The ancient Olympic Games

The story

A festival for Zeus

Olympia was not a city but a sanctuary in the region of Elis, in the western Peloponnese. It was dedicated to Zeus, the king of the gods, and every four years a great religious festival with sports contests was held there. The traditional date of the first Games is 776 BC, which is why our site marks the event as “about”: historians know the Games had existed for some time, but nobody can say for certain the exact year they began. From then on, according to tradition, they were held for more than a thousand years, until AD 393, for a total of 293 editions.

The Games were not only sport. They were a ceremony in honour of Zeus: people gathered in front of his altars, offered sacrifices and swore oaths. Winners felt they had honoured the god, as well as themselves and their city.

The sacred truce

Greek cities often made war on each other, but during the Games everything stopped. Heralds from Elis travelled around Greece to announce the “Olympic truce”: for the whole period of the festival nobody was to attack Olympia or those travelling there. In this way athletes, judges and spectators could travel safely, even if their city was at war. The truce did not cancel wars, but it paused them for a few days: an idea that the modern Games still call to mind today, although often with little success.

From the stadium race to twenty events

At first there was only one event: the stadion, a straight race one “stade” long, about 190 metres at Olympia. The name of the race later passed to the track itself, and that is where our word “stadium” comes from. Over time other events were added, and tradition remembers the date of each novelty. In 724 BC came the diaulos, two lengths of the track, about 385 metres. In 720 BC it was the turn of the dolichos, an endurance race of a few kilometres. In 708 BC wrestling and the pentathlon, which combined several events, were added. Boxing (688 BC), chariot and horse races (680 BC) and the pancration (648 BC) followed, a very tough sport that mixed wrestling and boxing. In 520 BC there was even a race in full battle armour.

With so many additions the programme grew to twenty events and five days of festival. The chariot and horse races were the most prestigious, because they required a great deal of wealth.

Who could take part

The Games were open to free male Greek citizens who spoke Greek. Slaves, foreigners called “barbarians” (for the Greeks, anyone who did not speak their language), murderers and those who had offended the gods were excluded. Women could not compete either. One curiosity: in the chariot races the winner was not the driver but the owner of the chariot and horses. So a rich woman, if she owned the team, could be proclaimed the winner.

The prize and the glory

The official prize was only a crown of olive branches, but it was worth a great deal. The winner returned to his city as a hero: poets wrote songs for him and the city set up a statue in his honour. Receiving a prize of branches, and not of money, was a sign that what mattered was honour.

The end and the rebirth

The Games continued after the Roman conquest of Greece. By the end of the 4th century AD, however, the Roman empire was Christian and festivals dedicated to the old gods were no longer tolerated. In AD 393 the emperor Theodosius I banned games of a religious character (some sources date the ban to 394), and the contests at Olympia came to an end.

For almost fifteen centuries nobody competed there any more. Then, in 1896, the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin organised the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, convinced that sport could bring peoples closer together. Since then the Olympics have been held every four years in different cities, but they keep many symbols of the ancient model: the very name, and the idea of a pause in the competition between countries.