Very different was the fate of the Olympic festival,—on the banks of the Alpheius[106] in Peloponnesus, near the old oracular temple of the Olympian Zeus,—which not only grew up uninterruptedly from small beginnings to the maximum of Pan-Hellenic importance, but even preserved its crowds of visitors and its celebrity for many centuries after the extinction of Greek freedom, and only received its final abolition, after more than eleven hundred years of continuance, from the decree of the Christian emperor Theodosius in 394 A. D. I have already recounted, in the preceding volume of this history, the attempt made by Pheidon, despot of Argos, to restore to the Pisatans, or to acquire for himself, the administration of this festival,—an event which proves the importance of the festival in Peloponnesus, even so early as 740 B. C. At that time, and for some years afterwards, it seems to have been frequented chiefly, if not exclusively, by the neighboring inhabitants of central and western Peloponnesus,—Spartans, Messenians, Arkadians, Triphylians, Pisatans, Eleians, and Achæans,[107]—and it forms an important link connecting the Etolo-Eleians, and their privileges as Agonothets to solemnize and preside over it, with Sparta. From the year 720 B. C., we trace positive evidences of the gradual presence of more distant Greeks,—Corinthians, Megarians, Bœotians, Athenians, and even Smyrnæans from Asia. [106] Strabo, viii, p. 353; Pindar, Olymp. viii, 2; Xenophon, Hellen. iv, 7, 2; iii, 2, 22. [107] See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats-Alterthümer, sect. 10.