Under the settled and luxurious conditions of Eastern life it is probable that the athletic festival developed at an early date,[41] though owing to the same conditions athletics never attained in the East to the position which they occupied in the Peloponnese, and the athletic business was often secondary to the other business of the festivals. This at least is suggested by the history of the Delian festival. The antiquity of this festival is vouched for by the Homeric _Hymn to Apollo_. At a time when Olympia was still little more than a local gathering, the long-robed Ionians were already flocking to Apollo’s isle with their children and their wives. Even from the mainland of Greece choirs came with hymns to Apollo. We still possess a fragment of Eumelus, a Bacchiad of Corinth, said by Pausanias to have been written for the Messenian choir sent to Delos in the eighth century.[42] “There when the games are ordered they rejoice to honour Apollo with boxing and dance and song.” The picture in the _Hymn to Apollo_ is full of joy and grace: the fair ships drawn up by the water’s edge, the costly merchandise spread out upon the shore, the throng of long-robed men and fair-girdled women, and in the background the slopes of Mount Cynthus, halfway up which stands out the rocky archway of Apollo’s ancient shrine. A fair scene truly, and typical no doubt of many another festival where men of kindred race gathered together for sacrifice and song, for sport and traffic. But in this joyous festival of the jovial Delians we feel that athletics hold but a secondary place. For the more serious business of athletics we must go to the sterner, more strenuous festivals of the Peloponnese—above all to Olympia.