Note 140 — Chapter XXVIII · PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAN.

The Latin writers remark it as a peculiarity of Grecian feeling, as distinguished from Roman, that men of great station accounted it an honor to contend in the games: see, as a specimen, Tacitus, Dialogus de Orator. c. 9. “Ac si in Græciâ natus esses, ubi ludicras quoque artes exercere honestum est, ac tibi Nicostrati robur Dii dedissent, non paterer immanes illos et ad pugnam natos lacertos levitate jaculi vanescere.” Again, Cicero, pro Flacco, c. 13, in his sarcastic style: “Quid si etiam occisus est a piratis Adramyttenus, homo nobilis, cujus est fere nobis omnibus nomen auditum, Atinas pugil, Olympionices? hoc est apud Græcos (quoniam de corum gravitate dicimus) prope majus et gloriosius, quam Romæ triumphasse.”