It is uncertain when and where the victors were crowned.[304] The only definite pronouncement on the point is that of a late scholiast, who states that the prizes were distributed on the sixteenth day.[305] In support of this statement is quoted the commencement of the seventh ode of Bacchylides, unfortunately much mutilated, which appears to connect the sixteenth day “with judgment for speed of foot and strength of limb.” But it may be noted that the verb ἐγκρίνω here used, like the ἁγνὰ κρίσις of which Pindar speaks, does not necessarily imply the prize-giving, but would be equally applicable to the actual competitions, or to the rejoicings and feast in which all the victors took part on the sixteenth day. At the same time, this passage of Bacchylides may well have given rise to the scholiast’s note on Pindar. On the other hand, there are certain allusions which seem to indicate that the victors were crowned by the Hellanodicas immediately after each event. This is certainly the natural inference from the story told by Pausanias of Apollonius, who having been disqualified by the Hellanodicae in the boxing for arriving too late, bound on the boxing thongs, and made a violent attack on Heracleides, to whom the Hellanodicae had already awarded the crown, and who had the olive already on his head.[306] Again, Ageus who won the long-distance race in 328 B.C. ran straight home to Argos and reported the news of his victory the same day.[307] Surely he must have received the crown first. Otherwise he must have returned that same night from Argos to Olympia in order to receive his prize the next day! Lastly, the picture described by Philostratus of the death of Arrhichion, who died in the moment of victory in the pankration, represents the Hellanodicas in the act of crowning him.[308] The stories themselves are fanciful, and their evidence is by no means conclusive, but, agreeing as they do with the undoubted practice of the heroic age,[309] it seems to me probable that the victor received his crown immediately after his victory. Let us now try to form some idea of the Olympic festival in the middle of the fifth century, the moment of Olympia’s greatest glory, when Libon’s temple had been completed, when the stadium and hippodrome had been laid out, when Pindar and Bacchylides were still singing the praises of the victors, and Myron and Polycleitus were immortalizing them in bronze. Some details will be inserted for the sake of convenience which may belong to a later date, but in such cases the fact will be noted.