The artificiality of the athletic revival is nowhere more evident than in the numerous inscriptions of this period, which in their pompous verbosity afford a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of the time when athletics were a real part of the national life. As we read them we feel ourselves in another world, a world-of professionalism, of self-advertisement, and of records, which bears no little resemblance to that in which we are living to-day. Compare, for example, the simple inscriptions at Olympia recording the victories of the Diagoridae[263] with the first-century inscription in honour of Publius Cornelius Ariston of Ephesus, who won the boys’ pankration in Ol. 207 (A.D. 49), or better still with the second-century inscriptions found in Italy enumerating the exploits of Titus Flavius Artemidorus of Adana of Cilicia, or of Marcus Aurelius Asclepiades of Alexandria. The very names are significant of the change that has taken place. “Diagoras (son) of Damagetus a Rhodian” such is the simple formula of early days. The only description of the contest vouchsafed is the name of the festival and the event, with the single word ἀκονιτεί added occasionally to denote a “walk over.” Occasionally a simple couplet is added. But the pedestal of Ariston’s statue[264] had inscribed on it, besides the usual formula, a poem of twenty-four lines describing his powers and his fame, how in a field of seven he won all his heats without having the advantage of a bye, and how his glory was proclaimed not only throughout all Hellas but throughout Asia. A few examples of these inscriptions will best illustrate the character of the age. They begin with a fulsome list of the victor’s honorary titles. That on Asclepiades[265] informs us that he and his father both held for life the office of “high-priest of the whole xystos and overseer of the imperial baths,” that he was “chief of the temple guardians of Great Serapis, a citizen of Alexandria, Hermopolis, and Puteoli, and councillor of Neapolis, Elis, Athens, and many other cities.” Then follows a glowing description of his unbeaten record as “a pankratiast, a periodonikes invincible, immovable,[266] unrivalled.” “I neither challenged any nor did any one in my time dare to challenge me, nor did I divide the crown with any, nor did I decline a contest or enter any protest,[267] nor did I abandon any contest, nor take part in a contest to please royalty, nor did I gain a victory in any new-fangled games, but in all the contests for which I ever entered my name I was crowned in the actual ring and was approved in all the preliminary trials.” This emphatic insistence on the cleanness of his record is clearly an answer to those malicious attacks of which he complains at the end of the inscription, and which caused him to abandon athletics.