Besides the four national games, many Greek cities had purely local ones, some of which originated in prehistoric days in honor of hero cults, while others were founded at historical dates. Athens was particularly favored in having many such local festivals. The most important of these were the _Panathenaic_ games in honor of Athena, which developed from earlier annual _Athenaia_ or _Panathenaia_. The festival was remodeled, or perhaps founded, just before Peisistratos seized the tyranny (561-560 B. C.), possibly by Solon, who died 560-559 B. C. The name certainly points to the unity of Athens promoted by Solon, if not to the earlier unification of the village communities of Attika ascribed to Theseus. In any case, under Peisistratos it became something more than a local festival, as the recitation of Homer became a feature of it. Following the games at Delphi and Olympia, the _Great Panathenaia_ were held every four years (the third year of each Olympiad) in the month of Hekatombaion (July), while the more ancient annual festival continued yearly under the name of the _Little Panathenaia_. There were musical, literary, and athletic contests. The central feature of the festival was the procession which ascended from the lower city to the Parthenon on the Akropolis to offer the goddess a robe woven by noble Athenian maidens and matrons.[96] This procession is known to us in detail from the great Parthenon frieze. The _Theseia_ exemplify a festival whose origin can be definitely dated. Kimon, the son of the hero of Marathon, in 469 B. C., discovered the supposed bones of the national hero Theseus on the island of Skyros. The Delphic oracle counseled the Athenians to place them in an honorable resting-place. Perhaps there was a legend that the hero was buried on Skyros; in any case a grave was found there which contained the corpse of a warrior of great size, and this was brought back to Athens as the actual remains of Theseus. Thereafter an annual festival was celebrated by the Athenian _epheboi_, comprising military contests and athletic events—stade, dolichos, and diaulos running races, wrestling, boxing, pankration, hoplite running, etc. It began on the sixth of Pyanepsion (October), and was followed by the _Epitaphia_, a funeral festival in honor of national heroes and youths who had fallen fighting for Athens.[97] Athletic games were held at the _Herakleia_ in honor of Herakles at Marathon in the month of Metageitnion, and had attained great popularity by the time of Pindar.[98] The _Eleusinia_, in honor of Demeter, took place annually in Athens in the month of Boëdromion, when horse-races and musical and other contests were held. This Attic festival claimed a greater antiquity even than Olympia. The great national festivals encouraged these smaller local ones, so that they attracted competitors from the whole Greek world. EARLY PRIZES FOR ATHLETES.