He and the crown princess took a great interest in art and industry, especially in the royal museums; and the excavations conducted at Olympia and Pergamon with such great results were chiefly due to him.
But even now the praise seems hardly excessive to a visitor who, looking eastward up the fertile and well-wooded valley of Olympia, sees the snow-crowned chains of Erymanthus and Cyllene rising in the distance.
Aristotle saw in the temple of Hera at Olympia a bronze disk, recording the traditional laws of the festival, on which the name of Lycurgus stood next to that of Iphitus, king of Elis.
Olympia entered on a new phase of brilliant and secure existence as a recognized Panhellenic institution.
This phase may be considered as beginning after the establishment of Elean supremacy in 572 B.C. And so to the last Olympia always remained a central expression of the Greek ideas that the body of man has a glory as well as his intellect and spirit, that body and mind should alike be disciplined, and that it is by the harmonious discipline of both that men best honour Zeus.
