But we must not forget man and his works when we are in one of the chief seats of Hellenic worship. Here is the temple of Nemeian Zeus, standing desolate in the plain, almost as some of our Cistercian abbeys stand in their valleys. The history of the holy place is characteristic of Greek religion and of Greek politics. As Elis wrested the possession of Olympia from Pisa, so Argos wrested the possession of Nemea from Kleônai. In each case the possession of the temple and all that belonged to it was a source of dignity and political power. It was therefore eagerly sought for, and unscrupulously seized, by the greater city at the expense of the smaller. In the Olympian case indeed, one ground of refusing the ancient claim of the men of Pisa was that they had no city at all, but were mere villagers, unable and unworthy to preside over one of the great religious solemnities of the Greek nation. With our Northern notions, we are inclined to ask why Olympia and Nemea did not themselves grow into cities. Why did not a town grow up around the sanctuary? Not a few English towns, some of them of considerable size, grew up round some venerated monastery or other great church. A few devotees of the saint, a few dependents of his ministers, began the settlement. Traffic, shelter, all the motives which draw men together, increased the colony. In course of time it either wrested municipal rights from its ecclesiastical lords or received them as a free gift. In either case a new borough was formed, a borough which had not been made but had grown. But in Greek ideas a city was something which did not grow but was made. It might grow indefinitely after it was once made; but its first making did not take the form of growing. A new city was called into being by special and solemn acts, and no such foundation would have been endured at Olympia by Elis or at Nemea by either Argos or Kleônai. Some accommodation there must have been for the ministers of the God and his worshippers, even in ordinary times. At the great festival seasons, so we gather from the story of the assault on the tents of the envoys of Dionysios at Olympia, the crowds which assembled were encamped in the open plain like an army. But such a camp did not, like so many of the camps of Rome, grow into a permanent city. One might have fancied that it might become an object of Pan-hellenic policy to remove these national sanctuaries from the power of particular cities, and to place them under some kind of management in which all who had a right to share in the festival might be represented. But such an idea was foreign to the Greek political mind. The presidency of the temple and the games was essentially a privilege of this or that city. Pisa or Kleônai, Elis or Argos, were hosts, and the rest of Greece were their guests. There were, indeed, Amphiktionies, where a temple belonged to several cities in common; but the action of the most famous of their number in Greek