The influence of Olympia spread first along the northern coast of the Peloponnese, secondly to Sparta. In the second half-century, Ol. 13-25, Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sicyon, Hyperesia, Athens, Thebes, figure in the list of victors, and yet farther east, Smyrna. All these places communicate with Olympia by the Gulf of Corinth. It is significant that this extension of its influence eastwards coincides with the founding of the first Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. The Corinthians, passing along the north coast of the gulf to Corcyra, crossed over and founded Syracuse 734 B.C. Six years later the Megarians founded a new Megara beside the hills of Hybla, and a century later the two Megaras combined to colonize Selinus. The Achaeans, making a stepping-stone of Zacynthos, founded the rich cities of Sybaris and Croton, and later Metapontum, and built on the Lacinian promontory south of Croton a temple of Hera, which became a centre of worship for the Greeks of Italy. Even the Eastern Greeks of the islands took part in this movement. Gela was colonized by settlers from Rhodes and Crete. All these colonies and many others played a great part in the history of Olympia, the importance of which we can see, not only in their list of victories, but in the remains of the so-called treasuries which they built there, and it is hardly fanciful to suppose that their connexion with Olympia dated from the time when the settlers were leaving the shores of Greece.
The victory of Onomastus of Smyrna in Ol. 23 is no less significant of the full communication existing between the mainland and the East at the commencement of the seventh century.[64] Eastern despots sent offerings to Delphi; poets from the islands and Asia Minor brought into Greece the Phrygian and Aeolian modes of music; even the alphabet came from the East. At Olympia, when the victors’ friends held revel in their honour in the evening, they sang down to the time of Pindar the triumphal song of Heracles composed by Archilochus of Paros.[65] Smyrna, at that time the foremost city of the Eastern coast, was closely connected with the Peloponnese. The poet Mimnermus tells us that his race had come from Neleian Pylos to Colophon first, and had then dispossessed the Aeolian inhabitants of Smyrna.[66]
