Both the Olympic and Pythian games were held every four years. The Nemean and Isthmian came every two years. In all four the prize was similar: the wreath of wild olive at Olympia; of mountain bay at Delphi; of parsley or of native pine at Nemea; of parsley at Corinth. We are, indeed, justified in emphasizing, until the period of decadence, the absence of professionalism. The athlete, after undergoing the severest training, contested, with no degradation of gate-money, merely to win the honour of a simple wreath. But we need not shut our eyes to the fact that the honour did not fade with the wreath. It belonged to the athlete’s native place and to all his fellow-citizens. Thinking of the evanescent glory of the Isthmian parsley and with the long race in the stadium of Eternity in mind, the apostle Paul might indeed point the contrast for his hearers between a “corruptible crown” and “one that fadeth not away;” yet for the shorter race-course of life the emoluments of honour and preferment were secure. And, in addition to all these honours, an Olympian victor had a post-mortem value. He might be worshipped as a divinity and his statue might heal diseases, like the bones of a mediæval saint. Thus Lucian’s Momus, the god of critics, reminds Zeus that their own prestige is endangered by these new faith-cures: “Actually,” he says, “the statues of the athlete Polydamas at Olympia and of Theagenes at Thasus are curing fever-stricken patients.” The athlete’s ambition might issue in a selfish “opportunism,” or it might be of the nobler kind to which Pindar, thinking perhaps of the altar dedicated in the Altis to the god “Opportunity” (καιρός), would lift the contestant’s ideal in his second Olympian:— “Winning the contest setteth free the essayer from its care and pain, and wealth embroidered o’er with virtues bringeth opportunity for this and that, inspiring mood that broodeth deeply upon earnest themes.”