Of that precinct, the Altis, we have a very full description by the old Greek traveller Pausanias, who visited it in the second century of our era. Following his indications German archæologists, assisted by their Government, excavated the greater part of the site with the most careful thoroughness between the years 1875-1881, and discovered there, _inter alia_, nearly all the exterior temple sculptures, the Hermes of Praxiteles, and the Victory of Pæonius, although they failed to find any trace of the greatest treasure of all, the sitting figure of Zeus by Pheidias. The Altis is a quadrilateral space, where goats now feed, about 750 feet long by 570 feet broad, lying between the river Alpheus on the south and a low but steep hill, thickly wooded with pine trees, the ancient Mount of Cronos, which rises to the north. Immediately to the west, the river Cladeus flows between high sandy banks into the Alpheus, which now in the summer is only a trickle of muddy water running over a broad gravelly bed, but in old times was a navigable stream. In the precinct itself stood the Temple of Zeus, built by the architect Libon, about 460 B.C., to house the statue of the god; the Temple of Hera, one of the oldest of Greek shrines, dating back perhaps to the tenth century B.C.; the Treasuries of the various states; and the Council House. The stadion, some 230 by 32 yards, where the athletic contests took place, was just outside the precinct at the north-east corner, the spectators being accommodated on raised embankments of earth which may have contained as many as forty-five thousand people standing.