That the Kleônæans continued without interruption to administer the Nemean festival down to Olympiad 80 (460 B. C.), or thereabouts, is the rational inference from Pindar, Nem. x, 42: compare Nem. iv, 17. Eusebius, indeed, states that the Argeians seized the administration for themselves in Olympiad 53, and in order to reconcile this statement with the above passage in Pindar, critics have concluded that the Argeians lost it again, and that the Kleônæans resumed it a little before Olympiad 80. I take a different view, and am disposed to reject the statement of Eusebius altogether; the more so as Pindar’s tenth Nemean ode is addressed to an Argeian citizen named Theiæus. If there had been at that time a standing dispute between Argos and Kleônæ on the subject of the administration of the Nemea, the poet would hardly have introduced the mention of the Nemean prizes gained by the ancestors of Theiæus, under the untoward designation of “prizes received from Kleônæan men.” [124] See Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. No. 1126. [125] K. F. Hermann, in his Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthümer (ch. 32, not. 7. and ch. 65, not. 3), and again in his more recent work (Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen, part iii, ch. 49, also not. 6), both highly valuable publications, maintains,—1. That the exaltation of the Isthmian and Nemean games into Pan-Hellenic importance arose directly after and out of the fall of the despots of Corinth and Sikyon. 2. That it was brought about by the paramount influence of the Dorians, especially by Sparta. 3. That the Spartans put down the despots of both these two cities. The last of these three propositions appears to me untrue in respect to Sikyon,—improbable in respect to Corinth: my reasons for thinking so have been given in a former chapter. And if this be so, the reason for presuming Spartan intervention as to the Isthmian and Nemean games falls to the ground; for there is no other proof of it, nor does Sparta appear to have interested herself in any of the four national festivals except the Olympic, with which she was from an early period peculiarly connected.