Thus at the beginning of the sixth century Olympia had acquired a unique position as the national festival of Hellas. Competitors and spectators of all classes gathered there from every part of Greece. The sacred truce-bearers proclaimed the month of peace throughout the Greek world, and in response, cities of Asia and of Sicily vied with one another in the splendour of the official embassies (θεωρίαι) sent to represent them at the festival. The old aristocratic character survived in the chariot-race and horse-race, which afforded to tyrants and nobles an opportunity of displaying their riches and their power. The athletic programme was now practically complete, the only important innovation of later times being the race in full armour introduced 520 B.C., and this programme was truly democratic. In athletic events noble and peasant met on equal terms. The aristocratic prejudice against these popular contests did not yet exist; and though the honour of the Olympic crown was open to the poorest citizen of Greek birth, such was the prestige of the festival that it was coveted even by the highest. The representative character of Olympia was due to a variety of causes. The geographical position of the place, its ancient sanctity, the athletic vigour of the pre-Dorian Greeks, the discipline and training of the Spartans, the enthusiastic patriotism of the colonies, the ambition of tyrants, the new spirit of democracy,—these and other causes contributed to the result, and the importance of the result was recognized by the founding within the next half-century of three other Panhellenic festivals at Delphi, at Nemea, and at the Isthmus, and of many another festival which, like the Panathenaea, aspired to but never attained Panhellenic dignity.
Yet, despite the growth of the festival and the development of athletics, there was little change in the appearance of the Altis or the organization of the games. Some of the wooden pillars of the Heraeum were perhaps replaced by stone, but no fresh building appeared till the treasuries, the earliest of which date from the close of the seventh century. The games still took place near the altar, where a course could be easily measured and marked out before each meeting. The new events added were merely variations of those which we find in Homer. Popularity and competition had no doubt improved the standard of performance, but athletic training did not yet exist. In the towns, indeed, gymnasia and palaestrae were already springing up; but these were educational rather than athletic, intended to train and discipline the young as useful soldiers rather than to produce champion athletes. The bulk of the population living an open-air country life in which war, hunting, and games played a considerable part, had no need of training. Thus, though athletics had become popular, they still maintained the spontaneity and joy of the Homeric age: they were still pure recreation.