The oldest and the greatest was the Olympic Festival, held in the valley of the river Alphæus in Elis, which was celebrated at intervals of four years. The event became so important in the life of Hellas that the interval of four years between one celebration and the succeeding one, called an Olympiad, became the measure for computing time, the first Olympiad being reckoned as 776 <small>B.C.</small> Originally the festival was held in honour of Hera, to whom a temple--the earliest as yet known in Hellas--was dedicated, 1000 <small>B.C.</small> Later the chief honour was paid to the Olympian Zeus. His temple, which in time contained the celebrated chryselephantine statue of the god by Pheidias, stood in a sacred grove, the Altis, which was adorned with statues of the successful athletes, made by the most famous sculptors. The sacred enclosure was surrounded by walls and colonnades, adjoining which, on one side, were the gymnasium, palæstra, and baths for the use of the athletes, whose training in the sacred precincts lasted for ten months, before they could compete in the stadium. The latter adjoined the Altis on the east side. From all parts of Hellas, states and cities vied with one another in furnishing competitors and, as the date of the Festival approached, heralds proclaimed throughout the Hellenic world the “Truce of God” under which, for the time being, warlike operations were suspended and safe conduct was guaranteed to all visitors to Olympia. The influence of Sparta had regulated the character of the contests of endurance: running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, to which in time was added chariot racing. But as the spirit of culture spread the Olympian and the other festivals included musical contests, while the poet declaimed his verses and the painter showed his work for the pleasure and profit of the assembled multitudes. The Olympic festival, in fact, was the supreme realisation of the Hellenic ideal: perfection of physical development, joined to highest intellectual development and the finest development of the senses. It was an ideal that involved the possible perfection of the whole man, a harmony of body, senses, and intellect--the Hellenic ideal of Beauty. Olympia, wrote Lysias, is “the fairest spot on earth,” and, surely, in the loveliness of its natural setting, in the embellishments which the architect and sculptor had added, in the glory of the youthful vigour of the competitors and the inspiration of poets and musicians, and, not least, in the joyous enthusiasm of the spectators was realised, as perhaps nowhere else at any time, the Beauty of Life; the idea, as Plato taught, that the Good is the Beautiful, the Beautiful the Good.