The judges who awarded the prizes to the victors in the games sat within the temple, in a row, on a raised platform at the foot of the great statue of Athéné, which was considered, for perfect beauty of proportion and grand dignity of expression, one of the finest works of art ever conceived. The expectant crowd, collected outside the temple, could see through the open doorway this gigantic figure towering high above the row of judges. It measured forty feet in height, and the golden figure of the Victory, which is held in its outstretched hand, alone measured six feet, the height of an extremely tall man. The goddess thus appeared to the multitude to be presenting the prizes to the successful competitors. The Greeks aimed at cultivating the physical powers up to the greatest possible pitch of perfection, and in later times they gave the same pains to cultivating the powers of the mind. "_Mens sana in corpore sano_" (a healthy mind in a healthy body) was one of their favourite maxims. Their games and feats of strength were to the Greeks, in their day, a good deal what our Oxford and Cambridge boat races, our Eton and Harrow cricket matches, our Volunteer training, are to us, which help to make our English lads such fine spirited young fellows. In the early days, before Pericles, the games consisted entirely of trials of physical skill--foot races, horse races, wrestling, boxing, throwing the discus or quoit. But in the more cultivated times of Pheidias, there were also trials of intellectual skill. It is recorded that Herodotus, the earliest Greek historian (called the "father of history"), read aloud his history to the assembled Athenians at the Pan-Athenaic festival, 446 B.C. It was so greatly admired that the city with one voice voted him a reward of ten talents (a talent is worth about £240). While at other festivals dramas were produced, and the plays being acted in the great open-air theatre at the foot of the Acropolis, the author of the best play received a crown of laurel. The plays then written, the subjects of which were the popular Greek legends, still rank, for grandeur of sentiment and nobility of feeling, with the finest poetry the world has ever produced. This proves to us that the Greeks were a highly refined and cultivated people. The Greek influence in art and literature has left its own mark in civilising and elevating mankind; but the belief in their legends was doomed to fade away and vanish utterly, "like an insubstantial pageant," when the truer light arose in Palestine which came in after years to bless and illumine the world. (_To be concluded._) FOOTNOTES: [1] Hecaton--Greek for hundred; pedon, feet. [2] Parthenos--Greek for virgin. [3] The Greek Zeus is the Jupiter of the Roman mythology. [4] As Homer constantly calls her. EXPLANATION OF FRENCH AND OTHER TERMS USED IN MODERN COOKERY. PART II.