For this story see chapter vii, p. 159, and note. When the modern Athenians revived the Olympic Games the chariot-races were beyond their resources. Contests of personal, physical strength and skill constitute the fitting nucleus of the games held in the old Stadium, now newly covered with marble from the “mountain that looks on Marathon.” And it was a happy and natural thought to add as the closing event the great Marathon race. While perpetuating the glory of the Athenians it reënforces the loyalty of all the Greeks to their national capital. In this race centres the chief ambition of the Greeks. The other events are of secondary importance. If fanciful critics demand any further excuse for the change of venue from Olympia to Athens, it may be enough to remind them that Heracles (according to one tradition) brought in the first place from the banks of the Ilissus the original graft of the sacred olive-tree from which, at Olympia, the victor’s crown was cut with the golden sickle. With graceful sentiment, however, the olive sprigs are now in turn brought to Athens from Olympia. Despite all the modern barnacles that encrust the ancient torso, the student of old Greek life can find much to stimulate him in the revival of contests inherited, or directly developed, from ancient times—such as the foot-race, short and long distance; javelin-throwing; leaping; and, chief of all, the discus-throw in the ancient style. The interest of the Greeks to-day in this latter event is second only to that in the Marathon race. A modern, seated in the Stadium at Athens, has cause for meditation. Behind the gaudy hats and parasols of women, the more sombre clothing of men, or the brilliant uniforms of officials gleams Pentelic marble. Over many tens of thousands of spectators, gathered from all Greece and Europe and from beyond the Atlantic, float the flags of powerful nations: of Turkey; of the lands that look upon the northern seas; of the mighty spawn of the Anglo-Roman; and of the New Atlantis. None of these nations had emerged from barbarism when this same choir of encircling hills sang together the triumph song of Salamis. Prometheus, the incarnation of human self-assertion, rebel to the rule of Zeus, pinioned on a crag overlooking those same northern seas, is made by the Greek prophet to utter the pessimistic cry: “New gods rule Olympus.” Now, as a modern Greek remarked to an American visitor, “the old gods have migrated to a new Olympus.” But although the gold-ivory statue of Zeus cannot reappear from the ruins of Olympia, yet “the godhead of supernal song” remains in the literature of the Greeks, interpreting and interpreted by the contributions of the archæologists. Swinburne’s words are not mere poetic license:— “Dead the great chryselephantine god, as dew last evening shed; Dust of earth and foam of ocean is the symbol of his head: Earth and ocean shall be shadows when Prometheus shall be dead.”