ABSTRACT
From 776 bc the Olympian truce began. It is hard to know at what point the celebrated games started: traditionally from that date. But the association of the sanctuary is with another semi-divine figure, the hero Pelops, whose myth includes a memorial games. The great festivals, also every four years in the third year of each Olympiad, was the Pythian at Delphi. Previously there seem to have been musical competitions, appropriate to the god of music, and the main event was for a hymn to the lyre celebrating the conflict between Apollo and the snake Pytho. The games as a panhellenic event date from 573 bc. Nemea, like Olympia, does not lie near a major city-state, and the festival was administered by the little village of Cleonae up until 460 bc when Argos decided to take it over. One of the great united festivals was the Panionia, which brought together the twelve scattered settlements of Ionian Greeks.
