a more public and ceremonious manner; and that on such occasions prizes were offered and intense excitement prevailed. Funeral games were customary in Homeric times. Nestor, when an old man, tells of competing in his youth in the various games held in honor of Amarynkes at Buprasion; on which occasion, Nestor was in his prime and was victor in the boxing-match, the foot-race, and the spear-throwing contest; being surpassed only in the chariot-races. Certain recorded myths sustain the scholar in referring the origin of funeral games to a time much preceding the age of the Homeric heroes. Pausanias speaks of the funeral games in honor of Azan, son of Arkas, and the nymph Erato, as the most ancient. Minos, according to Plutarch, celebrated a funeral contest in honor of Androgeos. In the Twenty-Third Iliad, Homer describes with considerable minuteness the games held in honor of Patroklos, Achilles’ friend, whom Hector slew in battle. The chariot-race was ordained as the first event. This mode of racing was not improvised before the walls of Troy. Hellenic legend assigns the origin of the races far back of Homeric times, in the dark heroic age of mythology. While the site of stately Thebes was still covered with forests, Onchestos is said to have seen in Poseidon’s grove, horses yoked to the chariot, and panting from the race. When Apollo thought of building a temple for himself at the sacred spring of the nymph, Telphoussa, she dissuaded him, declaring that the god would be disturbed by the incessant noise of chariots and the hoof-beats of horses, and that every one would prefer to see the beautifully-built chariots and the swift-footed horses, and so fail to appreciate the temple with its treasures. Oinomaos is said to have offered to her suitors his daughter, Hippodameia, as a prize for the victory in a chariot-race.