334 HISTORY OF CREECH. sanctity of the Olympic truce and the inviolability of the Eleian territory. Hence, though this tale is riot to be construed as matter of fact, we may see that the Lacedaemonians regarded the Olympic games as a portion of their own antiquities. More- over, it is certain, both that the dignity of the festival increased simultaneously with their ascendency, 1 and that their peculiar fashions were very early introduced into the practice of the Olympic competitors. Probably, the three bands of cooperat- ing invaders, JEtolians and Spartan and Messenian Dorians, may have adopted this festival as a periodical renovation of mu- tual union and fraternity ; from which cause the games became an attractive centre for the western portion of Peloponnesus, be fore they were much frequented by people from the eastern, or still more from extra-Peloponnesian Hellas. For it cannot be altogether accidental, when AVC read the names of the first twelve proclaimed Olympic victors (occupying nearly half a century from 776 B. c. downwards), to find that seven of them are Messenians, three Eleians, one from Dyme, in Achaia, and one from Korone ; while after the 12th Olympiad, Corinthians and Megarians and Epidaurians begin to occur ; later still, extra-Peloponnesian vic- tors. "VVe may reasonably infer from hence that the Olympic ceremonies were at this early period chiefly frequented by visi- tors and competitors from the western regions of Peloponnesus, and that the affluence to them, from the more distant parts of the Hellenic world, did not become considerable until the first Messenian war had closed. Having thus set forth the conjectures, to which our very scanty knowledge points, respecting the first establishment of the ^tolian and Dorian settlements in Elis, Laconia, and Mes- senia, connected as they are with the steadily increasing dignity and frequentation of the Olympic festival, I proceed, in the next chapter, to that memorable circumstance which both deter- mined the character, and brought about the political ascendency, of the Spartans separately: I mean, the laws and discipline of Lykurgus. 1 The entire nakedness of the competitors at Olympia was adopted fron-. the Spartan practice, seemingly in the 14th Olympiad, as is testified by the epigram on Orsippus the Megarian. Previous to that period, the Olympi* competitors had <5mV,'>/*ara nspl TU alfiola (Thucyd. i. 6).
