There is yet one unpleasant feature to be noted, which has disappeared from our sports. Several allusions make it plain that the vanquished, even vanquished boys, were regarded as fit subjects for jibe and ridicule, and that they sneaked home by lanes and backways. When the most ideal account which we have of the games gives us this information, we cannot hesitate to accept it as probably a prominent feature, which is, moreover, thoroughly consistent with the character of the old Greeks as I conceive it.(132) The general conclusion to which all these details lead us is this, that with all the care and with all the pomp expended on Greek athletic meetings, despite the exaggerated fame attained by victors, and the solid rewards both of money and of privileges accorded them by their grateful country, the results attained physically seem to have been inferior to those of English athletes. There was, moreover, an element of brutality in them, which is very shocking to modern notions: and not all the ideal splendor of Pindar’s praises, or of Pythagoras’s art, can raise the Greek pankratiast as an athlete much above the level of a modern prize-fighter. But, nevertheless, by the aid of their monumental statues, their splendid lyric poetry, and the many literary and musical contests which were combined with the gymnastic, the Greeks contrived, as usual, to raise very common things to a great national manifestation of culture which we cannot hope to equal. For common they were, and very human, in the strictest sense. Dry-as-dust scholars would have us believe that the odes of Pindar give a complete picture of these games; as if all the booths about the course had not been filled with idlers, pleasure-mongers, and the scum of Greek society! Tumbling, thimble-rigging, and fortune-telling, along with love-making and trading, made Olympia a scene not unlike the Derby. When the drinking parties of young men began in the evening, there may even have been a _soupçon_ of Donnybrook Fair about it, but that the committee of management were probably strict in their discipline. From the Isthmian games the successful athletes, with their training over, retired, as most athletes do, to the relaxation afforded by city amusements. One can imagine how amply Corinth provided for the outburst of liberty after the long and arduous subjection of physical training.