A similar practice prevailed in the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos, where likewise the ebullitions of vanity were concealed beneath the veil of religion. The exhibition took place in the temple of Hera, to whom, as the goddess of marriage, beauty should be dear. Priapos, however, was in some places supposed to be the deity who awarded the prize of loveliness in the Callisteia, on which account Niconoë, a Bacchante perhaps, dedicated to him her fawn-skin and golden ewer.[941] But the ladies were not singular in these displays. For among the Eleians, who had as favourable an opinion of themselves as Oliver Goldsmith, a similar show took place, and the pretensions of the male candidates were as carefully sifted as if they had been to take academical honours on their figures. And honours in fact they did take. They were presented with a complete suit of armour, which the winner consecrated with extraordinary pomp and rejoicing in the temple of Athena, whither he was led garlanded with fillets by his triumphant friends. According to Myrsilos, he was likewise decorated with a myrtle crown.[942] Footnote 941: Schol. ad Il. ι. 129. Cf. Meurs. Gr. Fer. p. 177. Hedyl. in Anth. Gr. vi. 292. Athen. xiii. 90. Footnote 942: Athen. xiii. 90. In some places, not named by historians, a contest was instituted which, though unconnected with the arts, we will intreat the reader’s permission to introduce here, for its extraordinary nature. This was a contest in prudence and good housewifery, in which certain barbarian nations followed the example. And, to show that character and mental qualifications were properly esteemed by the Greeks, it is added by Theophrastos[943] that it is these that render beauty beautiful, and that without them it is apt to degenerate into wantonness. Winkelmann, who has noticed several of these facts, is betrayed into some errors. He speaks of an Apollo of Philesia[944] at whose festival a prize was bestowed on the youth who excelled in kissing. The contest took place under the inspection of a judge, he supposes, at Megara. Meursius, though under the name of Diocleia he notices the Megarean festival, overlooks the writer who gives the fullest account of it;—I mean the scholiast on Theocritus, who observes that Diocles was an Athenian exile who took refuge at Megara. In a battle in which he was engaged, he fought side by side with a friend, whose life he saved at the expense of his own. He was interred by the Megareans, who instituted an annual festival in his honour, where the youth who excelled his companions was crowned and led in triumph to the arms of his mother.[945] Footnote 943: Ap. Athen. xiii. 90. Footnote 944: