There can be nothing more gratifying to laudable ambition, than the idea that great actions shall be handed down to posterity. To perpetuate, therefore, the glory of these victories, the names of the conquerors were recorded in a public register, which specified the exercise in which each had excelled: and the privilege of erecting their statues in the SACRED GROVE OF JUPITER, was the last and highest honor which the Hellanodics could grant to the Olympic victors. But upon arriving in their native cities, the conquerors were far more distinguished than at Olympia; and more substantial rewards were conferred upon them. They enjoyed the honor of a triumphal entry; and temples and altars, dedicated to them, were erected at the public expense. They were thus immortalized by what was deemed the perfection of glory. “To conquer at Olympia,” says Cicero, “was greater and more glorious than to receive the honors of a Roman triumph.” The importance which the Greeks attached to the Olympic games may be deduced from the care with which they instructed their youth in the gymnastic exercises. There was scarcely a town of any consideration in Greece, or in her colonies settled along the coasts of Asia and Africa--in the Ionian and Ægean islands--in Sicily and in Italy, in which there was not a GYMNASIUM, or school of exercise, maintained at the public expense. The GYMNASIA were spacious buildings, of a square or oblong form, surrounded on the outside with piazzas, and containing in the inside, a large area where the exercises were performed. Places for training in bad weather--porticoes, baths, chambers for oil and sand, with groves of trees, and seats, or benches, encompassed the stadium. The internal structure of these edifices was adapted to the convenience of those who frequented them, either for exercise or for pleasure; and they were the resort of rhetoricians, philosophers, and men of learning, who here read their lectures, held their disputations, and recited their several productions[7]. The moral and political influence of the Olympic games was acknowledged by the legislators of Greece; and accordingly, they were encouraged and protected by laws so strict, that for more than ten centuries they attracted the particular attention of the civilized world; and, amidst the revolutions of states and empires, they seemed to stand on a basis of perpetual duration. To gain the Olympic crown was the great object of solicitude, as it reflected the highest honor, not on the individual alone who obtained the prize, but also on the country which gave him birth. But to qualify the candidate for the combat, a long course of training was requisite; and in every city, the youth were instructed in the different branches of the gymnastic science, and regularly exercised by proper masters.