ore the first, or by taking his place; if not
in the first, at least in some of the subsequent rounds; for it is not to
be supposed, that in the progress of the race the antagonists always
continued in the same order in which they started. They often changed
places in a short interval of time, and in that variety and vicissitude
consisted all the diversion of the spectators.

It was not required, that those who aspired to the victory should enter
the lists, and drive their chariots in person. Their being spectators of
the games, or even sending their horses thither, was sufficient; but in
either case, it was previously necessary to register the names of the
persons for whom the horses were to run, either in the chariot or single
horse-races.

At the time that the city of Potidaea surrendered to Philip, three couriers
brought him advices; the first, that the Illyrians had been defeated in a
great battle by his general Parmenio; the second, that he had carried the
prize of the horse-race in the Olympic games; and the third, that the
queen was delivered of a son. Plutarch seems to insinuate, that Philip was
equally delighted with each of these circumstances.(148)

Hiero sent horses to Olympia, to run for the prize, and caused a
magnificent pavilion to be erected for them.(149) Upon this occasion
Themistocles harangued the Greeks, to persuade them to pull down the
tyrant's pavilion, who had refused his aid against the common enemy, and
to hinder his horses from running with the rest. It does not appear that
any regard was had to this remonstrance; for we find, by one of Pindar's
odes, composed in honour of Hiero, that he won the prize in the equestrian
races.

No one ever carried the ambition of making a great figure in the public
games of Greece so far as Alcibiades,(150) in which he distinguished
himself in the most splendid manner, by the great number of horses and
chariots which he kept only for the races. There never was either private
person or king that sent, as he did, seven chariots at once to the Olympic
games, wherein he carried the first, second, and third prizes; an honour
no one ever had before him. The famous poet Euripides celebrated these
victories in an ode, of which Plutarch has preserved a fragment. The
victor, after having made a sumptuous sacrifice to Jupiter, gave a
magnificent feast to the innumerable multitude of spectators at the games.
It is not easy to comprehend, how the wealth of a private p