The popularity of athletics, the growth of competition, and the rewards lavished on successful athletes completely changed the character of athletics in the sixth century. The actual events remained the same, but a change came over the attitude of performers and spectators. It was a change which will be readily understood by any one familiar with the history of our own sports and games during the last century, the change from spontaneous to organized sport. The change brought with it both good and evil; the standard of performance was greatly improved, but athletics ceased to be pure recreation, and something of the old Homeric joy was lost; and though the spirit of sport survived for a century more, even in the sixth century we can trace signs of the evils which over-competition inevitably brings in its train. In every Greek state all boys, whatever their station, received a thorough physical training. Sometimes, as in Sparta, this training was extended to girls. This training consisted partly in the traditional exercises of the public games, partly in dances which corresponded to our musical drill in which the performers went through the various movements of the palaestra or of actual war to the accompaniment of music. Thus every boy was trained to take his part in athletic competitions. Local festivals provided the promising athlete with an opportunity of testing his strength and skill from early boyhood. At Olympia there had been only two classes of competition, for boys and for men. In the festivals of the sixth century we find a third class added for those betwixt the age of boy and man, the beardless (ἀγένειοι). In local festivals of a later date we find three or even four classes for boys only, sometimes confined to local competitors; and perhaps, if we had details of the local festivals of the sixth century, we should find the same. These boys’ events were clearly intended to foster local talent. The youth who won success in his home festival would try his luck in the neighbouring competitions, and if still successful would go farther afield and perhaps enter for the Panhellenic games. Hence the competitors, especially at the Olympia, represented the picked athletes of all the states. The prizes offered at the various festivals enabled many to compete, who in a previous age could not have afforded the necessary time or money; and we may be sure that the emulation of the various states would not have allowed any citizen to lose his chance of the crown for lack of funds. The popular character of athletics is illustrated by a fragment of an epigram ascribed to Simonides on an Olympic victor “who once carried fish from Argos to Tegea.”[93] At the same time the noble families which had for generations been famed in athletics exerted themselves to their utmost to maintain their hereditary prestige. All classes caught the athletic mania. It was at the close of the century that Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of