There were four great national festivals, known as the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian. In these festivals contests in races and athletic exercises were held and also sometimes in music, poetry, rhetoric, and the like. The Olympic festival was held at Olympia every four years, in the summer, and lasted for five days; the Pythian festival was also held every four years, near Delphi, in the winter, in the third year of every Olympiad; the Nemean festival was held at Nemea in the second and fourth year of every Olympiad, alternating in winter and in summer; and the Isthmian festival was held at Corinth, in the first and third years of each Olympiad, alternating between spring and summer. These times were thus arranged so that these national festivals did not conflict with one another. The Olympic festival was the most noted. It was so important that in case of war a truce was entered into among the Grecian states, which lasted probably for three months during the year of the festival. During this time all people journeying to and from the festival were granted protection, and no one was allowed to carry arms within the sacred territory. The official prize was but a crown of wild olive, not valuable in itself, but it was perhaps the most coveted honor in all Greece. Only Greeks were eligible to compete and the winner received the highest honor from his fellow-townspeople. Poets of high renown composed odes in his honor, bronze statues were made of him, he rode home in a triumphal chariot and sometimes a part of the wall of his town was torn down for his entry, he was generally supported for the remainder of his life at public expense, and his honor extended to his parents and to his children, and even to the city of his birth. Women were not allowed to be present at the Olympian games. The only exception was in permitting the priestesses of Demeter to be present, who remained in a temple built for them near the Stadium. All other women were excluded from the territory for a certain number of days. The penalty of trespassing on the part of a woman was death, the transgressor being thrown from the Typæan rock. "Only one instance is recorded of this rule being broken. Pherenice, a member of the famous family of the Diagoridæ, in her anxiety to see her son Peisirodus compete in the boys' boxing, accompanied him to Olympia disguised as a trainer. In her delight at his victory she leapt over the barrier and so disclosed her sex. The Hellanodicæ, however, pardoned her in consideration for her father and brothers and son, all of them Olympic victors, but they passed a decree that henceforth all trainers should appear naked."[172] But women were permitted to enter their horses for the chariot-race, which they did, and won some races, too. The women had their own festival at Olympia, the Heræa, occurring every four years, at which there were races for maidens of various years, the course being one-sixth less than that for men.