He had reared already the altar of his father Zeus, the centre of worship at Olympia; the full harvest moon shone upon the lists; but the "Altis," the sacred grove, was still to come,—the "Stadium," the race-course, still lacked the olives which were to furnish the victor's crown.
"Already, by rocky Alpheus' side, to glorious contests sanctified
Those quinquennial lists were set:—
And Cronian Pelops' dells were treeless yet!
All naked to the scorching sun they lay:
So to Ister's shores he took his way."
He had visited that land before, bearing to Diana the wondrous stag with horns of gold from the jagged Arcadian mountains, whose capture had been one of the Twelve Labours imposed upon him by his harsh kinsman Eurystheus, "a little more than kin and less than kind," and submitted to by the hero in expiation of an involuntary crime. Thither had he come, and gazed entranced on the wondrous trees of the Northern land:—
"And longing seized his soul to deck with these
His twelve-fold course."
With these, then, he returned to Pisa, and surely now too his presence is among us; surely with his successors the Tyndaridæ he comes to share the feast! Gloriously does Thero honour those Tyndaridæ, and gloriously have they rewarded him. What blisses may exist beyond a mortal's reach "I know not, nor I greatly care not" [1]—
