According to Pindar, Heracles created the site of Olympia for the festival: Two Greek myths account for the origins of the ancient Olympic Games.
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inscription recounts that Athenian citizens who won competitions at panhellenic festivals got a free meal every day for the rest of their lives in the prytaneion (town hall), along with other civic honors. The panhellenic victors, too, often received a little something in addition to honor they were routinely rewarded with cash and privileges upon returning home. Those who won events at local festivals, however, generally received prizes of some material value victors in the games at Argos won a shield, for example, while those who won in Athens received amphoras filled with olive oil. The victors in all of the panhellenic events received symbolic awards, in the form of wreaths. Whereas winners’ prizes at the four ancient panhellenic games (held at Olympia, Nemea, Delphi and Isthmia) were simply wreaths symbolizing victory, athletes at local festivals often received prizes of material value. vase, now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, was presented to a champion athlete at a local festival in Athens. Once filled with the richest olive oil, this sixth-century B.C. Ranging from the original religious significance of the games to the brutal athletic competitions, this free eBook paints a picture of the ancient sports world and its devoted fans. Tracing the enigmatic, mystical genesis of the Greek Olympiad, The Olympic Games: How They All Began takes you on a journey to ancient Greece with some of the finest scholars of the ancient world. Miller’s “The Other Games: When Greeks Flocked to Nemea.”) and the games at Nemea (Zeus) in 573 B.C. the games at Isthmia (Poseidon) also in 582 B.C. The games at Olympia (Zeus) were supposedly inaugurated in 776 B.C.
The Olympic Games were the oldest and the most prestigious of the four great panhellenic festivals (or national festivals, as opposed to the numerous local festivals celebrated all over the Greek world), each of which was dedicated to a god. Olympia lies at the juncture of the Alpheus and the Kladeus rivers, in a wide, fertile river valley only 7 miles from the Ionian Sea. Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece (9,570 feet) and the mythological home of the Greek pantheon, sits hundreds of miles to the north. Olympia is actually located far from the mountain that gives the site its name.
By the fifth century B.C., however, athletes were flocking to Olympia from all over the Greek-speaking world for the five-day celebration, and 100 bulls were sacrificed to Zeus at Olympia’s sanctuary. At first, in the eighth century B.C., the festival was small and the athletes came from the nearby cities and towns of the western and southern Peloponnesus.
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The festival began with the second full moon following the summer solstice-that is, the end of July or the beginning of August. 1Įvery four years, athletes, dignitaries, emissaries and tourists traveled to Olympia for an athletic-religious festival in honor of Zeus. Or for contests greater than the Olympic Games. Even the words we use to refer to these events are often the same (“discus,” “pentathlon”), as are the names of places for competition and training (“gymnasium,” “stadium” and “hippodrome”). Athletes from around the world participate in events also contested in long-ago Olympia: the javelin, the long jump, footraces, wrestling and boxing. A rural sanctuary of Zeus in a relatively obscure part of Greece-far from the bustle and brilliance of Athens-became the site of the most famous athletic-religious festival of the entire ancient world, the direct precursor of the modern Olympic Games.Īs in antiquity, we call these celebrations Olympiads, and we number them sequentially. as a simple foot race dedicated to Zeus, the quadrennial Olympic games expanded into a five-day festival-during which 100 bulls were sacrificed to Zeus, and athletic events were contested-that attracted tens of thousands of people to Olympia from all over the Greek-speaking world.
Nestled in a valley bordered by the Alpheus and Kladeus rivers, the ancient sanctuary of Olympia hosted the earliest, and most prestigious, Greek athletic-religious festival.
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