The whole company quitted Elis a few days before the festival. First came the Hellanodicae and other officials, then the athletes and their trainers, the horses and chariots, their owners, jockeys, and drivers. They went by the sacred way, which, skirting the mountains, followed the coast-line till it entered the valley of the Alpheus. The journey lasted two days. At the fountain of Piera, which marked the boundary between Elis and Olympia, a halt was made, a pig was sacrificed and other rites of purification were performed.[315] The night was passed at Letrini, and the next day the whole procession wound up the valley to Olympia.[316]
Meanwhile, visitors of all classes were flocking to Olympia from every part of the Greek world. Some came to see, some to be seen; some for pleasure, some for profit. Tyrants and statesmen, poets and philosophers, peasants and fishermen, all met at Olympia. The whole Greek world was represented from Marseilles to the Black Sea, from Thrace to Africa. The country folk came on foot along the valleys of the Peloponnese, the richer classes in chariots or on horseback. The river Alpheus was still navigable, at its mouth was a small port, and tyrants and merchant-princes from the West could sail in rich barges up to Olympia itself. Particularly magnificent were the official embassies from the various states, each of them anxious to outshine the rest. For all this crowd there can have been little accommodation or provision at Olympia. Competitors and members of the embassies may have been lodged at the public expense. The rest had to provide for themselves. Some slept in tents or booths of wood in the plain around the Altis, the majority slept on the ground in the open air—no great hardship in summer at Olympia. There was no town, or even village near, and the needs of the assembly must have been supplied by merchants, hucksters, pedlars, who brought in provisions from the country and set up rough stalls and booths such as may be seen to-day at any local fair.
The first day of the festival, perhaps the day preceding the festival, was devoted to preliminary business and sacrifice. There were no competitions, except perhaps those for trumpeters and heralds, which were not introduced till 396 B.C.; they took place near the entrance to the stadium, the competitors taking their stand upon an altar. It was probably on this day that the ceremony in the Council Chamber described by Pausanias took place.[317] There the competitors, their trainers, and their friends underwent a solemn scrutiny. They took their stand before the statue of Zeus Horkios, who was represented with the thunderbolt in his right hand as a warning to evildoers, and there having sacrificed a pig, they swore on its entrails to use no unfair means to secure victory, and further, that they had trained for ten months in a manner worthy of the festival. The ceremony of the oath is represented on a red-figured kylix in Fig. 132. Next came the turn of the judges who decided on the eligibility of boys and colts to compete as such. They swore to give their decisions honestly and without bribes, and not to reveal the reasons for their decision. Then the final list of entries was drawn up and published perhaps on a white board (λεύκωμα).[318] Throughout the day there must have been various sacrifices both public and private, but little is known of their details. All through the year there was daily sacrifice at the great altar of Zeus. Sacrifice was probably offered on this day at the six double altars which Pindar mentions, and an offering of blood was made on the mound of Pelops.[319] Competitors and their friends would offer sacrifices and vows at the altars of the gods or heroes whom they regarded as their patrons, or who were specially connected with the events in which they were competing.[320] The superstitious would consult the oracles and soothsayers as to their chances of success.[321] The crowd of sight-seers would wander through the Altis admiring the statuary of the treasuries or Libon’s new-built temple, perhaps listening to some rhapsodist reciting Homer, or to Herodotus as he read the story of the Persian wars, or else visiting the workshop to the west of the Altis where Pheidias was busy on his ivory and gold statue of Zeus. There were friends, too, to be seen and greeted—friends from distant parts of the Mediterranean, who after years spent in the colonies had returned to meet their kinsfolk and acquaintances at Olympia.