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Some of these are world records, and more exceed professional records. These, of course, no more indicate general improvement than the steady reduction of time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally. In Panhellenic games as well as at present, athleticism in its manifold forms was one of the most characteristic expressions of adolescent nature and needs.
It was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger than ever before or after.
Those States which previously had been severed from each other by geographical position and diversity of interests, now rallied under the guidance either of Athens or Sparta. The intrigues of Themistocles and Pausanias had prevented that Panhellenic union, so necessary for the full development of political power, and which was for a time promoted by the Persian war.
Jaeger and Guildersleeve, and yet better Grasberger, would have us believe that the Panhellenic and especially the Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prize exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, a meeting of the British Association, a country cattle show, intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the "acme of festive life" and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their splendor.
This conduct so much enraged the Spartan admiral that he sailed with his whole fleet—the largest which had been assembled during the war, one hundred and forty triremes, of which only ten were Lacedæmonian—the rest being furnished by allies—to Lesbos, and liberated the Athenian captives and garrison at Methymna, and seemed animated by that old Panhellenic patriotism which had united the Greeks half a century before against the Persian invaders, declaring that not a single Greek should be reduced to slavery if he could help it.
The Persian wars bound all the States together by a powerful Hellenic sentiment of patriotism. The Peloponnesian war dissevered this Panhellenic tie. The disaster at Syracuse was fatal to Athenian supremacy, and even independence. But for this Athens might have remained the great power of Greece.
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