Though the origin of the four national religious festivals in Greece—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus—is buried in a mass of conflicting legend, certain writers agree in saying that all of them were founded on funeral games, though they were later dedicated to gods.[45] Thus the Isthmian were instituted in honor of the dead Melikertes,[46] the Nemean in honor of Opheltes or Archemoros,[47] the Pythian in honor of the slain Python,[48] the Olympian in honor of the hero Pelops.[49] To both Pindar and Bacchylides the Olympian games were associated with the tomb of Pelops; Pausanias, on the other hand, records that the ancient Elean writers ascribed their origin to the Idæan Herakles of Crete.[50] It was a common tradition that Herakles founded the games, some writers saying that it was the Cretan, others that it was the Greek hero, the son of Zeus and Alkmena.[51] Despite the variation in legends relative to the institution of the four national games, we should not doubt the universal tradition that all were funerary in origin. The tradition is confirmed by many lines of argument: by the survival of funeral customs in their later rituals, by the later custom of instituting funeral games in honor of dead warriors both in antiquity and in modern times, and by the testimony of early athletic art in Greece.[52] We shall now briefly consider these arguments. As an example of the survival of funeral customs in later ritual, Pausanias says that the annual officers at Olympia, even in his day, sacrificed a black ram to Pelops.[53] The fact that a black victim was offered over a trench instead of on an altar proves that Pelops was still worshipped as a hero and not as a god. The scholiast on Pindar, _Ol._, I, 146, says that all Peloponnesian lads each year lashed themselves on the grave of Pelops until the blood ran down their backs as a libation to the hero. Furthermore, all the contestants at Olympia sacrificed first to Pelops and then to Zeus.[54]