It is of far more importance to examine what positive evidence there was for this theory of the gradual rise and progress of the festival, its regularity, and the prominence of the _stadion_, or short race, in giving the name of its victor as the index of the date. We have two kinds of authority to consult--the older literature; and the monuments, either at first hand, or as described for us by former observers. As regards the literature, our review need be but very brief.
(1) The twenty-third book of the _Iliad_ seems composed without any reference to the earliest Olympian games as Pausanias describes them. The nature of this (perhaps special) competition is quite different. There are some events, such as the armed combat, which never made part of the historical games; there are others, such as the chariot race, which are expressly asserted to have been later innovations at Olympia. The giving of valuable prizes, and several of them in each competition, is quite against the practice at Olympia. The Phæacian games in the _Odyssey_ (+th+ 120, sq.) contain _five_ events, running, wrestling, leaping, discus, and boxing. Those who believe that the epics were composed before 776 B.C., or those who believe them to be the much later compilation of antiquarian poets, will find no difficulty in this. The one will assert that the poet could not know, and the other that he would not know, what was established at Olympia. The latter will also hold that the accounts of the mythical celebrations by Herakles, Pelops, &c., were invented in imitation of the Homeric account. But still if Lycurgus indeed promoted the knowledge of the Homeric poems, why did he and Iphitus found a contest without the least resemblance to the heroic models? And if, as I hold, the Homeric poems were growing into shape about the time of the alleged 1st Olympiad, and after it, the contrast of the _Iliad_ in its games to the Olympian festival is so difficult to explain, that we must assume the old Eleian competition to have been no mere sprint race, but a contest similar in its events to that in the _Iliad_, or at least to that in the _Odyssey_.
(2) This view is strongly supported by the statements of Pindar, who is the next important witness on the subject. In his Tenth Olympic Ode (_vv._ 43 _sq._) he tells of the foundation by Herakles, and gives the names of _five_ heroes who won the various events of the first contest. He gives us no hint that there was any break in the tradition, or that these five events had not remained in fashion ever since. In fact he does mention (_Isth._ i. 26 _sq._) that the _pentathlon_ and _pancration_ were later inventions, thus making it clear that the rest were in his mind the original components of the meeting. Nor does he anywhere give priority or special dignity to the _stadion_; only the last of his Olympian Odes is for this kind of victory, his Thirteenth for the _stadion_ and _pentathlon_ together. He never mentions, as we should certainly have expected, that these _stadion_ victors would have the special glory of handing down their names as eponymi of the whole feast. The other contests, the chariot race, the pancration, and the pentathlon, were evidently far grander and more highly esteemed, and we find this corroborated by the remark of Thucydides (v. 49), 'This was the Olympiad when Androsthenes won for the first time the pancration.' Thucydides therefore seems to have marked the Olympiad, not by the stadion, but by the pancration.