Despite the decline of athletics there was no diminution of the influence and popularity of the athletic festivals. Wealth had increased, means of communication had improved, and with the growing attractions of the festivals and the growing love of sight-seeing among the people the crowds that flocked to the games showed no falling off. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of these gatherings. In an age distracted by civil war and faction they served to remind the Greeks of their common brotherhood and to promote a spirit of good-will.[182] Especially was this true of Olympia, which, under the rigorous administration of the Eleans, had become the chief centre of Panhellenism. The sacred month, jealously guarded by the Eleans, afforded a brief respite from arms and security for all who wished to attend the festival, whether in a public or private capacity. All through the Peloponnesian war the representatives of Athens could travel unmolested to the festival.[183] There all states, unless under the ban of the Eleans, sent embassies, composed of wealthy and prominent citizens, who vied with one another in displaying the wealth and power and culture of their cities.[184] At Olympia the representatives of states at war with one another laid aside their animosities for a time, and opportunity was afforded for the discussion and settlement of many a grievance and dispute. To these meetings we may partly attribute the growing tendency to the formation of leagues. There, too, the terms of treaties could be proclaimed and made known to the whole Greek world. The terms of the thirty years’ truce between Athens and Sparta were recorded on a stele at Olympia;[185] so too was the 100 years’ treaty made in 420 B.C. between Athens, Argos, Mantinea, and Elis, and it was ordered that the treaty should be periodically renewed at the Olympia and the Panathenaea.[186] It was to Olympia that the envoys of Mytilene came at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war[187] to protest against the tyranny of Athens and plead for their autonomy before the assembled Greeks. Finally, when Athens and Sparta, false to the cause of Hellenism, were treacherously intriguing with Persia, it was at Olympia that on three occasions a noble appeal for unity was made. In 408 B.C. Gorgias of Leontini, addressing the assembled crowds from the steps of the temple of Zeus, appealed to them to forget their rivalries and unite together in the crusade of Hellenism against Persia.[188] His voice was unheeded at the time, but a later generation appropriately commemorated his appeal by erecting his statue in the Altis.[189] Twenty-four years later Sparta, in alliance with Artaxerxes and the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, was once more trampling on the liberties of Greece. Dionysius had sent to Olympia a magnificent embassy headed by his brother Thearion; his tents of gold and purple were pitched within the sacred