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86 ANCIENT GREECE. [CHAP. vix.The influence on the politicalrelations of the Grecianstates, was perhaps not so greatas Isocrates represents. Asolemnity of a few days could hardly be sufficient to coolthe passions and still the mutual enmities of the severaltribes. History mentions no peace, which was ever negotiated, and still less which was ever concluded at Olympia,But so much the gTeater was the influence exercised overthe culture of the nation ;and if the culture of a nation decides its character, our plan requiresof us to pause audconsider it.In all their institutions, when they arc considered in thelight in which the Greeks regarded them, wo shall commonly find proofs of the noble dispositions of the Hellenes.And these are to be observed in the games, where everything which was in itself beautiful and glorious ; bodilystrength and skill in boxing ; wrestling, and running; thesplendour of opulence, as displayed in the equipages for thechariot races ;excellence in poetry, and soon also in otherintellectualproductions, were here rewarded, each with itsprize.But the degree of importance assigned to the productions of mind was not every where the same. Musicalcontests, 1 in which the Greeks united poetry, song, andmusic, were common in those larger games, as well as inthose hardly less splendid ones, which were instituted in theseveral cities. But there was a difference in their relativeimportance. At Olympia, though they were not entirely excluded^ they were yet less essential ;they formed from thebeginning the primary object in the Pythian games. Theyheld the same rank in several festivals of the smaller cities,in the Panathen^a at Athens, in Delos, 3 at Epidaurus,elThe Greeks made a distinction between dycovcc yv/meoi and uowiicof. Theformer relate to the exercises of the body the; latter, to the works of genius -that is, to poetry, and whatever was connected with it. At these festivals ifnever entered the mind of the Greeks to institute prizes for competitors inthe arts of design ;at least not in the plastic art.(Pliny, however, mentionsa competition of painters, xxxv. 35.) The cause of this may in part be, thatthose arts were not so soon brought to perfection as the former OUCH but thecause was rather that the Greeks conceived itproper to institute competition?y [ hose^.of which the results were temporary; and not in those, ofwhich the productions are exhibited in public, and are lasting: for in themas m sculpture for example, there is a constant exhibition, and therefore aconstant emulation.* See the instructive Versuch von den musicalischen "Wettstreiten dcr Altonwhich is to be found m der neuen Bibl. der Schonen Wissenschaftcn, B. vii/