skill appear to have been esteemed equally becoming men of the highest rank; though it may seem, from the prizes offered and the persons contending at the funeral of Patroclus, the poet himself saw, in the game of the cestus, some incongruity with exalted characters. [Sidenote: [_ca._ 884 B.C.]] Traditions are preserved of games celebrated in Elis, upon several great occasions, in very early times, with more than ordinary pomp, by assemblies of chiefs from different parts of Greece. Homer mentions such at Elis under King Augeas, contemporary with Hercules, and grandfather of one of the chiefs who commanded the Elean troops in the Trojan War; and again at Buprasium in Elis, for the funeral of Amarynceus, while Nestor was yet in the vigour of youth. But it does not at all appear from Homer that in his time, or ever before him, any periodical festival was established like that which afterward became so famous under the title of the Olympiad or the Olympian contest, or, as our writers, translating the Latin phrase, have commonly termed it, the Olympian Games. On the contrary, every mention of such games, in his extant works, shows them to have been only occasional solemnities; and Strabo has remarked that they were distinguished by a characteristical difference from the Olympian. In these the honour derived from receiving publicly a crown or chaplet, formed of a branch of oleaster, was the only reward of the victor; but in Homer’s games the prizes, not merely honorary, were intrinsically valuable, and the value was often very considerable. After Homer’s age, through the long troubles ensuing from the Dorian conquest, and the great change made in the population of the country, the customs and institutions of the Peloponnesians were so altered that even memory of the ancient games was nearly lost. THE OLYMPIAN GAMES