Olympia was a meeting-place for all. There one might have seen Socrates listening with polite amusement to the encyclopaedic Hippias of Elis as he proclaimed to an admiring audience his varied knowledge and accomplishments, and told them that everything he had about his person was the work of his own hands, from the shoes on his feet to the girdle of his tunic, fine as the most costly fabric of Persia. There, too, one might have seen many another whose person is familiar to us in Plato’s dialogues, the great Gorgias himself, with his pupil, Polus, “impetuous as a runaway colt”; or Prodicus of Ceos declaiming in that fine bass voice of his on subtleties of language or of grammar. Or one might have listened to the mathematician, Oenopides, explaining to a select few the mysteries of the great year, a diagram of which, engraved on a bronze tablet, he had set up in the Altis. There one might have gazed on Zeuxis as he strutted about in his peacock clothes, displaying to the world his vanity and wealth. Every one who had anything to sell, to exhibit, or make known came to Olympia, which thus became a centre from which Hellenic culture was diffused throughout the world. This expansion of interests is evident in the list of honorary statues which cease in this period to be confined to victors in the games. Thus the Samians commemorated the freedom which they thought they had gained by the victory of Aegospotami by setting up in the Altis a statue of Lysander.[201] The statue of Gorgias has been already mentioned. In Macedonian times the custom spread, while the number of athletic statues steadily declined. Besides kings and princes, the historian Anaximenes of Lampsacus and the philosopher Aristotle received this honour.[202]