The race in armor had a practical value in the training of soldiers, and so became a popular sport, since it appealed not only to the trained athlete, but to the citizen in general. It belonged to “mixed athletics,”[1467] _i. e._, to competitions which were conducted under handicap conditions, such as our obstacle races, and consequently it never attained the prestige of the strictly athletic events. It came last among the gymnic contests at Olympia and elsewhere,[1468] being followed by the equestrian events. It seems to have varied in different places in the distance run, in the armor of the runner, and in the rules which governed the race. At Olympia, as at Athens, it appears to have been a _diaulos_ or a race of two stadia.[1469] The most strenuous race of the sort was run at the _Eleutheria_ at Platæa, where the contestants were completely enveloped in armor[1470] and were subject to peculiar rules. At Olympia the competitors originally ran with helmets, greaves, and round shields, as we infer from scenes on archaic vases and from the statement of Pausanias that the statue of the first victor in this event, Damaretos of Heraia, was represented with these arms.[1471] In this passage Pausanias adds that the Eleans and other Greeks later (ἀνὰ χρόνον) gave up the greaves, and we find that they disappear on the vase-paintings.[1472] Hauser has shown that the vase-paintings, which, however, mostly illustrate the Athenian practice, display a varied custom in respect of the use of the greaves before about 520 B. C., the general use of them until about 450 B. C., and after that date their disuse.[1473] The helmet disappeared after the greaves, but the shield was never given up.[1474] Thus the bronze statue of Mnesiboulos of Elateia, a victor (σὺν τῇ ἀσπίδι) of Pausanias’ day, which stood in “Runner Street” of his native city, appears to have been represented with the shield.[1475] It was for this reason that the event was later sometimes called merely ἀσπίς.[1476] The shields that appear on the vases are always round and the helmets are Attic.[1477] The gradual reduction in the amount of the armor may have been a concession to the regular athletes, who probably looked upon the contest as a spurious sort of athletics. As for the style of the race, the hoplite runners seem to have run somewhat as the stade and double-course runners, _i. e._, with their right hands up and their arms violently swinging.[1478]