“On either end stood 6 columns, and 16 stood on the sides,” writes Valavanēs, noting that the style of the columns surviving today are Doric. Known as the Heraion, it was built around 600 B.C. Valavanēs notes that the earliest monumental building was dedicated, not to Zeus, but rather to his wife, Hera. Olympia has a number of buildings that were used for religious ceremonies as opposed to athletics. (Image credit: Sadequl Hussain Shutterstock) Ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece. Unlike the men, the girls competed clothed, “the girls did not compete naked, but in short dresses hitched at one shoulder (or a male-style cloak) with their hair flying loose,” Spivey writes. This festival included a running event and the offering of a newly woven robe to Hera. In addition, unmarried girls were also allowed to watch the games, and Spivey notes that there was a “separate minor athletic festival in honour of Hera,” the wife of Zeus, in which they could compete. Spivey notes that in the early fourth century B.C., a Spartan woman named Kyniska was the “owner-trainer” of a chariot team that won twice, an inscription records that she was the “only woman of all Greece” to take the crown. “Olympia was not completely closed to female spectators or female participants,” he writes. Married women, with the exception of the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, were not allowed to watch the competitions however, as University of Cambridge professor Nigel Spivey points out in his book The Ancient Olympics (Oxford University Press, 2012), this ban was not complete. It was also common for statues to be made honoring Olympic champions. The winners were awarded with a crown of leaves (there were no second or third place medals) and a feast held in a building known as Prytaneion. "They bend ankles and twist arms and throw punches and jump on their opponents," wrote the ancient writer Philostratos describing the sport.Īs ancient art suggests, all the competitions, with the exception of chariot racing, were held in the nude, at least up until the period of Roman rule. However they started, they grew to encompass a five-day festival, held in mid-August, which included both boys' and men's events in a variety of sports, including foot and chariot racing, the pentathlon, wrestling, boxing and a bloody, no-holds-barred, form of mixed martial arts known as the Pankration.
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“He attributed their origins to Heracles who, on his return from victory over King Augeas of Elis, founded the games at the tomb of Pelops.
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“The earliest mention of their foundation is found in the writings of Pindar ,” writes Kristine Toohey and Anthony James Veal in their book The Olympic Games: A Social Science Perspective (Cab International, 2007). The ancient Greeks had several myths that described how they started. Who founded the games and why is a mystery. Later these offerings would come to include more and more weapons, something which hints at the growing importance of the military among the ancient Greek city states.Īlthough traditionally the first Olympic games are said to have been held in 776 B.C., archaeological evidence indicates that it could not have occurred before 700 B.C., after which a stadium and hippodrome were constructed. Valavanēs notes that they include depictions of “bulls, horses, rams, deer and birds,” something which indicates that “the adorants placed themselves and their property (that is, their hunting animals and flocks) under the protection of the god,” Zeus. By 4,500 years ago, they had constructed a tumulus, a rock structure with ritual significance, which inhabitants may have used for burial.Ībout 3,000 years ago, a small sanctuary was constructed and became a place where people made offerings of bronze and terracotta figurines. Panos Valavanēs, a professor at the University of Athens, notes in his book that the first evidence of human settlement near Olympia dates back more than 5,000 years, long before the first games took place. The games would be held for more than 1,000 years until, under pressure from Christian authorities, they stopped sometime in the fifth century A.D.