l causes bound them together as one people. Of these the most important were community of blood

ecian by the term BARBARIAN. This word has passed into our own language, but with a very different idea; for the Greeks applied it in

tes. Of these the most celebrated was the AMPHICTYONIC COUNCIL. It acquired its superiority over other similar associations by the wealth and grandeur of the Delphian temple, of which it was the appointed guardian. It held two meetings every year, one in the spring at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the other in the autumn at the temple of Demeter (Ceres) at Thermopylae. Its members, who were c

B.C.; and, accordingly, when the Greeks at a later time began to use the Olympic contest as a chronological era, this year was regarded as the first Olympiad. It was celebrated at the end of every four years, and the interval which elapsed between each celebration was called an Olympiad. The whole festival was under the management of the Eleans, who appointed some of their own number to preside as judges, under the name of the Hellanodicae. During the month in which it was celebrated all hostilities were suspended throughout Greece. At first the festival was confined to a single day, and

me proclaimed as victor before assembled Hellas was an object of ambition with the noblest and the wealthiest of the Greeks. Such a person was co

acquired celebrity, and became second only to the great Olympic festival. The Nemean and Isthmian games occurred more frequently than the Olympic and Pythian. They were celebrated once in two years-the Nemean in the valley of Nemea between Phlius and Cleonae-and the Isthmian by the Corinthians, on their isthmus, in honour of Poseidon (Neptune). As in the Pythian festival, contests in music and in poetry, as well as gymnastics and chariot-races, formed part of th

ncourse of so large a number of persons from every part of the Grecian world afforded to the merchant opportunities for traffic, and to the artist and the literary man the best means of making their works kn

all the rest in importance, and was regarded with veneration in every part of the Grecian world. In the centre of the temple of Delphi there was a small opening in the ground, from which it was said that a certain gas or vapour ascended. Whenever the oracle was to be consulted, a virgin priestess called PYTHIA took her seat upon a tripod which was placed over the chasm. The ascendin

carnania was marked and striking; but if we compare the two with foreign contemporaries, the contrast between them and the latter is still more striking. Absolute despotism human sacrifices, polygamy, del

to suppose that the territory of Greece was divided among comparatively small number of independent states, such as Attica, Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the like; but this is a most serious mistake, and leads to a total misapprehension of Greek history. Every separate city was usually an independent state, and consequently each o