It is of far more importance to examine what positive evidence there was for this theory of the gradual rise and progress of the festival, its regularity, and the prominence of the _stadion_, or short race, in giving the name of its victor as the index of the date. We have two kinds of authority to consult--the older literature; and the monuments, either at first hand, or as described for us by former observers. As regards the literature, our review need be but very brief. (1) The twenty-third book of the _Iliad_ seems composed without any reference to the earliest Olympian games as Pausanias describes them. The nature of this (perhaps special) competition is quite different. There are some events, such as the armed combat, which never made part of the historical games; there are others, such as the chariot race, which are expressly asserted to have been later innovations at Olympia. The giving of valuable prizes, and several of them in each competition, is quite against the practice at Olympia. The Phæacian games in the _Odyssey_ ([Greek: th] 120, sq.) contain _five_ events, running, wrestling, leaping, discus, and boxing. Those who believe that the epics were composed before 776 B.C., or those who believe them to be the much later compilation of antiquarian poets, will find no difficulty in this. The one will assert that the poet could not know, and the other that he would not know, what was established at Olympia. The latter will also hold that the accounts of the mythical celebrations by Herakles, Pelops, &c., were invented in imitation of the Homeric account. But still if Lycurgus indeed promoted the knowledge of the Homeric poems, why did he and Iphitus found a contest without the least resemblance to the heroic models? And if, as I hold, the Homeric poems were growing into shape about the time of the alleged 1st Olympiad, and after it, the contrast of the _Iliad_ in its games to the Olympian festival is so difficult to explain, that we must assume the old Eleian competition to have been no mere sprint race, but a contest similar in its events to that in the _Iliad_, or at least to that in the _Odyssey_.