At some date between this event and the close of the third century, the festival itself was transferred to Argos. Aratus, when engaged in war with Argos, made an attempt to restore the festival to the Cleonaeans who had joined the Achaean league.[372] The games were once more held at Nemea, and the athletes who had gone to compete at the rival games at Argos were, in defiance of the sacred truce, arrested and sold as slaves by the Achaeans. But the attempt of Aratus failed, and the festival continued to be held at Argos under Argive presidency. It was at Argos probably that musical competitions were first introduced into the festival. Plutarch[373] relates how Philopoemen, after defeating the Spartan tyrant Machanidas in the battle of Mantinea, came to Argos and reviewed his troops before the people assembled for the games. He entered the theatre during the musical competitions at the moment when the musician Pylades was reciting the opening verse of the _Persae_ of Timotheus—
and the whole assembly, struck by the coincidence, with one accord hailed him as the saviour of Greece. Philip V. of Macedon had, some years previously, been appointed by the Argives to preside over the games on the ground that the kings of Macedon were of Argive descent, and the same honour was afterwards bestowed on Flamininus.[374] Under the Empire the festival was still celebrated at Argos. Hadrian seems to have revived its glory. He instituted a winter festival, in which the race in armour was a conspicuous feature, and he also revived the hippios or four stades’ race which had fallen into disuse at the Nemea and the Isthmia.[375] The Argive coins of Antoninus Pius bear the inscription Νέμεια, surrounded by a celery wreath (Fig. 31), and the latter occurs still later on the coins of Gallienus. Meanwhile the old Nemean sanctuary had fallen so far into disuse that when Pausanias visited Nemea, he found the temple of Nemean Zeus roofless and the statue of the god gone.
Little is left to-day of the Nemean sanctuary, nor has the site ever been properly excavated. There was no town at Nemea, merely a sanctuary of Zeus with a stadium and a hippodrome, and we must suppose also a gymnasium. The cypress grove in which the temple of Zeus stood has disappeared, and of the temple itself only three pillars are left, sufficient, however, to show that the temple cannot have been much earlier than the close of the fifth century. The site of the stadium is also visible in a deep ravine some 650 feet long, the end of which forms a natural sphendone. There is no trace of hippodrome or gymnasium. There are said to be traces of a theatre, but the statement appears to be doubtful. Possibly the semicircular end of the stadium has been mistaken for a theatre.[376]