In an earlier lecture I referred to the part which Pisistratus played during the sixth century in fostering Orphism at Athens and in developing the mysteries at Eleusis. Now the Athenian success in driving back the Persian invaders had filled the citizens with a spirit which had little desire for the sacraments of the Orphics, and furthermore the mysteries at Eleusis satisfied all longing for mystic assurance of security and of future happiness. But Pisistratus had also emphasized the Olympian religion as set forth in the Homeric poems. Indeed, we may say that he produced a Homeric revival; for whatever the truth may be in the tradition that he had the Homeric text fixed and written down in the Attic alphabet, there can be little question that he made the Iliad and Odyssey more widely known by ordaining that the rhapsodes should recite them at the great Panathenaic festival. The emphasis given by him to the Olympian divinities resulted in the exaltation of Athena and the subordination of most local cults to her worship upon the Acropolis. It was Pisistratus also who developed and gave new magnificence to the Panathenaic festival. This was annual, but was celebrated with special splendor every fourth year. At these festivals the recitation of the Homeric poems brought before the people in impressive manner the whole pageantry of Olympus. The great procession with which the festival culminated—that procession known to us from Phidias’ frieze upon the Parthenon—had as its objective point the Acropolis, where the sacred robe and other gifts were offered to the patron goddess, Athena. Her old temple on the site once occupied by the goodly house of Erectheus was adorned at the tyrant’s orders with a peristyle and new pediment sculptures. The battle of Athena Polias and the gods against the giants replaced the old sculptures of Zeus encountering a three-headed monster and of Heracles destroying the Hydra. Thus Pisistratus made the temple of Athena the center of the united Athenian state, and established the goddess as the chief divinity of Attica.