There was a sacred truce from hostilities amongst all Greeks for a month, to allow time for distant competitors and visitors to go and come in safety. The games were held in summer at the time of a full moon, whether in July or August is uncertain. The September full moon, in fact, has been suggested as the date in the even Olympiads. At this later moon the heat might be almost as great as at the summer solstice, but it may be that the earlier date, with the longer day, was in vogue as long as the contests were all held upon one day. At any rate, the longest midsummer day was too short for the increasing number of events, and after 472 B. C. we hear of five days. The order of the contests is uncertain. At first, it would appear, the foot-races had been the only event. Later it seems probable that the foot-races, the long race, the short race, and the double course, came upon one day; on a second day, the wrestling, boxing, and pancratium. The chariot-races and the pentathlum came on one and the same day. The pentathlum was justly popular as calculated to secure an all-round development of the human form. It included leaping, the foot-race, discus-throwing, javelin-throwing, and wrestling. The Spartans, who were never charged with being effeminate, were said to favour it while discountenancing the more brutal pancratium. We certainly are not much attracted by the license of the latter, evidently considered legitimate, as we read of two athletes habitually winning this event by bending back their antagonists’ fingers. One of them, Sostratus, was surnamed “Finger-bender.” But the judges presided with absolute authority and enforced severe penalties against violations of the rules. Women were prohibited under pain of death from even crossing the river and entering the sacred precinct during the time of the games. Pausanias records one violation. Kallipateira, or Pherenike (“Victoria”), the daughter of Diagoras, the Rhodian victor immortalized by Pindar, anxious to see her son compete, disguised herself as a trainer. In her exultation at her son’s success she betrayed her sex. The penalty attached was to be hurled from the Typæum rock on a mountain south of the Alpheus. In deference to the victories won by her father, her brothers, and her son, she was pardoned, but thereafter the trainers were compelled to enter naked like the athletes themselves. The priestess of Demeter, however, was present _ex officio_, and Pausanias expressly states that virgins also were admitted as spectators. This statement is usually rejected, but it may have been true for certain times under the influence of Sparta, whose customs threw the sanction of public sentiment around the athletic contests of their maidens, the future mothers of their fighting men.