Odes which Pindar devotes to victories at Nemea, describe the successes of Æginetan champions. There are eleven so-called Nemean Odes, but two refer to victories gained in other contests, and one (as we have seen) is an Installation-ode, improperly classed among the Epinicia. Neither olive nor laurel graced the stadium of Nemea. There was, indeed, a grove of sacred cypresses round the temple of Nemean Zeus, three of whose singularly lofty Doric columns still remain as a puzzle to archæologists. But the victor's crown was not gathered from these ill-omened trees. It was supplied by the wild parsley, which still abounds in the locality.
The last of the four great games were the Isthmia, celebrated in alternate years with the Nemea, on the "sea-severing ridge"[1] of the Corinthian Isthmus, and appropriately dedicated to the sea-god Poseidon. The site of his temple is believed to be still marked by some very ancient Doric and Ionic ruined columns, "akin," as a modern traveller tells us, "rather to old Sicilian than to Attic or Æginetan architecture." The wreath was of pine, according to most authorities; yet here, too, as at Nemea, the victors in the chariot-race seem to have been sometimes at least crowned with parsley.[2] To this crown, whether of pine or parsley, St Paul refers, as is well known, when he reminds the Corinthians of the exertions of athletes in those Isthmian contests, at which some of his hearers may have themselves competed, and which all must have often witnessed. "Now they do it to
