the hard-mouthed horses of the Ænian bolted, and crashed head on into a Lybian car. Through this mishap one car dashed into another till all the plain of Crissa was filled with wrecks of chariots.

Seeing this the Athenian driver prudently pulled aside and slowed up, to let the wave of horses sweep by. Orestes, holding in his team and trusting to the finish, was driving last. But when he saw one only competitor left, he cried out sharply to his eager horses and started in pursuit. The two men drove their teams abreast, now one, now the other pulling ahead a little.

Orestes had covered safely all previous laps; but now, as the horses were turning, by ill luck he slacked the left rein, and suddenly struck the edge of the pillar. It shattered the nave and threw him to the ground, where he was dragged along entangled in the reins. At his fall the horses galloped wildly up the course.

And the people, when they saw him fall, raised a cry of horror that such an end should overtake the young man who had raced so well. Now prostrate, now showing his legs against the sky, he was dragged along till the other drivers managed to stop the runaway team and free him. So covered was he with bleeding wounds that not even a friend could have recognised his poor body.

The unusual accident to the Enian's car can be understood by supposing that his horses bolted across the low mound in the centre of the course, and collided with cars going in the other direction.

Greek writers grow too complacent when they mention the simplicity of the only prize to be won at Olympia-an olive garland. As a matter of fact, victors benefited in many substantial ways. The fame they acquired could only be paralleled to-day by that of a Sarah Bernhardt, for example, or a Caruso. Celebrated sculptors made their likenesses in bronze. Poets immortalised their names in song. If an Athenian, the victor received from Athens 500 drachmæ and free rations for life. (500 drachma was considerably more than a labourer would earn in a year.) If a Spartan, his reward was the post of honour in battle.

Returning victors made a triumphal entry into their own city. In one instance the delighted citizens made a breach in the city walls for their champion to enter by. Plutarch thinks they wished to show that a city which could produce Olympian victors had little need of walls. Or perhaps they felt the city gates were not good enough for a man who brought such honourable distinction to his country.

Pindar never fails to praise the country of the victor; in fact, he usually has more to say about the city, its gods, its history, and its triumphs, than about the champion himself. Naturally women took great pride in being the mothers or daughters of such men. Pliny mentions one lady, Berenice, who was the daughter, the sister, and the mother of Olympian victors. Berenice means Bringer of Victory

What an extravagant fuss men made over the prize-winners can be inferred from an incident in the Peloponnesian War. The town of Scione had revolted from the Athenians and joined the cause of Sparta. Brasidas, a Spartan officer who was campaigning in that region, went to Scione to thank the citizens. After the usual flattering speeches they decked him with garlands,' says Thucydides, and thronged to him as to a victorious athlete.'

A tribute to the prestige of the Olympian games appears in Thucydides' account of a speech made before the Athenian assembly by that brilliant rascal Alcibiades, who had been attacked for his extravagant way of living. This, said his opponent, made him unworthy to hold any high command.

It is quite fitting [retorted Alcibiades] that I, more than any other, should hold this command, and I think myself worthy of it. Cleon has attacked me on this point, which obliges me to mention it first. The very acts that he criticises confer honour on my ancestors and myself, and also do good to my country. For the other Greeks, when they saw the splendour of my display as an Athenian deputy at the Olympian games, began to believe that Athens was greater than they had ever thought her greater even than she actually is. Of course they had been in hopes that she was exhausted by the war. I entered seven chariots (a number no private person has ever before entered) and won the first prize, and the second and fourth; and I provided everything else in a style worthy of my victory. According to the usual view such deeds as these are honourable. . . . And it is no useless folly when a man, at his own cost, benefits both himself and his country.

After his victory Alcibiades is said to have given a banquet to all the spectators.

But the extravagance of the public attitude drew caustic comment from philosophers, and especially from Diogenes. As a spectator at the Isthmian games he once raised a rumpus by ridiculing all the competitors. Placing a garland on his head, he stalked about asserting loudly that he deserved it: for he at least had conquered his own passions.

STANLEY W. KEYTE.

THE CASE FOR A NATIONAL THEATRE

But you-o' my conscience, I believe, if the French were landed to-morrow, your first enquiry would be, whether they had brought a theatrical troop with them.-SHERIDAN, The Critic.

I PLACE this quotation at the head of this article not only because it may serve as a reminder that there is more than a danger that without some successful movement in favour of a subsidised theatre in this country whole generations of our countrymen may grow up without any opportunity of seeing a public performance of the great classic burlesque in which it occurs, but also because it illustrates two attitudes of mind which may serve to render that success impossible.

I mean, on the one hand, the attitude of mind of that small section of the community whose advocacy is tainted with 'Dangleism' in its most aggressive and irritating form, who continue an attempt to impose upon a naturally unwilling public their belief that the support of the theatre is such an important part of good citizenship that anyone who fails to be seen sitting in the stalls of his local playhouse at least once a week in company with his friends and entire family is failing in an obvious duty; and, on the other hand, that other and far commoner attitudenot quite so prevalent, indeed, as it used to be, but still deepseated enough-that all manifestations of a practical interest in the arts, and especially in the arts of the theatre, can safely be left to the 'stranger within our gates,' that we, the English race, have on the whole succeeded in securing a comparatively satisfactory position in the world without the help of art in any form, and that if native artists do occasionally appear among us they must be content with an easy tolerance and look for no organised encouragement.

It will be my object to inquire if a sane via media can safely be trodden by the average philanthropist between these two attitudes, and if some form of help can reasonably be demanded from the nation at large at least to ensure that the great classics of the English theatre can be witnessed in satisfactory performances by succeeding generations, and that methods of stage production,

which are more or less universally regarded as satisfactory, can be crystallised and preserved.

Moreover, it is possible—though I will not go so far as to say it is probable that those elusive millionaires of whose existence in our midst the paragraphists are constantly reminding us may be more inclined to listen to the none too vehement wooing of the committee of the National Shakespeare Memorial Fund and similar bodies if they are told not merely that their assistance is wanted but exactly what it is wanted for.

It might be for the moment an interesting speculation to inquire exactly what would happen if it occurred to (I will leave my readers to fill in the blank) to draw a cheque for, say, 920,000l., which, added to that seemingly useless 80,000l. already in possession of the trustees of the Shakespeare National Memorial Fund, would be sufficient, but by no means too much, to call such an institution into being.

The first step, I take it, would be to acquire a site and build a theatre; and the first essential of both should be quiet and space. I do not believe for a moment that the central position which seems so necessary for the success of the ordinary commercial theatre is essential; on the contrary, it would be in many ways a disadvantage, not only because my 1,000,000l. would then tend to become too insignificant a sum, but because a national theatre should not compete, even in situation, with the other theatres, which will continue to exist quite undisturbed by a theatre which will not attempt to rival their activities.

I would myself choose without hesitation some such site as that of the poor doomed Foundling Hospital, because its essential beauties could remain undisturbed-its gardens a pleasureground by day and by night an ideal parking place.

Its situation is ideal, easily reached by every form of transit, and surrounded, as it soon will be, by the atmosphere of London University. Moreover, the centralisation of London life within half a mile of Piccadilly Circus seems to be, as likely as not, a transient thing that will pass from us in our own time.

I cannot attempt in the space at my disposal to lay down. exact rules as to how the theatre should be built. I think it is clear at least that there should be two stages and two auditoria of different sizes, suitable for the different kinds of entertainments that would be presented there. It is possible that one of these should be capable of use as an opera-house, as well as for the presentation of Shakespearian and other drama on a large scale.

Having supposed, then, the erection of a theatre or two theatres, rather-what is going to be done with them?

Let me turn for a moment to classic examples for guidance— the founding, for instance, of the Comédie Française, the house of

Molière, in Paris, still, in spite of its detractors, an exceedingly flourishing and successful institution. That was founded, so the opponents of an English national theatre would say, not to revive an interest in classical performances whose traditions had been forgotten, but to preserve for ever, humanly speaking, great performances of contemporary works which everyone at that time found perfect and absorbing.

That argument, if it is put forward, is a sound one and must be answered. But can it not be answered? I think it can. If the French people had their Molière, we have our Bernard Shaw and our Granville Barker, who, compositely, make up a figure at least as arresting, and both are happily still with us, and both consistent advocates of a subsidised theatre, which, on any merely selfish consideration, neither of them needs.

My first step, then, in the organisation of a national theatre would be to call Mr. Granville Barker temporarily from his retirement, even if it required-as surely in these glorious circumstances it would not—a special Act of Parliament for the purpose! He would then organise a company, permanently attached to the theatre, but leaving it to tour the provinces and the Empire when its services were not required, to perform all the works of Shaw and also of Galsworthy, Masefield, and the other dramatists whose names are linked inseparably with the memories of the Court Theatre as it was under his management.

It would be necessary, of course, to call in Mr. Lewis Casson for the reproduction of St. Joan; but, equally of course, a national theatre would require the services of many visiting producers, exactly in the same way as a great hospital commands the services of a staff of distinguished physicians and surgeons.

It would be idle to go through a catalogue of their names and the particular services which they would be called upon to perform, but it is pleasant to remember that we still have with us for advice and assistance one of the greatest stage producers the English theatre has ever known, Sir Arthur Pinero. It is unthinkable that the great masterpieces of dramatic craftsmanship written by him-and, what is just as important, produced under his own direction-should continue to be neglected. I can think of nothing more stimulating to such an enterprise in its beginnings than a revival of a series of his early farces, given, no doubt, in the costumes and with the manners of a period which seems now so remote.

Then at certain times I have no doubt that it could be arranged that a season of Gilbert and Sullivan operas should be played— once a year or once in two years, as might be considered advisable. It is a fact that the traditional method of presenting them has been most carefully fostered-handed down without a break