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By the beginning of the sixth century B.C. the athletic spirit displayed in the Homeric poems had given rise to the four national festivals—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus. On these four, many lesser games were modeled.77 The origin of all these, as we have already remarked, is lost in a mass of legend. The myths of the origin of Olympia are particularly conflicting. We are practically certain, however, that Olympia as a sanctuary preceded the advent of the Achæans into the Peloponnesus, and that the foundation of the games preceded the coming of the Dorians, but was probably later than that of the Achæans. The importance of the games dates from the time after the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus, when the warring peoples finally became pacified.78 For centuries Olympia was overshadowed by Delphi and the Ionian festival on Delos. The importance of the latter festival in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. is shown by the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo. Only by the beginning of the seventh century had Olympia begun to gain its prestige. The pre-Dorian Pisatai, in whose territory the sanctuary was situated, probably controlled it early. The Dorian allies, the Eleans, whom legend had King Oxylos lead into the Peloponnesus from Aitolia,79 tried to wrest this control from the Pisatai, who, however, aided by religious reverence for the sanctuary, were able to maintain their rights. On account of the conflict the games languished, until finally a truce was made by the two factions and the games were re-established under their common management. This work was ascribed to Iphitos and Kleosthenes, kings respectively of Elis and Pisa, and to Lykourgos of Sparta.80 The dual control was not successful, as the jealous Pisatai constantly tried to regain their old honor; but the Eleans, supported by the Spartans, prevailed and finally, after the Persian wars, destroyed Pisa and the other revolting cities of Triphylia and henceforth remained in sole control. The restoration of the games under Iphitos and his colleagues took place in 776 B.C., from which date the festival was celebrated every fourth year, until it was finally abolished by the Roman emperor Theodosius at the end of the fourth century A.D. In 776 Koroibos of Elis won the foot-race and this was the first dated Olympiad in the Olympian register,81 and from it, as Pausanias says,82 the unbroken tradition of the Olympiads began. This history of Olympia is very different from the orthodox mythical story told by Pausanias and Strabo and based on the “ancient writings of the Eleans.”83 According to it the games were originally instituted by the Eleans under Oxylos and refounded by Iphitos, his descendant, together with Lykourgos, still under the management of the Eleans. In Ol. 8 the Pisatans invoked the aid of the Argive king Pheidon and dispossessed the Eleans, but they lost the control of Olympia in the next Olympiad. In Ol. 28 Elis, during a war with Dyme, allowed the Pisatans to celebrate the games. Six Olympiads later the king of Pisa came to Olympia with an army and took charge. The story leaves the Pisatans in control from about Olympiads 30 to 51, but some time between Ols. 48 and 52 the Eleans defeated Pisa and destroyed it, and henceforth controlled the games. Such a story was manifestly a contrivance by the later priests of Elis to justify their control of the games through a prior claim. It is contradicted by all the evidence.84 The antiquity of Olympia is known to us from the results of excavations and from its religious history. The latest excavations on the site have disclosed the remains of six prehistoric buildings with apsidal endings, below the geometric stratum, upon the site of what used to be considered the remnants of the great altar of Zeus.85 Such an inference is borne out by many primitive features in the religious history of the sanctuary. The altar of Kronos on the hill to the north of the Altis was earlier than that of Zeus; an earth altar antedated that of Zeus, while a survival of the earlier worship of the powers of the underworld is seen in the custom, lasting through later centuries, of allowing only one woman, the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, to witness the games. We also know that the worship of the Pelasgian Hera antedated that of the Hellenic Zeus; her temple, the Heraion, is the most ancient of which the foundations still stand, a temple built of stone, wood, and sun-dried bricks, whose origin is to be referred to the tenth, if not to the eleventh, century B.C.86 We have already remarked that the worship of the hero Pelops preceded that of the god Zeus.87 All such indications attest the high antiquity of Olympia. That it is not mentioned in Homer, while Delphi and Dodona are, only proves that in the poet’s time it was still merely a local shrine. Not until the beginning of the sixth century B.C. did it attain the distinction, which it retained ever afterwards, of being the foremost national festival of Hellas.88