The foot-race around the stadion.

The Pentathlon, so called because it comprised five exercises.  The competitors were to leap, run from one end of the stadion to the other, make a long throw of the metal discus, hurl the javelin, and wrestle.

Boxing, in which one fought with arms bound with thongs of hide.

The chariot races, which were held in the hippodrome; the cars were light and were drawn by four horses.

The judges of the games were clothed in purple, crowned with laurel.  After the combat a herald proclaimed before the whole assembly the name of the victor and of his city.  A crown of olive was the only reward given him; but his fellow-citizens on his return received him as a conquering hero; sometimes they threw down a section of the city wall to give him entrance.  He arrived in a chariot drawn by four horses, clothed in purple, escorted by all the people.  “These victories which we leave today to the athletes of the public shows appeared then the greatest of all.  Poets of greatest renown celebrated them; Pindar, the most illustrious lyric poet of antiquity, has hardly done more than sing of chariot races.  It is related that a certain Diagoras, who had seen his two sons crowned on the same day, was borne in triumph by them in the sight of the spectators.  The people, holding such an honor too great for a mortal, cried out, ’Perish, Diagoras, for after all you cannot become a god.’  Diagoras, suffocated with emotion, died in the arms of his sons.  In his eyes and the eyes of the Greeks the fact that his sons possessed the stoutest fists and the nimblest limbs in Greece was the acme of earthly happiness."[56] The Greeks had their reasons for thus admiring physical prowess:  in their wars in which they fought hand to hand the most vigorous athletes were the best soldiers.

=Omens.=—­In return for so much homage, so many festivals and offerings, the Greeks expected no small amount of service from their gods.  The gods protected their worshippers, gave them health, riches, victory.  They preserved them from the evils that menaced them, sending signs which men interpreted.  These are called Omens.  “When a city,” says Herodotus,[57] “is about to suffer some great misfortune, this is usually anticipated by signs.  The people of Chios had omens of their defeat:  of a band of one hundred youths sent to Delphi but two returned; the others had died of the plague.  About the same time the roof of a school of the city fell on the children who were learning to read; but one escaped of the one hundred and twenty.  Such were the anticipating signs sent them by the deity.”