Herewith the official programme of the festivities came to an end, but there was no lack of further entertainment; for the opportunity of appearing before so great a number of their countrymen, and thus attaining sudden fame, was a very attractive one for poets and writers, who in those days were little assisted by the bookselling trade. The custom of holding lectures or reciting poems before the assembled people originated in the 5th century, when it is said to have been introduced by Herodotus, who read aloud a portion of his history at Olympia, though this story is not entirely removed from doubt. It is, however, a fact that from that time onwards recitations of this kind became commoner; thus Gorgias the Sophist, and Hippias the Elian, held long discourses here; and similarly, Prodicus and Anaximenes, Lysias, Isocrates, etc., lectured at Olympia; and in later times this was a frequent occurrence. Occasionally, though less often, works of art were here exposed to view; thus, a painter, Aetion, exhibited his picture of the marriage of Alexander the Great and Roxana, and the astronomer, Oinopides, of Chios, exhibited a brass tablet which was to explain a new method of calculating the time, discovered by him. This last, however, turned out a failure. The publicity of the Olympic festival was also used in other ways. Important decrees relating to solemn pledges, treaties among states, mutual acknowledgment of meritorious actions, decisions to confer crowns, or other matters of importance, which it was desirable to bring into universal notice as soon as possible, were proclaimed by the solemn voice of the herald and then graven in bronze or stone, and set up in the Altis.