ense might not become too chargeable to the
state, Solon(159) reduced the pension of a victor in the Olympic games to
five hundred drachmas;(160) in the Isthmian to a hundred;(161) and in the
rest in proportion. The victor and his country considered this pension,
less as a relief of the champion's indigence, than as a mark of honour and
distinction. They were also exempted from all civil offices and
employments.

The celebration of the games being over, one of the first cares of the
magistrates, who presided in them, was to inscribe, in the public
register, the name and country of the Athletae who had carried the prizes,
and to annex the species of combat in which they had been victorious. The
chariot-race had the preference to all other games. Hence the historians,
who date occurrences by the Olympiads, as Thucydides, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, and Pausanias, almost always express the
Olympiad by the name and country of the victors in that race.

The praises of the victorious Athletae were amongst the Greeks one of the
principal subjects of their lyric poetry. We find, that all the odes of
the four books of Pindar turn upon it, each of which takes its title from
the games in which the combatants signalized themselves, whose victories
those poems celebrate. The poet, indeed, frequently enriches his matter,
by calling in to the champion's assistance, incapable alone of inspiring
all the enthusiasm necessary, the aid of the gods, heroes, and princes,
who have any relation to his subject; and to support the flights of
imagination, to which he abandons himself. Before Pindar, the poet
Simonides practised the same manner of writing, intermingling the praises
of the gods and heroes with those of the champions, whose victories he
sang. It is related upon this head,(162) that one of the victors in
boxing, called Scopas, having agreed with Simonides for a poem upon his
victory, the poet, according to custom, after having given the highest
praises to the champion, expatiated in a long digression to the honour of
Castor and Pollux. Scopas, satisfied in appearance with the performance of
Simonides, paid him however only the third part of the sum agreed on,
referring him for the remainder to the Tyndaridae, whom he had celebrated
so well. And in fact he was well paid by them, if we may believe the
sequel; for, at the feast given by the champion, whilst the guests were at
table, a servant came to Simonides, and tol