here the herald proclaimed the victor’s name and city, and here the victors received their crowns from the hands of the Hellanodicae. From this point too we may suppose, when the games for the day were finished, the Hellanodicae followed by the victors started in a triumphal procession, and passing through the official entrance on the north side, made their way to the temple of Asclepius to render thanks and pay their vows to the patron of the festival. [Illustration: Fig. 43. Stadium of Epidaurus.] A further stage in the development of the stadium is seen in the stadium of Delphi, the best preserved and the most romantic in its situation of all Greek stadia. It lies on a rocky shelf to the north-west of the sacred precinct at the foot of the cliffs of Parnassus, which rise sheer above it to a height of 800 feet, and looking down over the valley of the Pleistus and the Crisaean plain. As at Olympia, there seems to have been no permanent stadium till the second half of the fifth century.[441] In Pindar’s time the athletic competitions took place in the plain below, where, for want of sufficient room at Delphi itself, the hippodrome must have continued to exist.[442] It seems probable that the change took place between the years 448 and 421 B.C. when the control of the festival was in the hands of the Phocians. To construct a stadium on the steep slope of the mountain it was necessary to build a massive retaining wall, and the date of this wall is approximately fixed by a fifth-century inscription built into it forbidding the introduction of wine into the dromos.[443] [Illustration: Fig. 44. Stadium of Delphi.]