the same fondness for the arts and sciences.

Of the Prizes of Wit, and the Shows and Representations of the Theatre.

I have reserved for the conclusion of this head another kind of
competition, which does not at all depend upon the strength, activity, and
address of the body, and may be called with reason the combat of the mind;
wherein the orators, historians, and poets, made trial of their
capacities, and submitted their productions to the censure and judgment of
the public. The emulation in this sort of dispute was so much the more
lively and ardent, as the victory in question might justly be deemed to be
infinitely superior to all others, because it affects the man more nearly,
is founded on his personal and internal qualities, and decides upon the
merit of his intellectual capacity; which are advantages we are apt to
aspire after with the utmost vivacity and passion, and of which we are
least of all inclined to renounce the glory to others.

It was a great honour, and at the same time a most sensible pleasure, for
writers, who are generally fond of fame and applause, to have known how to
unite in their favour the suffrages of so numerous and select an assembly
as that of the Olympic games; in which were present all the finest
geniuses of Greece, and all who were most capable of judging of the
excellency of a work. This theatre was equally open to history, eloquence,
and poetry.

Herodotus read his history(169) at the Olympic games to all Greece,
assembled at them, and was heard with such applause, that the names of the
nine Muses were given to the nine books which compose his work, and the
people cried out wherever he passed, "That is he, who has written our
history, and celebrated our glorious successes against the Barbarians so
excellently."

All who had been present at the games, caused afterwards every part of
Greece to resound with the name and glory of this illustrious historian.

Lucian, who writes the fact which I have related, adds, that after the
example of Herodotus, many of the sophists and rhetoricians went to
Olympia, to read the harangues of their composing; finding that the
shortest and most certain method of acquiring a great reputation in a
little time.

Plutarch observes,(170) that Lysias, the famous Athenian orator,
contemporary with Herodotus, pronounced a speech in the Olympic games,
wherein he congratulated the Greeks upon their reconciliation with each
other, and their having un