First of all a modern can scarcely avoid a feeling of surprise that plays were almost always brought out in competition; but no instinct was more thoroughly imbedded in the Greek consciousness than this. From the time of the first celebration of the Olympian games in 776 B.C. or before, a contest of some kind formed, to their minds, the most natural setting for the display of athletic, musical, and literary skill. Associated with this fact was another, viz., that the prizes awarded upon these occasions were usually more honorific than intrinsically valuable. The victors in the Olympian games received a garland of wild olive and a palm branch. It is true that the delighted fellow-citizens of the victors usually supplemented the award by something more substantial, but the fact remains that these trivial objects were the sole official reward for many arduous months of preparation and training. In like manner we are informed by the most ancient tradition that the original prize in tragic contests was a goat (see p. 13 f. above); and what is more, it is said to have been customary for the victorious poet to offer up his prize in immediate sacrifice to the god of the festival. After the reorganization of the City Dionysia about 501 B.C., however, it seems likely that pecuniary awards were established for the tragic victors. Though we are in ignorance as to their amount, some notion can be formed from the fact that prizes of ten, eight, and six minae,[344] respectively, were granted dithyrambic victors at the Piraeus festival toward the close of the fourth century B.C. Three prizes seem to have been available in tragedy at the City Dionysia also, so that every contestant was sure of some compensation. In other words, to be chosen to compete at all was sufficient honor to entitle even the poorest of the three to a suitable reward. Only the winner of the first prize, however, was technically regarded as “victor.” In comedy, according to tradition, the original prize was a jar of wine, which likewise gave place to financial awards after comedy came under state control at the City Dionysia of 486 B.C. These arrangements were extended to the Lenaea, when first comedy and then tragedy were introduced there (see p. 119, above), and to contests between actors, as these were established at the two festivals (see p. 202, above). The successful playwrights, actors, and “choregi” (see below) seem to have been crowned with garlands of ivy by the presiding archon—the archon eponymus at the City Dionysia and the king archon at the Lenaea.