There were booths all round the Altis, or sacred precinct of Zeus (Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xi, 55), during the time of the games.
Strabo observes with justice, respecting the multitudinous festivals generally—Ἡ πανήγυρις, ἐμπορικόν τι πρᾶγμα (x, p. 486), especially in reference to Delos: see Cicero pro Lege Maniliâ, c. 18: compare Pausanias, x, 32, 9, about the Panegyris and fair at Tithorea in Phokis, and Becker, Chariklês, vol. i, p. 283.
At the Attic festival of the Herakleia, celebrated by the communion called Mesogei, or a certain number of the demes constituting Mesogæa, a regular market-due, or ἀγοραστικὸν, was levied upon those who brought goods to sell (Inscriptiones Atticæ nuper repertæ 12, by E. Curtius, pp. 3-7).
[138] Pausan. vi, 23, 5; Diodor. xiv, 109, xv, 7; Lucian, Quomodo Historia sit conscribenda, c. 42. See Krause, Olympia, sect. 29. pp. 183-186.
[139] Thucyd. i, 120; Herodot. v, 22-71. Eurybatês of Argos (Herodot. vi, 92); Philippus and Phayllus of Kroton (v, 47; viii, 47); Eualkidês of Eretria (v, 102); Hermolykus of Athens (ix, 105).
Pindar (Nem. iv and vi) gives the numerous victories of the Bassidæ and Theandridræ at Ægina: also Melissus the pankratiast and his ancestors the Kleonymidæ of Thebes—τιμάεντες ἀρχᾶθεν πρόξενοί τ᾽ ἐπιχωρίων (Isthm. iii, 25).
Respecting the extreme celebrity of Diagoras and his sons, of the Rhodian gens Eratidæ, Damagêtus, Akusilaus, and Dorieus, see Pindar, Olymp. vii, 16-145, with the Scholia; Thucyd. iii, 11; Pausan. vi, 7, 1-2; Xenophon, Hellenic. i, 5, 19: compare Strabo. xiv, p. 655.
[140] The Latin writers remark it as a peculiarity of Grecian feeling, as distinguished from Roman, that men of great station accounted it an honor to contend in the games: see, as a specimen, Tacitus, Dialogus de Orator. c. 9. “Ac si in Græciâ natus esses, ubi ludicras quoque artes exercere honestum est, ac tibi Nicostrati robur Dii dedissent, non paterer immanes illos et ad pugnam natos lacertos levitate jaculi vanescere.” Again, Cicero, pro Flacco, c. 13, in his sarcastic style: “Quid si etiam occisus est a piratis Adramyttenus, homo nobilis, cujus est fere nobis omnibus nomen auditum, Atinas pugil, Olympionices? hoc est apud Græcos (quoniam de corum gravitate dicimus) prope majus et gloriosius, quam Romæ triumphasse.”
[141] Lichas, one of the chief men of Sparta, and moreover a chariot-victor, received actual chastisement on the ground, from these staff-bearers, for an infringement of the regulations (Thucyd. v, 50).
[142] Thucyd. v, 18-47. and the curious ancient Inscription in Boeckh’s Corpus Inscr. No. 11. p. 28. recording the convention between the Eleians and the inhabitants of the Arcadian town of Heræa.