Isthmian Games.

The athletes wrestled. They boxed with iron-studded leather
straps over their knuckles. They fought lions brought across the
Mediterranean (the Great Sea as they called it) from Africa, and
tigers carried up the Khyber Pass across Persia from India. They flung
spears, threw quoits and ran foot-races. Amid the wild cheering of
thirty thousand throats the charioteers drove their frenzied horses,
lathered with foam, around the roaring stadium.

One of the most beautiful of these races has a strange hold on the
imagination. It was a relay-race. This is how it was run.

Men bearing torches stood in a line at the starting point. Each man
belonged to a separate team. Away in the distance stood another row of
men waiting. Each of these was the comrade of one of those men at the
starting point. Farther on still, out of sight, stood another row and
then another and another.

At the word "Go" the men at the starting point leapt forward, their
torches burning. They ran at top speed towards the waiting men and
then gasping for breath, each passed his torch to his comrade in the
next row. He, in turn, seizing the flaming torch, leapt forward and
dashed along the course toward the next relay, who again raced on and
on till at last one man dashed past the winning post with his torch
burning ahead of all the others, amid the applauding cheers of the
multitude.

The Greeks, who were very fond of this race, coined a proverbial
phrase from it. Translated it runs: