At the Olympian festival, as established by Iphitus, the foot-race, distinguished by the name of _stadion_, is said to have been the only game exhibited; whether the various other exercises familiar in Homer’s age had fallen into oblivion, or the barbarism and poverty, superinduced by the violent and lasting troubles which followed the return of the Heraclidæ, forbade those of greater splendour. Afterwards, as the growing importance of the meeting occasioned inquiry concerning what had been practised of old, or excited invention concerning what might be advantageously added new, the games were multiplied. The _diaulos_, a more complicated foot-race, was added at the fourteenth Olympiad; wrestling, and the _pentathlon_ or game of five exercises, at the eighteenth; boxing at the twenty-third; the chariot-race was not restored till the twenty-fifth, of course not till a hundred years after the institution of the festival; the _pancration_ and the horse-race were added in the thirty-third. So much Pausanias has asserted; apparently from the Olympian register, which on other occasions he has quoted. Originally the sacrifices, processions, and various religious ceremonies apparently formed the principal pageantry of the meeting. Afterwards perhaps the games became the greater inducement for the extraordinary resort of company to Olympia; though the religious ceremonies continued still to increase in magnificence as the festival gained importance. The temple, like that of Delphi, became an advantageous repository for treasure. A mart or fair was a natural consequence of a periodical assembly of multitudes in one place; and whatever required extensive publicity, whatever was important for all the scattered members of the Greek nation to know, would be most readily communicated, and most solemnly, by proclamation at the Olympian festival. Hence treaties by mutual agreement were often proclaimed at Olympia; and sometimes columns were erected there at the joint expense of the contracting parties, with the treaties engraved. Thus the Olympian meeting to a not inconsiderable degree supplied the want of a common capital for the Greek nation; and, with a success far beyond what the worthy founder’s imagination, urged by his warmest wishes, could reach, contributed to the advancement of arts, particularly of the fine arts, of commerce, of science, of civilised manners, of liberal sentiments, and of friendly communication among all the Grecian people. Such was the common feeling of these various advantages, it became established as a divine law that, whatever wars were going forward among the republics, there should be a truce, not only during the festival, but also for some days before and after; so that persons from all parts of Greece might safely attend it.