.  Previous to the year B.C. 560, we see only those commencements of innovation which drew upon Thespis the rebuke of Solon; who however himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic festival a more solemn and attractive character by checking the license of the rhapsodes and insuring to those present a full orderly recital of the Iliad.