Bury assigns to Cleisthenes the leading part in the reorganizing of the Pythian games at Delphi after the Sacred War[1315], and pictures the Sicyonian tyrant as doing for the Delphic Pythia much what Periander and Peisistratus are depicted as doing for the Corinthian Isthmia and the Athenian Panathenaia and Pheidon very possibly did for the great games at Olympia. Bury’s general picture of the early tyrants as founders or reorganizers of these great Greek games is quite in harmony with the chronological evidence and with all that is known about the various tyrants’ activities and characters[1316]. Developing these games might well be part of a broad commercial policy, the more so as the games were under divine patronage and ensured periodic opportunities for peaceful intercourse in an age of chronic warfare[1317]. Under such circumstances gatherings of this kind naturally tend to become the “commercial affair (ἐμπορικὸν πρᾶγμα)” that the Delian festival admittedly grew to be[1318]. Everything known about the early Greek tyrants shows how capable they were of turning such a tendency to good account. That Delphi in particular had from early times a commercial character has already been conjectured by Cornford[1319]. In the early years of the Sicyonian tyranny the greatness of the Euboean cities Chalcis and Eretria had begun to be steadily on the decline. The time had come to change the course of the Eastern part of this great trade route and instead of Krisa, Delphi, Thebes, Euboea to substitute another line, in which Sicyon and probably Athens should be dominating points. This is probably what Cleisthenes had in view when he so strongly supported Solon in the Sacred War. It follows that to make him the founder of the Delphic Pythia is a view that cannot be accepted without reservations. The available evidence represents Cleisthenes as rather the rival than the champion of Delphi. A Pindar scholiast already quoted states that he instituted Pythian games in his own Sicyon. There is no other evidence for Pythian games at Sicyon, but Herodotus gives a long account of the way in which Cleisthenes radically reformed the chief existing festival in the city. This festival, like the Delphic Pythia of the days before the Sacred War, was devoted largely to musical and poetical competitions. Its patron was the ancient hero Adrastus, whose connexions were all with Argos, the Dorian city whose influence in Sicyon Cleisthenes was bent on overthrowing. Cleisthenes ejected Adrastus from Sicyon by the curious process of burying beside him the body of his bitterest enemy, the Theban Melanippus (which he borrowed for the purpose from Thebes), and then removing the body of Adrastus which was assumed to depart voluntarily from so unpleasant a neighbourhood.