But an earthquake shook down the buildings and toppled over the statues. The columns and walls of the grand old temple of Zeus fell in a heap. The marble statues in its pediments dropped to the ground and broke. Victory fell from her high pillar and shattered into a hundred pieces. The roof of Hera's temple fell in, and Hermes stood uncovered to the sky. Old Kronion rocked and sent a landslide down over the treasure houses. Kladeos rushed out of his course and poured sand over the sacred place.
That earthquake frightened the people away, and they left Olympia alone again. Hermes was still there, but he looked out upon ruins. Victory lay in a heap of fragments. Apollo was there, but broken and buried in earth with the other people of the pediments. Zeus and all the hundreds of heroes and athletes were gone. So it was for a while. Then a new race of people came and built another little town upon the earth-covered ruins. They little guessed what lay below their poor houses. But for some reason this town, also, died and left the ruins alone. Then dusty winds and flooding rivers began to cover up what was left. Kladeos piled up sand fifteen feet deep. Alpheios swung out of its banks and washed away the race-course for chariots. Under the rains and floods the sun-dried bricks of Hera's walls melted again into clay and covered the floor. Again the earth quaked, and Hermes fell forward on his face, and little was left of the beautiful old Olympia. Grass and flowers crept in from the sides. Seeds blew in and shrubs and trees took the place of columns. Soon the flowers and the animals had Olympia to themselves. A few gray stones thrust up through the soil. So it was for hundreds of years. Greece was conquered by the men of Venice and then by the Turks. But Olympia, in its far corner, was forgotten and untouched except when a Turkish officer or farmer went there to dig a few stones out of the ground. And they knew nothing of the ancient gods and the ancient festival and the old story of the place, for they were foreigners and new people.
But about a hundred years ago Englishmen and Germans and Frenchmen began to visit Greece. They went to see, not her new Turkish houses or her Venetian castles or the strange dress of her new people, but her old ruins and the signs of her old glory. These men had read of Olympia in ancient Greek books and they knew what statues and buildings had once stood there. They wrote back to their friends things like this: