is eyes of
the brightest jewels.

The temple and grove were further adorned with a great many statues
representing the other gods and all the prize winners, for it was
customary to place a life-sized statue of each of them in this beautiful
place.

During the celebration of the Olympic games many sacrifices were offered
up to the gods, and there were many religious processions in their
honor. Poets and artists, as well as athletes, were in the habit of
hastening thither on every occasion; for there were contests in poetry
and song, and the people were anxious to hear and see all the new
works.

Between the games, therefore, the poets recited their poems, the
musicians sang their songs, the historians read their histories, and the
story-tellers told their choicest tales, to amuse the vast crowd which
had come there from all parts of Greece, and even from the shores of
Italy and Asia Minor.

As the games were held every four years, the people eagerly looked
forward to their coming, and soon began to reckon time by them. It was
therefore usual to say that such and such a thing happened in the first,
second, or third year of the fifth, tenth, or seventieth O-lym'pi-ad, as
the case might be.

Soon even the historians began to use this way of dating important
events; and by counting four years for each Olympiad, as the time
between the games was called, we can find out exactly when the chief
events in Greek history took place.

Although the Olympic games were probably held many times before this
system of counting was begun, and before any good record was kept, we
can trace them back to 774 B.C.

For one thousand years after that, the name of each victor was carefully
written down; and it was only about three centuries after Christ that
the Olympic records ceased. Then the games came to an end, to the sorrow
of all the Greeks.

Several attempts have since been made to revive these games; but all
proved fruitless until the Greek king arranged to renew them in 1896. In
that year a great festival was held, not at Olympia, but in the city of
Athens.

Besides some of the old-fashioned Greek games, there were bicycle and
hurdle races, shooting matches, and contests in jumping. People from all
parts of the world went to see them in as large numbers as they went to
Olympia in the olden times.

The victors in the games, who belonged to many different nations,
received medals, and wreaths of wild olive and laurel leaves;