The war, however, broke out afresh and lasted for six years, at the end of which, in 582, the festival was finally reorganized out of the spoil of Crisa as a pentaëteris, and placed under the control of the Amphictyons. The year 582 dates as the first Pythiad, and from this time the festival was held every fourth year, in the August of the third year of each Olympiad. The valuable prizes which had been offered of old were abolished, and in their place was substituted a crown of bay leaves plucked from the Vale of Tempe. The somewhat scanty details which we possess as to the festival and its history will be discussed in a later chapter. For the present it is sufficient to note one significant fact: the chariot-race which had been omitted in 590 was introduced in 582, and the first victor was Cleisthenes of Sicyon himself. The plains of Sicyon were admirably adapted for breeding horses, a pursuit which afforded its tyrants a ready means of increasing and displaying their wealth. Myron had already gained a victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, and his grandson Cleisthenes, shortly after his Pythian success, secured the same honour on the occasion when he issued his invitation to the suitors for the hand of Agariste. At Sicyon itself he commemorated the part which he had played in the Sacred war by a splendid colonnade built out of the spoils of Cirrha, and at the same time he reorganized as a local Pythia an ancient festival connected with the Argive hero Adrastus, whose memory he delighted to insult.[73] We may therefore safely regard the introduction of the chariot-race at Delphi as due to the tyrant’s influence, and the remodelling of the festival as part of his pushing Panhellenic policy.
Almost at the same time, perhaps in the same year, 582 B.C., the Isthmian festival was reorganized. This festival, which claimed an antiquity greater even than that of Olympia, was celebrated at the sanctuary of Poseidon, which stood in a grove of pine-trees at the south-east of the Isthmus, a little to the south of the eastern end of the present Corinth canal. The various legends of its origin are all connected directly or indirectly with the worship of Poseidon. The wreath of dry celery leaves, which in the time of Pindar was the prize, recalled the story that the games were first founded in honour of the luckless Melicertes at the spot to which his dead body was carried by a dolphin. According to another legend they were instituted by the Attic hero Theseus, when he had freed the land from the terror of the robber Sinis. This story points to the close connexion of the Isthmia with Athens. The Athenian envoys enjoyed the privilege of precedence (προεδρία) at this festival, and a space was reserved for them, as much as could be covered by the sail of the ship which brought them to the Isthmus. No other festival was so conveniently situated for the Athenians. Athens and Corinth had much in common, and were on most friendly terms before the relations between them were embittered by commercial rivalry, and their friendship was especially close in the period following the fall of the Cypselidae. Another version of the Theseus legend represents him as founding the Isthmia in rivalry of Heracles, who had founded the Olympic games; and here we may trace a certain jealousy existing between the two festivals.[74] We know on good authority that the Eleans were not allowed to compete at the Isthmia. This ban, which Elean tradition represented as a self-denying ordinance imposed by the curse of Molione, may well have originated in this rivalry. We can imagine that the Elean authorities regarded with no favour the rise of a rival festival on a site so central, the meeting-place of the trade of East and West. Yet, after all, Olympia had no reason to fear its rival. The central position of Corinth involving her in all the feuds and wars of Greek history, prevented the Isthmia from ever acquiring that unique independence which characterized the more remote Olympia. There can be little doubt, too, that from the first the festival reflected the luxurious commercial character of Corinth. There the joyous life of the Ionian race found vent in a sort of cosmopolitan carnival which contrasted strangely with the more strenuous Dorian festival of remote Olympia.