distinguished athlete and held the office for life; and with it also the office of overseer of the imperial baths. The religious character of these guilds is a curious survival of the immemorial connexion between religion and athletics. Sometimes there were special competitions for members of certain guilds. At the Augustalia at Naples we find a series of competitions confined to members of the Augustan class, while mention is also made of a pankration for Claudian boys. These expressions seem to denote clubs or guilds bearing the name of Augustus and Claudius.[258] The most important guild at Naples was “the holy itinerant synod of the Alexandrini.” The term περιπολιστική, which corresponds to our “nomads” or “wanderers,” indicates that they did not confine their attentions to local festivals, but went about from place to place.[259] An Olympic inscription of the year A.D. 85 records the erection of a statue in honour of Lucius Vetulenus Laetus by the whole body of athletes gathered together “from the inhabited world” for the festival, and by the holy synod of the Xystos.[260] This particular xystos was presumably a local Elean guild. The title xystarches is known also at Sparta, and occurs in an inscription recently discovered at Sparta by the British excavators. The inscription contains regulations for a Spartan festival, probably the Leonidaea, a festival held in honour of those who fell at Thermopylae, and confined to Spartan competitors.[261] The xystarches is to place oil in the stadium, and discharge the usual duties of his post. As the president of the local gymnasium, he naturally took an important part in local festivals. He seems generally to have been a man of some importance, often an old athlete. His duties were probably as vague and depended as much on his personal inclination as those of the president of a modern athletic club. [Illustration: Fig. 22. Athletics under the Romans. From a mosaic found at Tusculum.] A mosaic found at Tusculum (Fig. 22) gives a vivid picture of the life of these professional athletes under the Empire. A comparison of these scenes with those represented on the Panaetius kylix in Fig. 17 will illustrate better than any description the difference between the two ages.