Nor was it only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these four great festivals that the gradual increase of Hellenic family-feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of our history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and accessible, and attracted guests as well as competitors from beyond the border; the dignity of the state, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, being measured by numbers, admiration, and envy, in the frequenting visitors.[128] There is no positive evidence, indeed, of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Peisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæa to the ancient annual or lesser Panathenæa; nor can we trace the steps of progress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiæ, Megara, Sikyôn, Pellênê, Ægina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believing that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or Isthmian victors whom Pindar and Simonidês celebrated, many derived a portion of their renown from previous victories acquired at several of these local contests,[129]—victories sometimes so numerous, as to prove how wide-spread the habit of mutual frequentation had become;[130] though we find, even in the third century B. C., treaties of alliance between different cities, in which it is thought necessary to confer this mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value; and Timæus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Kroton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preëminence of the Olympic games, by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes, to be celebrated at the same time,[131]—a statement in itself not worthy of credit, but nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded games. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis; but before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.[132] [128] Thucyd. vi, 16. Alkibiadês says, καὶ ὅσα αὖ ἐν τῇ πόλει χορηγίαις ἢ ἄλλῳ τῳ λαμπρύνομαι, τοῖς μὲν ἀστοῖς φθονεῖται φύσει, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ξένους καὶ αὐτὴ ἰσχὺς φαίνεται. The greater Panathenæa are ascribed to Peisistratus by the Scholiast on Aristeidês, vol. iii, p. 323, ed. Dindorf: judging by what immediately precedes, the statement seems to come from Aristotle. [129] Simonidês, Fragm. 154-158, ed. Bergk; Pindar, Nem. x, 45; Olymp. xiii, 107.