We are thus enabled partially to trace the steps by which, during the two centuries succeeding 776 B. C., the festival of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century B. C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalized,—the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia, near Corinth, the Nemea near Kleônæ, between Sikyôn and Argos. In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution and enlargement were brought about,—a notice the more interesting, inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a manifestation of something like Pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation except distinct city-interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B. C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers “the counsels of the immortals.” Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pæans, he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot-races in the neighborhood,—nay, this psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be “a nuisance,” the drinking of mules a desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine-built chariots objectionable,[113] as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. [113] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 262. Πημανέει σ᾽ αἰεὶ κτυπὸς ἵππων ὠκειάων, Ἀρδόμενοί τ᾽ οὐρῆες ἐμῶν ἱερῶν ἀπὸ πηγέων· Ἔνθα τις ἀνθρώπων βουλήσεται εἰσοράασθαι Ἅρματά τ᾽ εὐποίητα καὶ ὠκυπόδων κτυπὸν ἵππων, Ἢ νηόν τε μέγαν καὶ κτήματα πόλλ᾽ ἐνεόντα. Also v. 288-394. γυάλων ὑπὸ Παρνήσοιο—484. ὑπὸ πτυχὶ Παρνήσοιο—Pindar, Pyth. viii, 90. Πυθῶνος ἐν γυάλοις—Strabo, ix, p. 418. πετρωδὲς χώριον καὶ θεατροειδὲς—Heliodorus, Æthiop. ii, 26: compare Will. Götte, Das Delphische Orakel (Leipzig, 1839), pp. 39-42.