The influence of the colonies was great. Their competition gave a fresh impulse to that wave of athleticism which reached its height in the sixth century. To Olympia they gave a Panhellenic character as a meeting-place for all the scattered members of the Greek race, and thereby tended to preserve and strengthen that feeling of unity which contact with other nations had already quickened into life. No foreigner could enter as a competitor at Olympia, no barbarous potentates sent offerings to its shrines or consulted its oracle. Olympia remained throughout its history purely and exclusively Hellenic. Again, the colonies brought Olympia into touch with the democratic spirit of the age, and broke down the barriers of Elean and Spartan exclusiveness. The colonial claimed admission purely by virtue of his Greek birth, and no distinctions of rank or caste or wealth were known in the Olympic games. Sport, especially national sport, is a great leveller of social distinctions. The political importance of such a festival, which drew competitors and spectators from all quarters of the Greek world, could not escape the notice of the clear-sighted and ambitious tyrants and nobles of the seventh century. But the sanctity of the place and the new democratic spirit of the festival were too strong for them. Pheidon of Argos had tried to make himself master of Olympia by force of arms. Other tyrants tried more peaceful means, seeking to win popularity among the assembled crowds and influence with the powers of Olympia by victories in the chariot-race, or by sumptuous offerings to Olympian Zeus. In the middle of the seventh century Myron of Sicyon won a victory in the chariot-race and commemorated his success by dedicating two treasure-chests of solid bronze, one of which weighed 500 talents. These treasure-chests were afterwards placed in the treasure-house of the Sicyonians, built in the fifth century possibly in the place of some more ancient structure. The excavations of Olympia have revealed the solid floor intended to bear the weight of these treasure-chests. His grandson Cleisthenes, himself a victor, took advantage of the festival to proclaim the famous competition for the hand of his daughter Agariste, which Herodotus describes. Cypselus of Corinth, too, dedicated at Olympia a golden statue of Zeus made in the style of the early metal-workers, of beaten gold plates riveted together. His son Periander was victor in the chariot-race, and gave to Olympia the famous chest of Cypselus in which, according to the story, the infant Cypselus had been hidden by his mother from the assassins sent by the oligarchs of Corinth to murder him. From Athens came the would-be tyrant Cylon, who won the diaulos race in Ol. 35; and in the next generation the chariot-race was won by Alcmaeon, the son of that Megacles who was responsible as archon for the death of Cylon and the consequent pollution of the Alcmaeonidae, and the