At Olympia the honour of the games was still maintained. Bribery was severely punished. In Ols. 192 (12 B.C.) and 226 (A.D. 125) we read of fines exacted for corruption from which as of old Zanes were erected.[252] In the former case it was a father who bribed his son’s opponent, and the fine was therefore exacted from the parents. In Ol. 218 (A.D. 93) one Apollonius of Alexandria was fined for coming too late and thereby disqualifying himself from competition. He pleaded that he had been detained by contrary winds. But it was proved that the plea was false, and that the real cause of his delay was that he had been “pot-hunting” in Ionia. It seems as if the authorities at Olympia even made an attempt to check the arrogant pretensions and self-advertisements of the professional fighter by abolishing the title “Successor of Heracles.” The title was won for the last time in Ol. 204 (A.D. 37) by one Nicostratus, after whose victories the Eleans made a secret decree that no one should thereafter be allowed to win in both wrestling and the pankration. The account given by Dion of the Isthmia gathers force from its contrast with the veneration which he expresses for the Olympia, and his charming picture of the youthful Melancomas.[253] He and his father, himself an Olympic victor, seem even in that age of athletic decay to have lived up to the ideal of the best days. A curious development of professionalism which we now meet with was the growth of athletic guilds resembling the dramatic guilds which had long existed. Victorious athletes at Rome, as in Greece, received certain privileges, including maintenance at the public cost, which privilege Maecenas advised Augustus to confine to winners at Olympia and Delphi and Rome.[254] Augustus, we are told, maintained and increased the privileges of athletes.[255] Guilds were one of the features of the early Empire, and it was therefore natural for athletes to form such combinations. These athletic guilds were called Xystoi from the xystos or covered colonnade which formed part of a gymnasium. The most famous of these clubs was that of the Herculanei,[256] a club which seems originally to have been formed at Sardis. In the reign of Trajan it was dissolved and transferred to Rome. One M. Ulpius came to the emperor as their spokesman to petition for quarters at Rome, and we possess copies of two letters of Trajan granting their petition.[257] He appoints them a house where they may keep their sacred things and records, near the baths built by his grandfather Trajan, and conveniently situated for the great Capitolia. Here they had a gymnasium and a council-chamber in which discussions could take place on all questions affecting the welfare of athletes, the holding of competitions, and the erection of honorary statues. They were a sacred guild, and within their precinct were statues of emperors and members of the guild. Their president or xystarches was also high-priest of the guild. He was often a