The matter of this section is taken from the reports of the _B.S.A._, vols. xii., xiii. Footnote 276: _B.S.A._ xii. 314. Footnote 277: _B.S.A._ xii. 445 ff. Another Spartan festival mentioned in inscriptions is the Euryclea founded by Eurycles, a rich and powerful friend of Herod the Great, _C.I.G._ 1378, 1389. Footnote 278: _B.S.A._ x. 63, xii. 212. Footnote 279: _B.S.A._ xii. 352, xiii. 182. Footnote 280: The whole mosaic is published by Secchi in his _Musaico Antoniniano_, and a large portion of it in Baumeister’s Denkmäler, Fig. 174. Footnote 281: Dr. Jüthner, in the introduction to his _Philostratus_, shows that there was a long-standing quarrel between doctors and trainers. The doctors resented the encroachments of the trainers on their domain, and regarded them as ignorant and unscientific quacks. Footnote 282: _Vide_ Jüthner, _op. cit._ pp. 285 ff. Footnote 283: I am glad to find my estimate of Philostratus in substantial agreement with that of Dr. Jüthner. Philostratus had, as he shows, no technical knowledge of gymnastic. He was a rhetorician, writing an essay on what was evidently a burning question, and, like a modern journalist, he naturally derived his knowledge from one of the many technical treatises on gymnastic which existed, and as naturally made mistakes (_op. cit._ pp. 97-107). CHAPTER IX THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL [Illustration: Fig. 24. Staters of Elis, in British Museum (enlarged). Fifth century. (_a_) Head of nymph Olympia. (_b_) Victory seated, with palm; olive twig below.] Many of the details and regulations connected with the Olympic festival have been already mentioned in previous chapters, where the reader can readily find them by consulting the index. In the present chapter we shall attempt to give some account of the festival itself, as it existed in the fifth century. First we must premise that the details of the festival are involved in the greatest obscurity, largely owing to the fact that the bulk of our information is derived from late writers whose evidence as to what took place five or six hundred years before their time must always be received with a certain amount of reserve. Still, religious conservatism was nowhere stronger than at Olympia, and much that is recorded of the second century of our era existed with little difference in the fifth century B.C. Therefore, though many details remain obscure we can feel fairly certain as to the general outline of the festival.