one of the four great national festivals of the Greeks. It was instituted in honour of Neptune, and took its name from the isthmus (i.e., of Corinth) where it was celebrated. At the narrowest part of that isthmus was a race-course and theatre, where the games were held. The conduct of the games was entrusted to the Corinthians, who enjoyed that privilege till the overthrow of their city by Mummius, n.c. 146. In that year it was devolved upon the people of Sicyon, with whom it remained till the rebuilding of Corinth by the order of Julius Caesar, when it The name Italia was originally applied to the extreme end of the peninsula, south of a line drawn from the Gulf of Squillace, Sinus Scylaceus, to that of Sta. Eufemia, Sinus Terinae. By the time of Thucydides, in the 5th century B.C., the appellation had already extended to Metapontum on the E., and the Posidonian Gulf on the W. coast, thus including the whole of modern Calabria, and great part of the provinces of Basilicata and Salerno. The further extension of the name was contemporary with the progress of the Roman power, and at the time of Pyrrhus it included apparently the whole peninsula, except Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul. In the 7th century of Rome, though both Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul were still, in official usage, distinct from Italia, yet the latter name, as we gather from many passages in the classics, was already employed, in common acceptation, to designate the whole country from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. The official acceptation was dropped as soon as Augustus, in his division of Italy, incorporated Liguria, Cisalpine Gaul, Venetia, and Istria.

The origin of the name has been referred to various sources, all equally uncertain. Greek and Roman tradition deduced it from the eponymous hero Italos, a supposed Enotrian or Pelasgic chief; whilst Timaeus, followed by Varro and Gellius, derived it from Italos, which in old Greek signified an ox, from the quantity of cattle bred in the country. Gracius enim antiqua, ut scribit Timaeus, tauros vocabat Italos, quorum multitudine et pulchritudine et factu vitulorum, Italiam dixerunt. The word Vitulus (calf) and Italos were, according to Festus, synonymous; and on the demarit, struck by the Sabellian nations during the Social War, B.C. 90-88, there occurs the word Vitela for Italy.

In early times Italy was also called Soturnia from the Latin god Saturnus, Enotria from an ancient chief Enotrus, and Ausonia from the Ausones, the Aurunci of the Romans, who occupied the centre of the peninsula. All these names, however, seem to have belonged to particular districts, and to have been applied to the whole country only by the Latin and later Greek poets; indeed Enotria would appear from Antiochus to have been synonymous with Italia in its original acceptation. The Greek poets applied to it sometimes the name Hesperia, on account of