The intimate connexion between the political changes in Elis and the Olympic festival can be best realized from Pausanias’ account of the new city.[137] Everything in Elis seems to have been planned purely and simply with a view to the festival. The agora was nothing more or less than a training-ground for horses, it was a large open square or oblong surrounded by colonnades with no other ornaments than a few altars to Zeus and other gods, and even these so constructed as to be easily removable. Close to this agora, appropriately called the hippodrome, were no less than three gymnasia with running tracks, and rings for boxing or wrestling, and conveniently connected with agora and gymnasium was the Hellanodiceon, or headquarters of the Hellanodicae. Here the latter had to reside for ten months before the festival, receiving instruction in all the ancient usages of the games from the Guardians of the Lavs (Nomophylakes). During the last month before the games they themselves were engaged in superintending the practice of the athletes, who spent the last thirty days of their training at Elis, and in classifying men and horses according to age, a matter of no little difficulty when no registers of births were kept. The principal buildings of Elis city were all connected with the games, and though we cannot tell the date of those which Pausanias saw, there can be little doubt that they truly indicate the character of the city from the start. The agora was typical of the rest, and Pausanias pointedly contrasts it with the cheerful market-places of Ionian towns. Certainly it cannot have been an attractive place to live in, and the Eleans never took kindly to it; indeed many an old-fashioned country gentleman lived and died without even setting foot in his chief city.[138]