Germany had given them money for the work, and at last Greece allowed them to begin. In October they started their digging. Workmen up-rooted shrubs and dug away dirt. Excavators watched every spadeful. They were always measuring, making maps, taking notes. They found a few vases, terra cotta figures, pieces of bronze statues, swords and armor. They cleared off temple floors and were able to make out the plans of the old buildings. They found the empty pedestals of many statues. Yet they were disappointed. Olympia had been a beautiful place, a rich place. They were finding only the hints of these things. The beauty was gone. Of the three thousand statues that had been there should they not find one? Then they uncovered the fallen statues of the pediments of Zeus' temple. Thirty or more there were--Apollo, Zeus, heroes, women, centaurs, horses. Arms were gone, heads were broken, legs were lost. The excavators fitted together all the pieces and set the mended statues up side by side as they had been in the gable. They found, too, the carved marble slabs that showed the labors of Herakles. But even these were not the lovely things that people had hoped to see from Olympia. They were rather stiff and ungraceful. They had not been made by the greatest artists. In the temple of Hera one day men were digging in clay. Over all the rest of Olympia was only sand. The excavators wondered for a long time why this one spot should have clay. Where could it have come from? They read their old books over and over. They thought and studied. At last they said: "The walls of the temple must have been made of sun-dried brick. In the old days they must have been covered with plaster. This and the roof kept them dry. But the plaster cracked off, and the roof fell in, and the rain and the floods turned the bricks back to clay again." Then one May morning, when the men were digging in the clay, a workman lifted off his spadeful of dirt, and white marble gleamed out. After that there was careful work, with all the excavators standing about to watch. What would it be? They thought over all the statues that the ancient books said had stood in Hera's temple. Then were slowly uncovered, a smooth back, a carved shoulder, a curly head. A white statue of a young man lay face down in the gray clay. The legs were gone. The right arm was missing. From his left hung carved drapery. On his left shoulder lay a tiny marble hand. "It is the Hermes of Praxiteles," the excavators whispered among themselves.