Note 193 — THE THEOGONY.

A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days.] The odes of Pindar are traditional records of the glory attached by the Greeks to the conquerors in their games: a glory which extended to their parents and connexions, and even to the city in which they were born. Cicero describes the return from an Olympic victory as equivalent to a Roman triumph. The victor in fact rode in a triumphal chariot, and entered through a breach in the walls into the city: which Plutarch explains to signify that walls are useless with such defenders. The same writer relates, that a Spartan meeting Diagoras, who had been crowned in the Olympic games, and had seen his sons and grand-children crowned after him, exclaimed, “Die Diagoras! for thou canst not be a god.” A memorial on the gymnastic exercises of the Greeks will be found in the “Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,” tom. i. 286.