For the earliest account of this phase of Hellenic life one naturally turns to the poems of Homer. Yet one must not presume that these poems, simply because they are the earliest literary records of the Greeks, exhibit this or any other feature of Hellenic civilization in its initial state. The art of literature, mechanical on the one hand and artistic on the other, though when its technique is once learned, it becomes inseparable from civilization, and though now we justly consider the nation that has nothing to transcribe as uncivilized;--this art of literature is, nevertheless, only one phase of the life of civilized man! If we reflect that even today the lives of the majority of persons are, in most of their relations, outside the sphere of literature, it becomes easy to conceive how a people that has not yet mastered this art could, notwithstanding, be versed in simpler arts that would fully entitle them to the epithet civilized; and if we should find portrayed in the earliest literary records of that people a very high and perfect social life, our conception would be corroborated. We must not, therefore, regard the Homeric poems as affording data concerning the origin and initial condition of this phase of Hellenic life. On the contrary, the Homeric athletics especially presuppose a long antecedent course of development. Hellenic legend strengthens this inference. According to a myth, Apollo enjoyed the diskos no less than music. He practiced for amusement with his favorite Hyakinthos, whom, as it is related, he accidentally killed by an unlucky throw. Other traditions inform us, that Orion challenged Artemis to a contest with the diskos, and that Autolykos, son of Hermes, instructed young Herakles in the art of wrestling. It must be remembered, again, that Homer sang of the deeds of a very select aristocracy, just as in later times, the French Troubadours and Trouvères were to sing exclusively of the nobility and to them. French literature remained aristocratic until the closing years of the seventeenth century, when Molière made room on his stage for the Parisian bourgeois. For Homer, even the noblest men were not sufficient, and the gods themselves were made to act in his scenes. There is, accordingly, some room for doubt as to whether the régime, described in the Homeric poems, may be taken without modification, as the régime of the Hellenic race at large at that time. It must be remembered, too, that the poems were sung to the very class whose deeds they portrayed, so that any additional splendor, with which the scenes of this high life were adorned, would add to the credit of the poet. Let us, therefore, rightly appraise the Iliad, with reference to our subject: “Athletic Games among the Homeric Heroes.” The Homeric poems give us the idealistic picture of the lives of a band of Greek nobles who, with their followers, had left their native land, to besiege a foreign and hostile city.