The Olympic Games – 2700 Years ago – How it started

The athletes of the ancient Olympic Games fought naked, just as the statues of the gods were naked, which were modeled like the bodies of the athletes. They were admired by everyone for their strength and boldness. Sometimes they died from the blows they received in fistfights. During chariot racing, it could happen that the chariots overturned in the curve and this led to the death of men and horses. The athletes preferred to risk their own lives to avoid the humiliation of defeat. As is still the case today, the dedication to training and the effort of competition have only one goal…Victory.

What did they receive in return for this great effort? An olive branch −unthinkable in our modern age in which we are often used to millions in salaries. They wore this branch after their return home like a king wears his crown, and they were awarded magnificent gifts like war heroes. With this goal in mind, they did everything they could and were far from the fair and strict behavior at today’s Olympic Games.

But the really big prize was another. The memory of the winners. A remembrance forever, as close to immortality as it gets. It was their motive that after the victory they were honored with their statue, often with a face similar to the face of the gods, but usually with an inscription in which the name, the name of the family, the hometown, and the discipline were eternalized.

And the losers? There were no consolation prizes or fame for them, and when they returned home, they often had to hide in dark, narrow streets, as Pindar, one of the greatest poets of ancient Greece reports in an ode.

Unfortunately, not enough remains of the ancient sanctuary in Olympia, where the original games took place, to get an authentic picture of the atmosphere of the Agone. The games were held in honor of Zeus, the father of the gods, and his temple has been in ruins since an earthquake in the 4th century AD. In front of his temple rose on a high triangular pedestal the statue of Victoria, who was called Nike by the Greeks, the goddess of victory. It was a gift after a successful war, but at the same time, it could personify the agonistic spirit of the Games. It is shown in flight, like all these unexpected gods, because, as even Napoleon said, life is made up of many battles, those who think they are winning and lose, and those who are thought to lose and win.

The stadium intended for athletic competitions was a simple square, with simple soil and grass areas but once 45,000 to 50,000 Greeks sat down on the embankment and cheered. The origins of Olympia are very old, dating back to at least 2800 BC. Zeus, the god of thunder and lightning, has been worshipped since at least 1000 BC.

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The organization of the competitions

But how did the Games begin? The ancient writers report religious ceremonies in honor of Zeus, such as a race of young men to the altar of the god. The first official competitions began in 776 BC and were held every four years without interruption. All free Greek citizens were able to participate. Excluded were slaves, women, and foreigners, who were called barbarians because they did not speak Greek. The competitions began on the first full moon of August.

The regulations were strict, and Pindar calls the entirety of these rules the “Laws of Zeus”.This means that a violation was serious because it meant an insult to the creator.

The athletes traveled to Elis a month before the start of the Games, both to train and to be checked by the Hellanodikai, the referees.

If you have proven yourselves worthy to go to Olympia by work
and have not been frivolous and ignoble, go confidently!
But if you have not prepared yourself in this way, let him go where he will!

Shortly before the start of the competitions, thousands of spectators from all parts of the ancient world gathered in Olympia and lingered in the fields under the olive trees around the temple. They came mainly from Greece, but also from Egypt, North Africa, and from the Greek colonies of Marseille in southern France and Olbia on the Black Sea. Often they came from rival cities or cities at war with each other, but the Olympic Games were so important and prestigious that they took a break from fighting. This agreement had been carved into a disc and guaranteed the athletes immunity for three months.

The registration for the games was made as a self-disclosure about origin and age, the latter was important for the assignment to the corresponding age group. For example, in 468 BC, Pherias was expelled from Aegina because he was too young, but in the following games, he was included in the group of boys (paides) and won the pankration. Likewise, the Hellanodikai had to decide between horse and foal for the animals.

The first day was intended for a cleansing ritual. The athletes gathered in the Bouleuterion and – while the priests made a sacrifice at the statue of Zeus – swore fairness, discipline, and observance of the rules. Such an oath has continued in a slightly modified form to our time. Since 2017, it has been:

On behalf of all athletes, referees, and coaches, I promise that we will participate in the Olympic Games while respecting the applicable rules and adhering to them in the spirit of fair play. We are all committed to sports without doping and cheating. We do this for the glory of sport, for the honor of our teams, and for respect for the fundamental principles of the Olympic Movement.

Violations of the rules were severely punished. If athletes had tried to win by bribery, they were forced to erect statues of Zeus, so-called Zanes, at their own expense.

The inscriptions on the bases say that one must not win with money but with physical strength and speed of the feet.

The ancient Greeks were fascinated by the beauty of bodies and the competition called Agon – meaning pain, struggle and passion – from which the modern term agony is derived. The discipline most associated with this term was fist fighting, which originated in the Greek world. An exquisite fresco from Santorini from the 2nd millennium BC, created about a thousand years before the start of the Olympic Games, shows two slender boys fighting with boxing gloves. This discipline was introduced at the Olympic Games in 688 BC and soon became one of the agones preferred by the public, because they immediately entailed the danger and sometimes the death of the fighters.

Even today’s boxers would be dismayed by the ancient fistfight, which was absolutely irregular and unfair. There were no weight classes, no rounds with recovery breaks, no water and no padded gloves. The hands were only protected by leather strips. When the Romans took part in the Olympic Games in 146 BC, small metal nails were inserted into these strips, which injured the skin of the opponent, who could also be hit in the head. A fight lasted until one of the two fighters collapsed.

The careers of the athletes could be very successful, but also very short because of the frequent deaths. In any case, death was better than defeat, as it says in the Epitaph of the fighterAgathos Daimon from Alexandria in Egypt, who died in battle after asking Zeus to grant him either the victory wreath or death.

The athletes were greatly admired for their superiority, but also for enduring the pain. This behavior also had an ideal value, because they were regarded as social role models. One had to prove the ability to endure very great pain despite exertion, heat, and dust.

If a competition lasted too long or a tie occurred, the referees ordered that the athletes had to take turns punching each other (like the penalty shootout in football). The opponent was not allowed to react, he had to keep still and was not allowed to defend himself in any way.

Ancient training methods

Even though the athletes did not have such sophisticated sports equipment as today’s, their statues represented just as perfect bodies as modern athletes have. Obviously, they underwent hard training sessions every day. For example, for strength training, people practiced with boulders, such as the one from Olympia with a weight of about 143.5 kg (300 lbs).

For the long jump or the race, people trained with halteres made of stone, which were held in the hand like dumbbells. The so-called bikini girls on a mosaic in the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina confirm the use of dumbbells even in late Roman times.

Fistfighting was undoubtedly the discipline that most often ended in death, but it was soon surpassed by pankration (since 648 BC), a bare-handed wrestling in which it was forbidden only to bite and press in the eyes of one’s opponent. They fought naked and often pulled at the genitals. Because of this brutality, the surprises, and the infamous tricks, this sport was preferred by the public.

Today’s ideas were more in line with the more correct wrestling match, even if chokeholds and breaking fingers and knees were allowed. The “Ring” was set up inside the stadium. There were two types of wrestling, standing and ground. The winner was the one who had thrown his opponent to the ground three times. In the 5th century BC, finger-breaking was banned, but this was ignored.

The most dangerous sports, however, were the chariot races with the pairs and fours in the hippodrome. This sports venue was flooded by the downpour of the Alpheios around 600 BC and is now hidden under a dense olive grove. The riskiest parts of the race were the corners, which forced the cars to turn 180° at high speed. This resulted in collisions and falls. The wagons broke, the charioteers fell out of the wagon body and the horses fell on top of each other, as depicted in the films Ben Hur (1959) or Gladiator (2000). According to Pindar, 40 competitors had an accident in a competition and the winner reached the finish line alone.

In the hippodrome, was the altar of the god Taraxippos (or Poseidon Hippios), the patron saint of horses, to whom gifts were brought before the races so that the horses would not be frightened. A complicated mechanism was used to prevent false starts. When the mechanism was activated, an eagle flew up from an altar and a bronze dolphin fell from the bronze pole. As a result, the barrier ropes lowered at intervals so that the wagons on the outer lanes could start earlier and were not disadvantaged compared to those on the inner lanes.

The most beautiful surviving statue of a charioteer stands in Delphi, dedicated to a victory in the Pythian Games, which were as important as the Olympics. However, the winners were not only the charioteers and the jockeys, but also the owners of the racing team, as is the case today. So the women who were not permitted to compete could at least participate as owners of the horses. Cyniska of Sparta (from the royal family) was the first woman to be awarded victory in a chariot race at the 396 BC Olympics after she herself had ridden one of her horses. The response to her victory was so great that two statues were dedicated to her in Olympia.

The women had their own competitions, the Heraia, which they organized in honor of Hera, the wife of Zeus. The running distances for the women in the three age groups were reduced by a sixth compared to the male athletes. In contrast to the men, the girls wore a short belted chiton that left the right shoulder free up to the chest. Their competitions and victories were considered a rite of passage before marriage. Especially the girls from Sparta were used to sports from childhood through paramilitary education and were therefore at the top of the competitions.

The course of the games

The holiest place in the Altis of Olympia was the Altar of Zeus between the Temple of Zeus and the Temple of Hera, but there is no trace of it anymore. It was famous throughout Greece, about 10 meters high from ash, coal, and the bones of thousands of animals, sacrificed over many centuries. In order to bring new victims to the top, the priests had to build stairs. Towards the middle of the first day of the Games, a hundred animals were sacrificed. A real spectacle! The god was offered only the legs and the leftovers, the rest of the good meat was distributed to the participants as at a great feast.

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The second day began with the stadium run. It was perhaps the most important event, as the Olympic Games were also named after the winner. The stadium had a similar shape to today’s. The starting line consisted of a series of plates with grooves in which the runners had to put their toes without stepping over them. Anyone who did so was punished with the whip. In the 4th century BC, however, a mechanism was introduced that consisted of a system of ropes and crossbeams. The ropes were dropped by a referee sitting in a recess.

The race course was 192 m long because Heracles, the mythical founder of the games, had run this distance in one breath.

In addition to stadium running, there was also the Diaulos, which we would now call a middle-distance run, and the Dolichos, introduced in 720 BC, which varied between seven, twelve, or 24 stadium lengths, which adds up to about 4.5 km, which would be defined as long distance.

The last day ended with the race of the hoplites, athletes who were fully armed like the foot soldiers of the army (helmet, sword, shield). They had to run a diaulos in the stadium, the double course for footraces in ancient Greece in which the contestants ran down one side of the stadium, turned round a goal, and returned to the starting point, a real test of agility and strength. With the last competition, the Olympic Games and the armistice between the hostile cities ended.

The grassy slopes of the stadium could seat 45,000 spectators, many staying until the evening to cook, eat, and finally stay and sleep under the stars. Umbrellas were forbidden to the public, as they would have impaired the view of those behind them. And so you had to roast in the August sun all day long.

Despite the great treasures donated to the sanctuary by different cities and displayed in the small buildings called thesauroi, there were strangely never any seats or benches made of stone in the stadium, as was common in many other stadiums. Perhaps this was to preserve the democratic tradition of sitting together on the lawn without social differences.

There were only twelve stone seats in the middle of the southern long side, on which the referees (hellanodikai) sat. On the opposite side was the stone seat of the priestess of Demeter, goddess of fertility and vegetation, worshipped in Olympia even earlier than Zeus.

The stars of the arena

For about 1200 years, athletes from all over the ancient world gathered in Olympia to show off their skills at enormous sacrifice. What rewards did they receive in return? A branch from the wild olive tree at the temple of Zeus, but when they returned home, they were showered with gifts. Free meals for life in Athens, a cash reward equivalent to 500 sheep; they were respected as heroes and revered as demigods. The Olympians personified the Greek ideal of efficiency (arete), the struggle for perfection. Even their sweat was venerated as a relic and regarded as a precious commodity, it was scraped from the skin with a paste of oil and sand, filled into ampoules, and sold as a miracle ointment.

Unfortunately, of the monuments dedicated to them in Olympia, only the bases have survived, but not the statues that depict them in a heroic pose and naked like the gods.

Two anecdotes warn of the brutal violence that can become the worst enemy without prudence:
We know that Poulydamas from Skotoussa in Thessaly won the Pankration in 408 BC. He was so strong that incredible stories were told about him. He is said to have killed a gigantic lion on Mount Olympus with his bare hands, stopped a chariot at full speed and another time held a wild bull by the hooves. Pausanias writes that he felt like Heracles. His fame reached Darius II. in Persia, who invited him to his court, where he defeated three soldiers of the king’s selection guard, the so-called immortals, with his bare hands. But one day, when he was resting in a cave with his friends, the ceiling began to fall. Poulydamas trusted in his strength and tried to hold it with his hands, his friends escaped unharmed, but he was crushed by the boulders.

The end of the Games in 393 AD

Since the Hellenistic period, the Agones have gradually lost their religious character in favor of a spectacle in which professional athletes participated. Tertullian writes as late as the 2nd century AD that all games are celebrated in honor of the pagan gods but calls on Christians to refrain from such idolatry. Without this original religious background and now associated with commerce, professional sports increasingly came under criticism from the Christians, who became powerful with Constantine (272−337 AD) and who saw in the games a pagan world full of violence and false gods. In the 4th century AD, Theodosius I. banned the pagan religion and had the temples closed.

However many still adhered to the ancient belief, they would not have believed that the ancient gods could be dead, but only that they had been expelled from their own homes. Subsequently, after 393 AD, the Olympic Games were also banned, which were rejected by Christians because of the brutal violence.

by Umberto Pappalardo, Pompeii – Masanori Aoyagi, Tokyo

Translation from the Italian: Anemone Zschaetzsch
Translation into English: The Happy Quitter