United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They then having consulted together asked the Eleians whether their own citizens took part in the contest; and they said that it was permitted to any one who desired it, to take part in the contest: upon which the Egyptians said that in so ordering the games they had wholly missed the mark of justice; for it could not be but that they would take part with the man of their own State, if he was contending, and so act unfairly to the stranger: but if they really desired, as they said, to order the games justly, and if this was the cause for which they had come to Egypt, they advised them to order the contest so as to be for strangers alone to contend in, and that no Eleian should be permitted to contend.
By an obvious literary artifice he makes Nestor detain the reluctant Patroclus with a long story of his own early feats of arms. It is a story of a "hot-trod," so called in Border law; the Eleians had driven a creagh of cattle from the Pylians, who pursued, and Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus.
Such was the suggestion made by the Egyptians to the Eleians. When Psammis had been king of Egypt for only six years and had made an expedition to Ethiopia and immediately afterwards had ended his life, Apries the son of Psammis received the kingdom in succession.
This was decided in favor of the Lacedæmonians, with a great loss to the Athenians and their allies, including both their generals, Laches and Nicostratus. It was lost by the withdrawal of three thousand Eleians before the battle, illustrating the remark of Pericles that numerous and equal allies could never be kept in harmonious co-operation.
While this Psammis was king of Egypt, there came to him men sent by the Eleians, who boasted that they ordered the contest at Olympia in the most just and honourable manner possible and thought that not even the Egyptians, the wisest of men, could find out anything besides, to be added to their rules.
Residing hard by on his own property, allotted to him by the Lacedæmonians, Xenophon superintended this estate as steward for the goddess; looking perhaps to the sanctity of her name for protection from disturbance by the Eleians, who viewed with a jealous eye the Lacedæmonians at Skillûs, and protested against the peace and convention promoted by Athens after the battle of Leuktra, because it recognized that place, along with the townships of Triphylia, as having the right of self-government.
Having thus become an exile, Xenophon was allowed by the Lacedæmonians to settle at Skillûs, one of the villages of Triphylia, near Olympia in Peloponnesus, which they had recently emancipated from the Eleians.
Now when the Eleians came to Egypt and said that for which they had come, then this king called together those of the Egyptians who were reputed the wisest, and when the Egyptians had come together they heard the Eleians tell of all that which it was their part to do in regard to the contest; and when they had related everything, they said that they had come to learn in addition anything which the Egyptians might be able to find out besides, which was juster than this.
But while the Athenians thus appeared at the ninetieth Olympiad, the Lacedæmonians were excluded by the Eleians, who controlled the festival, from an alleged violation of the Olympic truce, but really from the intrigues of Alcibiades. It was distinctly violated by the attack of Argos by the Lacedæmonians, Bœotians, and Corinthians, and the battle of Mantinea opened again the war.
Word Of The Day