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The Olympic Games
How They All Began
Originally published in 2008,
updated in 2017
© 2017
Biblical Archaeology Society
4710 41st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20016
www.biblicalarchaeology.org
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society i

The Olympic Games: How They All Began
About the Biblical Archaeology Society

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The articles in this collection originally appeared in Archaeology Odyssey.
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society ii

Contents
Introduction iv
Sarah Yeomans
The Sporting Life: Five Books on Ancient Athletics 1

Jenifer Neils
Ancient Combat Sports 4

Michael B. Poliakoff
When the Games Began: Sport, Religion and Politics 15

Converged in Ancient Olympia
David Gilman Romano
Walking to Olympia: Who Went, How They Got There, 27

and Where They Stayed
Tony Perrottet
The Other Games: When Greeks Flocked to Nemea 36

Stephen G. Miller
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society iii

INTRODUCTION
Nothing New Under the Sun
Sarah Yeomans
E very fourth summer, elite athletes from all over the world gather to pummel one
another in the spirit of brotherhood at a special two-week festival—the Olympic
Games. In this eBook, we look back at the ancient Olympiad and find that, indeed,
there’s nothing new under the summer sun.
The heavily-marketed concept of the Games as a peaceful, clean, harmonious, amateur sport-
ing event is a fictitious reflection of the games in ancient times. As scholar Jenifer Neils explains
in her review essay, the ancient Games were characterized by strife, violence, cheating, highly
specialized professional training and high stakes political agendas. Sound familiar? Her review
continues, discussing books that explain the world of ancient athleticism and demonstrate its
similarities with our own modern sports culture. For example, the elevation of accomplished
athletes to demi-god status in society is not a new phenomenon; ancient athletes had tremen-
dous financial and cultural motivations to succeed and could often great achieve personal wealth
and fame if they did so. Topics such as diet, training, sports medicine and drugs were all of
major concern to athletes and their trainers in the ancient Olympic Games—the very
subjects that dominate the media coverage of sports competition today.
In contrast to the works reviewed by Neils, Michael B. Poliakoff strives to put some distance
between the brutality of the ancient games and the gentler, more sportsmanlike competition
of the modern Olympic Games. He points out that while modern boxing regulations provide
for a controlled environment and safety measures for athletes, ancient Greeks, he wryly notes,
“recognized a number of ways to make the sport safer—and ignored all of them.” In fact, he
goes on to reveal that boxers often used equipment that enabled them to cause more damage to
their opponent, rather than less. The lack of weight classes in boxing and wrestling would pit
smaller athletes against much larger ones, and choking an opponent was perfectly acceptable
method of subduing an adversary. Adding to an athlete’s vulnerability was the fact that he com-
peted in the nude. Framing the Games as a ritual designed to emulate battlefield heroism rather
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society iv

than friendly competition, Poliakoff emphasizes that the modern Olympic Games are far more
benign and controlled than their brutal predecessors in the ancient world.
David Gilman Romano offers an overview of the ancient Olympiads, discussing in detail the
site of Olympia itself and the mythic origins of the original games. The first known Olympic fes-
tival is thought to have taken place in 776 B.C. in honor of Zeus, though archaeological evidence
suggests that Olympia had been the site of athletic contests from as early as the 11th century B.C.
By 457 B.C., a massive temple had been constructed at Olympia, dedicated to Zeus, the patriarch
of Greek deities. Romano goes on to discuss the construction of other large structures dedicated
to the Olympiads as the Games took their place firmly within the religious and cultural tradi-
tions of the Greek world. He tells us of the enigmatic Olympic Register—a fragmentary record
of Olympic victors thought to have first been compiled by Hippias of Elis in the 5th century
B.C. Though incomplete, the register lists victorious athletes by name and accomplishment, and
offers us the opportunity to view the ancient Olympiads through a more personal, human lens.
While most authors focus on the games themselves and the athletes who competed in them,
Tony Perrottet takes up the question of why regular Greeks would make a long journey to an
overcrowded and blazingly hot venue. The journey itself was usually made on foot over 200
miles and took approximately two weeks. Conditions upon arrival were often poor at best, and
deadly at worst. Perrottet describes poor or non-existent sanitation, a lack of fresh drinking
water, an unrelenting sun, and hordes of disease-carrying black flies. So how does one explain
the nearly 70,000 spectators that journeyed to Olympia every fourth year for the better part of
12 centuries? Because, explains Perrottet, a journey to Olympia was a religious pilgrimage, and
the Games themselves were one of the most important sacred festivals in the ancient Mediter-
ranean. Spectators who made the journey were not just fanatical sports enthusiasts but also
dedicated devotees of Zeus, who believed that making such a journey was to participate fully in
the religious life of their society.
While the Olympic Games and the site that gave them their name loom large in our mod-
ern sports culture, Stephen Miller reminds us that the competitions held in Olympia were not
the only panhellenic sports events of the ancient world. He describes a site in the Arcadian
mountains called Nemea, where athletes would compete in games called the Nemeads. As the
archaeologist responsible for the excavation of the site over a 20-year period, Professor Miller is
an ideal tour guide as he leads us through a descriptive tour of the ancient sports facilities. An
amusing sidebar explains the modern fascination with the ancient competition: the Society for
the Revival of the Nemean Games has reinstituted the games of old, and participants compete
in the same competitions as the ancient athletes once did. One exception has been made for
modern sensibilities, however. In the modern Nemean Games, participants have the option of
wearing clothing.
Airplanes and modern media technology make being an Olympic fan much easier today
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society v

than it was 2,500 years ago, and the circumstances in which the Games take place are both
safer and more comfortable. However, the Games’ popularity today demonstrate that
competitive spirit and passionate fandom are nothing new. Let the Games begin!
© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society vi

The Sporting Life
Five Books on Ancient Athletics
Jenifer Neils
E
very four years sports-obsessed Americans become captivated by a spectacle
that traces its origins back nearly three millennia to the shadowy Dark Age of
ancient Greece.
We know almost nothing about the first
Olympic festival of 776 B.C.E. (or even if it
was actually inaugurated on that traditional
date). But the athletic-religious festival’s sub-
sequent development and impact on Greek
society are the subject of numerous books—
some newly published to coincide with the
first modern Olympic Games to be held in
Greece since their founding in 1896.
The book most obviously pitched at the 2004
Olympics is British classicist Nigel Spivey’s
The Ancient Olympics (Oxford University
Press, 2004), which examines the military,
social, political and commemorative aspects
of the games. Like many revisionist scholars,
Spivey wants to demonstrate that our view
of the Olympics as a peaceful, clean, harmo-
nious, amateur sporting event is completely
erroneous; rather, it was characterized by
strife, violence, cheating and highly special-
ized professional training—more NFL than
Little League, or what George Orwell called
“war minus the shooting.”
© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 1

Spivey demonstrates how political leaders from the would-be Athenian tyrant Kylon
(sixth century B.C.) to the Judean king Herod (37-4 B.C.) used the games to advance
their own agendas; the most infamous was the wealthy Alcibiades, who in 416 B.C.
entered seven chariot teams at Olympia to assure a victory, which he then exploited
to influence a military expedition three years later (it turned out disastrously). The
rigorous training of athletes not only allowed them to earn a living but also to be
upwardly mobile; much as an Olympic win today means lucrative endorsements, in
antiquity victory meant free meals at state expense, tax exemptions and everlast-
ing fame in the form of poetic encomi-
ums and victory statues. Spivey argues
persuasively that the remarkable longev-
ity and resilience of the Olympics—over
a period of some 1,200 years—were due
to its gradual expansion from a purely
local festival to one with trans-Mediter-
ranean drawing power. For example,
victory lists show local athletes domi-
nating in the early years, colonists from
Sicily and South Italy winning events in
the sixth century B.C., and competitors
from the eastern Mediterranean tak-
ing home olive crowns in the Hellenistic
period and later.
The best of the new books on the ancient
games is Stephen G. Miller’s Ancient
Greek Athletics (Yale University Press,
2004). With nearly 300 illustrations, a
glossary and an extensive bibliography,
this book will serve for years to come
as the locus classicus for the history of
sport in ancient Greece.
Miller traces the development of athletics from Bronze Age bull-leaping on
Crete to the Roman emperor Nero’s ten-horse chariot win at Olympia in 67 A.D.
(though Nero quit before finishing the race, he was still awarded the olive wreath).
Ancient Greek Athletics also discusses the other panhellenic “crown” competi-
tions held at Delphi, Isthmia and Nemea. (Miller, an archaeologist with the Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley, discovered Nemea’s stadium in 1974 and helped
reconstruct its starting gate. His article “The Other Games: When Greeks Flocked
to Nemea” appears in this issue.) The book’s excellent diagrams help us visualize
the mechanics of ancient sport—such as the use of jumping weights (carried by
long-jumpers), or the staggered start of the horserace. Liberally supported with
quotes from ancient authors, Ancient Greek Athletics is thorough, convincing and

lucid—accessible to the general reader and suitable as a textbook for courses on

Greek athletics.
Three other books, though not so new, remain useful for the study of ancient Greek
athletics and culture. A somewhat quirky but informative book by the German archae-
ologist Ulrich Sinn—Olympia: Cult, Sport, and Ancient Festival (Marcus Wiener Pub-
lishers 2000), an English translation of the 1996 German edition—also deals with the
development of the festival. Sinn wants the reader to envision Olympia “without ath-
letes,” in its earlier phase as an important cult center before the contests were for-
mally instituted. He emphasizes the relatively unknown facts that Olympia served
as a gathering point for rich agriculturalists (hence its many bronze votive statues
of cattle), that it was the site of an important oracle of Zeus (much as Delphi was the
site of an oracle of Apollo) and that after the Persian Wars it became an arbitration
center where city-states resolved their disputes. With an archaeologist’s eye, Sinn
examines Olympia’s altars and temples, the spectator facilities and even the plumb-
ing. Although he pays attention to the female deities worshiped on the site, he fails to
mention the footraces for girls held in honor of Hera.
In his thought-provoking Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1998 [reprinted 2000]), historian Mark Golden does not delve into such
minutiae as the scoring of the pentathlon; rather, he considers the big issues, like the
relationship of athletics to warfare and religion. His wit and timely references—he
draws analogies with Shaquille O’Neal, Die Hard 3 and Canadian ice hockey—make
for enjoyable reading, and his control of the vast bibliography is impressive.
Judith Swaddling’s The Ancient Olympic Games (British Museum Press, 1980; 2nd
edition 1999) is aimed at the interested lay reader. It presents the basic information
in a readable form and is illustrated with color photographs of objects in the British
Museum, where Swaddling is a curator. The revised edition includes discussion of
exercise, diet, sports medicine and drugs—subjects of considerable interest in today’s
Olympics—as well as the revival of the Olympic Games more than a century ago at
the instigation of the French nobleman Pierre de Coubertin.
Although contemporary culture is clearly saturated with competition of all kinds,
this obsession was even more pervasive in antiquity. Mythical or fictional charac-
ters, like Sophocles’s Orestes, compete in contests (Orestes participates in a chariot
race at the Pythian Games in Delphi). In Plato’s dialogues, men often compete to get
the better of an argument. Ancient Greek playwrights competed in drama competi-
tions, and ancient Greek singers competed in singing competitions. Even the apostle
Paul—writing, of course, in Greek—tells us to fight the good fight, finish the course
and earn the “crown” of righteousness.
Competition is here to stay, and the 2004 summer Olympians will have much in com-
mon with their first-millennium B.C. counterparts, including the heat, the flies and
the hucksters.

Ancient Combat Sports
Michael B. Poliakoff
“Y
ou know that the Olympic crown is olive, yet many have honored it above life,”
wrote the Greek orator Dio Chrysostom (c. 40-110 C.E.).1 Indeed, the occasional
philosopher or doctor may have condemned the brutality and danger of ancient
athletics, but the Greek public nevertheless accepted a good deal of hazard, injury
and death.2
This is particularly true of the three Greek combat events—wrestling, boxing and
pancratium (a combination of boxing and wrestling that allowed such tactics as kick-
ing and strangling). Their history at ancient Olympia is long and eventful: Wrestling
entered the program in 708 B.C.E., boxing in 688 B.C.E. and pancratium in 648 B.C.E.
These grueling sports reveal much about the aspirations and values of ancient Greece,
about what was deemed honorable,
fair and beautiful, both in the eyes of
those of who competed and those who
traveled to Olympia to watch.
Combat sports were designed to be
as physically taxing and uncomfort-
able as possible. This meant no time
limits, no rounds, no rest periods, no
respite from the midsummer sun.
One of the three ancient Greek combat sports,

wrestling was celebrated for its complexity, as it
required not only strength but precise skills and
cunning. Wrestlers like those depicted on this
fourth-century B.C.E. silver coin probably knew
of the legendary exploits of Homer’s Odysseus,
who uses his wits to wrestle the massive Ajax
to a draw in Book 23 of the Iliad.

His eyes fixed in an intense, burning glare, a wrestler

Erich Lessing
controls his opponent in this 6-inch-tall bronze statue

found in Alexandria, Egypt, dating to the second
century B.C.E. One of the three ancient Greek
combat sports, wrestling was celebrated for its
complexity, as it required not only strength but precise
skills and cunning. Wrestlers like those depicted on
this statuette probably knew of the legendary exploits
of Homer’s Odysseus, who uses his wits to wrestle
the massive Ajax to a draw in Book 23 of the Iliad.
According to some ancient authors, such

as Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.) and Philostratus
(third century C.E.), boxers could bear
their opponents’ blows more readily than
the unremitting heat.3 And the combat ath-
lete might well have gone from one hard-
earned and injurious victory straight into
another round of competition.
Anthony Milavic
Nor were there weight classes, so the
ambitious but undersized athlete simply
took his chances against larger competi- This second-century C.E. inscription from
tors. In the event of a mismatch, the supe- Olympia memorializes the 35-year-old boxer
rior athlete was unlikely to show mercy. Agathos Daimon, whose nickname was “The
Some athletes were so terrifying that their Camel.” Agathos Daimon had triumphed at
opponents simply defaulted, allowing them the Nemean Games but died while competing
to win akoniti (dust-free), without having at Olympia, after having “prayed to Zeus for
to get dirty. A late-second-century C.E. victory or death.” The inscription is a sobering
reminder of the hazards involved in ancient
athlete named Marcus Aurelius Asclepia-
combat sports. The Greeks weren’t ignorant of
des—who won the pancratium at many the safety precautions taken in modern boxing;
festivals, including the games held at they simply chose to ignore them. As another
Olympia—boasted in an inscription that he Greek inscription, from the first century B.C.E.,
“stopped all (potential) opponents after the makes clear: “A boxer’s victory is gained
first round.”4 An inscription honoring the in blood.”

A muscled boxer pauses, perhaps following a
Erich Lessing
bout, in this first-century B.C.E bronze sculpture
now in Rome’s Museo Nazionale. Wrapped
around his wrists are thin strips of oxhide, which
protected the pugilist’s knuckles and lacerated his
opponent’s face. In antiquity, boxing matches were
brutal; there were no weight classes to protect
smaller competitors (though men and boys fought
separately), and bouts ended in submission,
knockout or even death.
Preparing to fight, a boxer wraps his wrists with

oxhide strips, in this red-figured amphora dating
to the fifth century B.C.E. These so-called soft
thongs, or himantes meilichai, were in use until the
fourth century B.C.E., when they were replaced by
the even more devastating sharp thongs ( himas
oxus), gloves of leather 1 to 2 inches thick.
wrestler Tiberius Claudius Marcianus recounts

that at one festival, “when he undressed, all
his opponents begged to be dismissed from
the contest.”5
The ancient Olympic world adhered to values
very different from our own (or what we ide-
ally think of as our own). In a speech given in
1908, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder
of the modern Olympics, said:
For when the One Great Scorer comes

to mark against your name,
He writes—not that you won or lost—
but how you played the Game.
Erich Lessing
“The purpose of these Olympiads is less to win

than to take part in them,”6 a sentiment later
echoed by the sportswriter Grantland Rice:

Preparing to fight, a boxer wraps his wrists
Erich Lessing
with oxhide strips, in this red-figured amphora
dating to the fifth century B.C.E. These so-called
soft thongs, or himantes meilichai, were in use
until the fourth century B.C.E., when they were
replaced by the even more devastating sharp
thongs ( himas oxus), gloves of leather 1 to 2
inches thick.
The ancient Greeks did not view their

Olympics in this way. A second-century C.E.
inscription found at Olympia relates the
ancient Olympic spirit with quiet dignity:
The chasm between ancient and modern
widens further once we look more closely at
the specific combat events contested at the
panhellenic games.
The Association Internationale de Boxe
Amateur, whose rules govern modern Olym-
pic boxing, has precise requirements for
boxing gloves—they must weigh 10 ounces,
Erich Lessing
half of that weight consisting of padding, and

they must be engineered to absorb, rather
than transmit, shock. Association boxers
A wrestler lifts his opponent off the ground, must also wear headgear, mouth guards and
holding him firmly in his grasp, in this 6- ear protectors during their bouts; they must
inch-tall, second-century B.C.E. bronze
also use protection for the groin and lower
statuette discovered in Alexandria, Egypt.
The philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) abdomen. According to the guidelines of the
encouraged Athens’s youth to wrestle, and Atlantic branch of the U.S.Amateur Boxing
the historian Plutarch (c. 46-120 C.E.), in Association, “The main objective of Olym-
his Quaestiones conviviales, calls wrestling pic-style boxing’s rules and the actions and
“the most technical and the trickiest” of
sports. A Greek wrestling manual, dating to
decisions of the referee is the safety and pro-
the first or second century C.E., confirms tection of boxers.” What is remarkable about
Plutarch’s view, illustrating the intricacy of ancient Olympic boxing is that the Greeks
drills the Greeks used to teach tactics and recognized a number of ways to make the
counter tactics. sport safer—and ignored all of them.

Scala/Art Resource, NY
This sixth-century B.C.E. drinking vessel, attributed to the so-called Heidelberg Painter, depicts a wrestler
about to flip his opponent, as judges look carefully on. A variety of throws and holds were permitted in
ancient Greek wrestling, such as headlocks, hip throws, body lifts and arm bars. Though tactics such as
snapping an opponent’s fingers were not technically permitted, they were sometimes overlooked by judges.
Leontiskos of Messene, for example, broke a finger or two on his way to claiming two Olympic wrestling
victories in the fifth century B.C.E.
“A boxer’s victory is gained in blood,” begins an inscription dating from the first cen-
tury B.C.E., praising a tough and successful boxer.8 The Greeks celebrated the hazards
of boxing and the damage it caused, and their art did nothing to sanitize this damage. Box-
ers in vase paintings bleed from the nose; sculpted statues show broken noses and cauli-
flower ears. A second-century C.E. manual on the interpretation of dreams, by the Greek
soothsayer Artemidorus, observes that boxing dreams ominously foretell a deformed
face and loss of blood.9
Until the fourth century B.C.E., Greek boxers bound their hands with thin strips
of oxhide. These “soft thongs” (himantes meilichai), as the Greeks called them, did
nothing to protect boxers against concussions or facial lacerations. On the contrary,
they protected the boxer’s knuckles against fracture and the wrist against sprain:
In effect, they simply encouraged more vigorous and damaging blows. The “sharp
thongs” (himas oxus) that replaced them—consisting of a pad of leather, 1 to 2 inches
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1906
Other than biting or eye-gouging, any

form of unarmed combat was tolerated
in the brutal sport of pancratium, a kind
of extreme fighting that did, on occasion,
result in death. Strangling, kneeing the
genitals, kicking, punching, locking onto
limbs and joints—all were legal means
of gaining a submission. Pancratiasts
usually fought bare-fisted, but in this
black-figure Attic vessel by the Theseus
Painter, dating to around 500 B.C.E.,
they wear oxhide thongs similar to those
used by boxers.

thick, tied over the boxer’s knuckles—were even more damaging. Exactly when they
became standard equipment is unclear, but a vase dated 336 B.C.E. shows a highly
developed form of the thongs.
In Book 8 of the Laws, Plato says that during practice sessions boxers put on pad-
ded gloves called sphairai instead of thongs.10 These padded gloves, however, were
never used in competition. Needless to say, modern attempts to protect a boxer’s eyes
from injury—by mandating gloves that keep the thumb from being bound together
with the fist—find no parallel in antiquity; ancient texts mention boxers whose eyes
had been struck out.11
The boxing rules enforced by the judges at Olympia were minimal. As in other
sports, boys and men competed in separate events—though, as already noted, there
were no weight divisions that protected the welterweight from the crushing blows of
the heavyweight. Clinching (the act of holding onto your opponent’s body to slow a
fight down) was forbidden, and we find depictions of judges using their sticks to pun-
ish such infractions. Technique mattered insofar as it led to submission or insensibil-
ity; the concept of winning by points or by judges’ decision is modern, not ancient. In
the absence of a knockout (or worse), the vanquished pugilist could hold up a finger
to signal submission, a moment often seen in Greek vase paintings.
Unlike boxing and pancratium, a wrestling match typically did not end with submis-
sion or incapacitation, but rather with one competitor achieving technical mastery
over his opponent. The ancients admired wrestling for the level of skill and science
it required. Homer’s Odysseus is the archetypal clever wrestler who deflects and
neutralizes the massive strength of a far larger man (Ajax) in Book 23 of the Iliad.
A statue honoring one Aristodamus of Elis for his victory at Olympia in 388 B.C.E. is
inscribed with text reading, “I did not win by virtue of the size of my body, but by my
technique.”12 In the Laws, Plato praised wrestling as a form of exercise well suited for
the training of Athens’s youth. Plutarch referred to the sport as “the most technical
and the trickiest,” and a surviving section of a first- or second-century C.E. wrestling
manual shows how well developed the drills for tactics and counter tactics were.13
To gain a fall, the Greek wrestler had to take his opponent down, making the man’s
back or shoulders touch the ground or stretching him out prone. Three falls were nec-
essary to win a contest. Not every fall was clear. Greek literature sometimes refers
to disputes over whether a fall occurred.14 The tactics depicted in Greek art sug-
gest that very forceful holds and throws were common. Vase paintings and sculpture
show headlocks and hip throws, shoulder throws and body lifts, including the reverse
body lift that the formidable Russian wrestler Aleksander Karelin has used with
such devastating effect in recent Olympiads. If a fall did not result from a wrestler’s
being thrown on his back, action would continue on the ground. Joints could be forced
against their normal range of movement, and sculptures show a variety of arm bars
and shoulder locks that would be illegal in modern Olympic wrestling.

The struggle was likely to be bitter and intense, however sophisticated the tac-
tics. Greek sources are quite clear that choking an opponent into submission, though
apparently uncommon, could result in a legitimate fall.15 The great British historian
of ancient sport E.N. Gardiner (1864-1930) may have written that “Wrestling, at all
events in the early days before it was corrupted by professionalism, was free from all
suggestions of that brutality which has often brought discredit on one of the noblest
of sports,”16 but the evidence proves otherwise. A recently discovered inscription
from Olympia records a judges’ decree passed in the late sixth century B.C.E. for-
bidding wrestlers to break each other’s fingers and empowering the judges to flog
athletes who disobeyed the rule.17 Nevertheless, Leontiskos of Messene won the Olym-
pic crown in wrestling in both 456 and 452 B.C.E. by using this tactic.18
Aside from biting or gouging into the soft parts of an opponent, all means of unarmed
combat were legal in pancratium. A Greek synonym for pancratium, pammachon (total
fight), describes the sport well. In fact, pancratium differed from modern “extreme
fighting” largely by virtue of its having been a central, rather than marginal, part of
the athletic world of its day. Exhibiting the power and extension of the legs, kicking
was an essential part of pancratium, almost to the point of being an emblem of the
sport. Driving the knee into an opponent’s genitals was a particularly effective tactic.
Pancratiasts also punched and applied strangle holds and locks on their opponents’
limbs and joints, all with the purpose of forcing their rivals to concede the contest.
One famous pancratiast, Sostratos of Sikyon, won 12 crowns at Nemea and Corinth,
two at Delphi and three at Olympia (in 364, 360 and 356 B.C.E.) by using Leontiskos
of Messene’s trick of bending back an opponent’s fingers. Sostratos used the tactic so
effectively that many potential opponents forfeited their matches rather than meet
him in the stadium.19
In his Anacharsis, the second-century B.C.E. writer Lucian imagined a typical pan-
cratium bout:
These folk standing up, who also have been coated with dust, punch and kick at each
other in their attacks. And now this poor wretch looks like he is going to spit out even his
teeth—his mouth is so full of blood and sand, having just taken a blow on the jaw.20
Typically, pancratiasts fought bare-fisted, leaving the hands free for wrestling and
strangling holds, but at least two vase paintings show that sometimes they preferred
the lacerative potential of the thong.
Gouging and biting were punished as foul play, and one vase painting shows a
trainer vigorously flogging two pancratiasts for digging into each other’s faces. Greek
authors, including the physician Galen (c. 129-199 C.E.), observed that quite a lot of
gouging and biting did take place nonetheless—which is not entirely surprising in
a contest that permitted, and rewarded, snapping an opponent’s fingers and kicking
his genitals.

Reliving the Death of an Olympian
A new PBS documentary on the history of the Olympics captures the drama—and casual-
ties—of the Greek combat sports. The Real Olympics was written and produced by Antony
Thomas, whose controversial film The South African Experience caused the government
of his native South Africa to ban him from the country in 1977. The ban went the way of
the Apartheid regime, and indeed, much of the action in The Real Olympics was filmed in
South Africa, where 35 local young athletes were recruited to star in the documentary. In
May 2003, I flew to South Africa to train the actors, not only in the art of the discus, javelin
and long jump, but also in the intricacies of the pancratium. Among the many sequences in
the two-hour documentary is a reenactment of the final moments of the life of Arrhichion,
who in the sixth century B.C.E. spectacularly died while winning his pancratium bout at
Olympia. The actor playing Arrhichion shows how the venerated athlete, trapped by his
opponent’s standing body scissors and stranglehold, managed to dislocate his opponent’s
ankle while collapsing lifeless to the ground. Despite the scene’s realism, no actors were
injured during the filming!—M.B.P.
It is hard to say how often contests turned lethal. Greek texts seem quite clear that
boxing was regarded as more injurious and dangerous than pancratium. But pan-
cratium’s hazards were very real, as is best evidenced by the extraordinary story of
one Arrhichion.
Arrhichion of Phigalia had twice won the pancratium event at Olympia. In 564
B.C.E., his third attempt to win an Olympic crown, he advanced to the finals. Dur-
ing the final bout, Arrhichion was standing up when his opponent, whose name is not
recorded, jumped on his back, clamped a leg scissors around his waist and strangled
him with a forearm against his throat. Realizing that he was suffocating, Arrhichion
chose to exit Olympia in a blaze of glory. Catching his opponent’s right ankle in the
crook of his right knee, he clamped his opponent’s left leg to his own body with his
left arm, thus preventing his opponent from releasing the hold. As he lost conscious-
ness, Arrhichion fell toward the left while straightening his right leg against his oppo-
nent’s ankle, wrenching it from its socket. His opponent, in agony, threw his hand in
the air, signaling concession, not realizing, as he fell, that Arrhichion’s corpse lay
beneath him.
Just who participated in these grueling and often injurious ancient contests? The
evidence is clear: everyone from blue bloods to men of modest means.21 Diagoras of
Rhodes, who boasted of both royal and mythical lineage (he claimed to be descended
from Herakles), won in boxing at the 464 B.C.E. Olympics. His three sons all won
Olympic events in boxing or pancratium, and his two grandsons won Olympic crowns
in boxing.22 In the first or second century C.E., Tiberius Claudius Rufus of Smyrna
battled an opponent in the finals of the pancratium at Olympia until darkness and

the bravery of the performers convinced the judges to award both men the Olympic
crown; the inscription honoring Tiberius Claudius Rufus notes that he was a personal
acquaintance of the Roman emperor, implying the significant wealth and prestige of
his family.23
Aristotle, on the other hand, tells of a fishmonger who won the boxing crown at
Olympia (unfortunately, he provides no further details),24 and the snobbish fifth-cen-
tury B.C.E. Athenian general Alcibiades competed only in chariot racing, explaining
that the other contests were populated by men of humble birth.25 Indeed, one mani-
festation of the Greeks’ democratic brilliance is that at ancient Olympia, competi-
tors—rich or poor, aristocrats or tradesmen—were simply athletes; stripped naked
for competition, they sought to prove they were the best in the Greek world. Although
the incentive of valuable prizes or money (which the victors received at all ancient
games, including those at Olympia) might have been powerful, especially for those of
slender means, it does not explain why wealthy aristocrats eagerly joined in contests
of this nature.
The lure for all Greeks was kleos (fame), the perfect antidote to the grim, disem-
bodied obscurity of death. The Homeric poems, which were for the Greeks what the
Bible became for later Western society, are permeated with the deeds of heroes, for
which they are rewarded with kleos. Hector, the eldest son of King Priam and the
Trojans’ greatest warrior, speaks for all when he says that his heart did not know how
to shrink back in battle, since the time “when [he] learned to be brave and always to
fight in the front ranks of the Trojans, guarding [his] father’s honor and [his] own
also” (Iliad 22.458-59).
In time, however, phalanx warfare, with its highly organized ranks and files, elimi-
nated the need for one-on-one combat, which figured centrally in the battles of an ear-
lier age (as, perhaps, preserved in Homer). Greek city-states thus came to view their
wartime victories as the achievements of the entire people, not of a heroic general,
however brilliant or valorous he might have been.26
Only in combat sports could the Greek man prove his mettle in fighting one-on-one.
(Indeed, nowhere else in Greek civic life was aggression both tolerated and encour-
aged. We know from surviving court speeches that the Athenians severely punished
even casual acts of assault and battery with sanctions including the death penalty.)27
By placing combat sports in the context of warfare, we can understand the baffling
paradoxes of what the Greeks considered fair play. Just as on the battlefield, no hand-
icap was awarded to smaller or weaker opponents. There were no weight classes in
the combat sports to prevent a stronger man from brutalizing a weaker or less-expe-
rienced fighter. Athletes in the combat sports could not avoid thirst, discomfort or
the heat of the sun, and warfare allowed for no periods of rest. The great athletic fes-
tivals, then, were a surrogate for the world of heroic combat that had vanished from
Greek reality but was alive in the Homeric poems.

To win in competition was to strive for the heroic, to enjoy unending kleos. As the
Greek poet Pindar (c. 522-440 B.C.E.) wrote, “He who braves the contest’s struggle
with success wins the fairest sense of inner peace for the remainder of his days.”28
The modern world will rightly depart—and depart sharply—from the ancient world’s
disregard for the safety of its competitors. Nevertheless, look this summer on the
faces of those in Athens who brave a contest’s struggle and then prevail: Their hard-
earned joy is one of the continuities between ancient and modern times.
Notes
1. Dio Chrysostom 31.110.

2. See Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 89-91.
3. See Cicero, Brutus 69; Philostratos, Gymnastika 11, Heroikos 15 (147 K.); Pausanias 6.24.1.
4. See Inscriptiones Graecae 14.1102; Luigi Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche. Studi pub-
blicati dall’ Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica 12 (Rome: Angelo Signorelli, 1953), no. 79;
and Poliakoff, Combat Sports, p. 106.
5. J.G.C. Anderson, Journal of Roman Studies 3 (1913), p. 287 n. 12.
6. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, “Les ‘Trustees’ de l’Idée Olympique,” Revue Olympique, July
1908.
7. J.G.M.G. Te Riele, Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique 88 (1964), pp. 186-87.
8. G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca (Berlin, 1878), p. 942; and Moretti, Inscrizioni agonistiche
greche, no. 55.
9. Artemidorus, Oneirocriticus 1.61-62.
10. Plato similarly recommended that soldiers engage in military exercises with weapons
equipped with protective buttons on their tips. See Plato, Laws 830a-831a; see also Plu-
tarch, Praecepta rei publicae gerendae 32 (Moralia 825e), with further discussion in Polia-
koff, Combat Sports, p. 73.
11. Libanius 64.119 and Galen, Protrepticus 12 (1.32 K.)
12. Denys Page, Epigrammata Graeca, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, LII, 283 ff;
also see Joachim Ebert, Griechische Epigramme auf Sieger an gymnischen und hippischen
Agonen. Abhandlungen der Saechsichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, philolo-
gisch-historische Klasse 63.2 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972), no. 34.
13. Plato, Laws, 796b; Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 2.4 (Moralia 638d). For a translation
of the wrestling manual, see Poliakoff, Combat Sports, pp. 52-53.
14. For further information on disputes over scoring a fall, see Ambrose, Commentary on
Psalm 36.51, in Patrologia Latina 14.1038-39; see also Aristophanes, Knights, pp. 571-73.
15. Lucian, Anacharsis 1.8; Nonnus, Dionysiaka 37.602-9.
16. E.N. Gardiner, Journal of Hellenic Studies 25 (1905), p. 14-31.

17. Peter Siewert, “The Olympic Rules,” in Proceedings of an International Symposium on the
Olympic Games, William Clulson and Helmut Kyrieleis, eds. (Athens, 1992), pp. 111-17.
18. Pausanias 6.4.3 tells of Leontiskos’s skill at breaking fingers.
19. Sostratos the pankratiast is known from Pausanias 6.4.1-2 and a surviving inscription:
Moretti Iscrizioni agonistiche greche, no. 25; see also Ebert, Griechische Epigramme,
no. 39.
20. Lucian, Anacharsis 3.
21. See H.W. Pleket, “Games, Prizes, and Ideology,” Stadion 1 (1976), pp. 49-89; and David C.
Young, The Olympic Myth of Amateur Greek Athletics (Chicago: Ares, 1984).
22. The story of Diagoras and his family was often told in antiquity. See in particular Pausa-
nias 6.7.1-7 and 4.24.1-3; Pindar praised Diagoras in a victory ode, Olympian 7, and Cicero
tells the story, in Tusculan Disputations 1.46.111, of a spectator who saw Diagoras carried
on the shoulders of his sons who had triumphed in boxing and pancratium on the same day
at Olympia; the spectator remarked, “Die, Diagoras, for you cannot go up into heaven”—in
other words, there is nothing greater that any mortal man could ever have.
23. Tiberius Claudius Rufus’s victory is commemorated on a surviving inscription, Inscriften
von Olympia 54/55. For further discussion, see Reinhold Merkelbach, Zeitschrift fur Papy-
rologie und Epigraphik 15 (1974), pp. 99-104; and Walter Ameling, Epigraphica Anatolica 6
(1985), p. 30.
24. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1365a, 1367b; and Page, Simonides XLI, pp. 238-239
25. Isocrates, On the Team of Horses 16, pp. 2-35.
26. Note how the Athenians forbade the successful generals of the Persian wars to erect mon-
uments to themselves; see Aeschines, Against Ktesiphon, pp. 183-186, with discussion in
M. Detienne, “La Phalange,” in J.-P. Vernant, ed., Problemes de la guerre en Grece anci-
enne (Paris, 1968), pp. 127-28; also see Poliakoff, Combat Sports, 112 ff.
27. See Isocrates, Against Lochites 20.9-11 and Demosthenes, Against Meidias 21.45.
28. Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.

When the Games Began
Sport, Religion and Politics Converged in Ancient Olympia
David Gilman Romano
I
t’s one of history’s curiosities. 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.
As in antiquity, we call these celebrations Olympiads, and we number them sequen-
tially. Athletes from around the world
From Ancient Greece
participate in events also contested in

long-ago Olympia: the javelin, the long
jump, footraces, wrestling and boxing.
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 (“gymna-
sium,” “stadium” and “hippodrome”).a
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. Starting in 776 B.C.
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.

According to the fifth-century B.C.
Erich Lessing
Greek poet Pindar,
If you wish to celebrate great games

look no further for another star
shining through the sky
brighter than the sun
or for contests greater than the Olympic
Games.1
Every four years, athletes, dignitaries,

emissaries and tourists traveled to Olym-
pia for an athletic-religious festival in
honor of Zeus. The festival began with the
second full moon following the summer
solstice—that is, the end of July or the
beginning of August. 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. By the fifth century B.C.,
however, athletes were flocking to Olym-
pia from all over the Greek-speaking
world for the five-day celebration, and
100 bulls were sacrificed to Zeus at
Olympia’s sanctuary.
Olympia is actually located far from
the mountain that gives the site its name.
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 lies at the
juncture of the Alpheus and the Kladeus rivers, in a wide, fertile river valley only 7
miles from the Ionian Sea.
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 festi-
vals celebrated all over the Greek world), each of which was dedicated to a god.
The games at Olympia (Zeus) were supposedly inaugurated in 776 B.C.; the games at
Delphi (Apollo) in 582 B.C.; the games at Isthmia (Poseidon) also in 582 B.C.; and the
games at Nemea (Zeus) in 573 B.C. (See Stephen G. Miller’s “The Other Games: When
Greeks Flocked to Nemea”.)
The victors in all of the panhellenic events received symbolic awards, in the form of
wreaths. Those who won events at local festivals, however, generally received prizes

Vanni Archive/Corbis
Zeus (the headless central figure) oversees preparations for a chariot race between the hero Pelops (to
the left of Zeus) and King Oenomaus (to the right of Zeus), who ruled the area around Olympia. Now in
Olympia’s museum, these statues originally adorned the east pediment of the fifth-century B.C. Temple of
Zeus at Olympia.
In Greek myth, Oenomaus promises his daughter, Hippodameia (left of Pelops), to any man who can beat
him in a chariot race. Pelops bribes Oenomaus’s charioteer, Myrtilus (shown kneeling next to Oenomaus’s
wife, who stands to the right of her husband), to loosen the linchpins of his master’s chariot. After Pelops
wins the race, he celebrates by establishing the religious/athletic festival at Olympia. In honor of Pelops,
the region of Greece where Olympia is located is called the Peloponnesus (“Pelops Island”).
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 panhel-
lenic victors, too, often received a little something in addition to honor; they were
routinely rewarded with cash and privileges upon returning home.b A fifth-century
B.C. 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.2
Two Greek myths account for the origins of the ancient Olympic Games. According
to Pindar, Heracles created the site of Olympia for the festival:
[Heracles] measured out a sacred precinct for his father most mighty; he fenced in the
altisc and set it apart in the open, and he made the surrounding plain a resting place for
banqueting.3
The second-century A.D. writer Pausanias relates that Heracles won victories at
Olympia in wrestling and pancratium.4
In another story, a young man named Pelops travels to the western Peloponnesus to
compete for the hand of Hippodameia, the daughter of the wealthy king Oenomaus.
According to Pindar, Pelops and Oenomaus compete in a chariot race, during which the
king is killed. Pelops wins the race, marries Hippodameia and establishes the Olympic

Games.5 The region of Greece

The Art Archive/Dagli Orti
where Olympia is found is thus

named the Peloponnesus, or
“Pelops Island.” At Olympia,
the ancients erected a shrine to
Pelops, called the Pelopeion.
Both myths are depicted in
the sculptural program of the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The
pedimental sculpture from the
east facade depicts the moment
before the chariot race between
Pelops and Oenomaus, and
the metopes—or relief carv-
A Doric colonnade encloses Olympia’s third-century B.C. ings—inside the front and rear
palaestra, a large square courtyard where ancient athletes porches include depictions of
trained for the games. A series of rooms and halls opened off
the colonnade, including three chambers that functioned as a
Heracles’s 12 labors (one was
library, and a room that served as a dining room. to clean the Augean Stables,
which Heracles accomplished
by diverting one of the two rivers that meet at Olympia, the Alpheus).
The exact origins of the Olympic festival, however, are lost in the shadowy dark
ages of Greek history. The 776 B.C. date is based on the Olympic Register, a listing
of Olympic victors compiled by Hippias of Elis in the fifth century B.C. and then
worked on by others throughout antiquity. But there is evidence that the religious
cult, and possibly even the
athletic contests, may be even

older. Pottery found in recent
German excavations at Olym-
pia suggests that cult activ-
ity in the area of the altis (the
Only naked athletes and the judges

who officiated at the games were
permitted to pass through this
entranceway, described by the
second-century A.D. writer Pausanias
as “the secret entrance.” The arched
gate, newly constructed at the time
of Pausanias’s visit, opened into a
vaulted tunnel that led to Olympia’s
stadium, which was built in the fourth
century B.C. on the site of a running
track (dromos) dating centuries earlier.

An athlete balances on one foot while his trainer

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY
helps him stretch, on this sixth-century B.C. red-

figure krater painted by Euphronius. The athletic/
religious festival at Olympia was dedicated to
Zeus, the chief god of the Greek pantheon,
and victorious athletes were thought to be the
favorites of Zeus—largely because they combined
prodigious athletic prowess with moderation
and modesty.
enclosed heart of the sanctuary) dates to

the late 11th century B.C.6 Bronze dedi-
cations from the tenth and ninth centu-
ries B.C. have also been discovered at
Olympia, including tripods and minia-
ture charioteers—which may indicate
that equestrian games were held at this
early date.
The sanctuary of Zeus lay just south of
Cronus Hill (named after Zeus’s father).
The principal part of the sanctuary
was the altis, a walled enclosure that
included the ash altar of Zeus, the altar
of Hera (Zeus’s wife), the Pelopeion, the
Temple of Hera, the Temple of Zeus and
the Temple of Rhea (Zeus’s mother).
Statues were set up in and around the
altis to honor victorious athletes and to
commemorate military victories and political alliances.
The ash altar to Zeus was probably the earliest structure at the sanctuary. At the
beginning of each Olympic festival, participants would march into the sanctuary and
sacrifice 100 bulls to Zeus at this altar. In the second century A.D., according to Paus-
anias, the altar consisted of a stone platform, where animals were sacrificed; piled on
this base was a tower of ash, where the thighs of the sacrificed animals were burned.
Pausanias observes that the ash altar reached 22 feet into the air. Following the sacri-
fice of the bulls, the crowd consumed the meat at a great public banquet.7
The massive Temple of Zeus, built between 471 and 457 B.C., was 210 feet long
and 90 feet wide—only 16 feet shorter and 10 feet narrower than the Parthenon in
Athens (which was completed some 20 years later). The temple’s Doric colonnade
consisted of six columns at each end and 13 columns along the sides, and the roof sup-
ported tiles made of Pentelic marble (from Mount Pentelicus, near Athens, which also
supplied the marble for the Parthenon). The temple’s pediments, 40 feet above the

The stern countenance of Theodosius
Erich Lessing
I—depicted on this 10-inch-high, fourth-
century A.D. marble bust—seems to express
the Roman emperor’s reputation as a
staunch defender of Christianity. Originally
a Spanish officer in the Roman army,
Theodosius ruled the eastern empire from
379 to 395 A.D. His edict of 393 A.D.
forbade all pagan worship and festivities,
including the Olympic games, and marked
an end to a millennium-long tradition.
ground, were adorned with sculp-

tures depicting scenes from Greek
myth—Lapiths battling Centaurs on
the west end, and Pelops, Oenomaus
and their entourages on the east end
(where visitors entered).
Inside the temple, completely
filling its west end, was a 40-foot-
high bronze statue of Zeus sitting
on a throne—which became one of
the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World. The statue was made by the
Athenian sculptor Phidias (c. 490-
425 B.C.) in a common Greek style
called chryselephantine, meaning that it was covered with gold and ivory (like the
statue of Athena in the Parthenon, which was also made by Phidias).
To the west of the Temple of Zeus was a modest fifth-century B.C. facility where
the Olympian athletes bathed. The building had a series of tubs, in which the athletes
reclined and had water poured over their heads. A 5-foot-deep swimming pool, mea-
suring 79 feet by 52 feet, lay adjacent to the baths; this pool also dates to the fifth
century B.C.
In the third century B.C. a palaestra was added just north of the bath building. This
was a large open-air courtyard enclosed on all four sides by a colonnade, which was
surrounded by rooms. The Greek word “palaestra” means “the place of wrestling,” so
wrestling and other events were probably practiced in the courtyard.
In the second century B.C. a large gymnasium was constructed to the north of the
bath facility. This structure included a roofed racecourse, 600 feet long, allowing run-
ners to train under cover. The gymnasium also included a large open-air courtyard
for practicing the discus, javelin and long jump.

A vaulted entrance led from the altis to the stadium, and this was the route that
athletes and judges would follow during the games.
The Olympic stadium evolved considerably over the years. It began as a simple
rectangular running track, or dromos, on which the athletes competed. Gradually
spectator facilities were added around the sides of the race track. Archaeologists
have found starting lines carved in stone at both ends of the dromos, 600 feet apart
(the length of a stadion). Spectators used the northern slope of the Cronus Hill to
view the contests. By the mid-fifth century B.C., the dromos was surrounded on
four sides by artificial earth embankments on which 45,000 spectators could watch
the contests.
Spectators at Olympia stood while watching the games. The word stadion, in fact,
may have originally meant “the standing place”—only later coming to mean the length
of the stadium (and, for us, the stadium itself). The judges, however, had a small seat-
ing section reserved for them on the southern embankment of the stadium. There
were also simple seats for dignitaries and diplomats.
The hippodrome—for equestrian events—was located south of the stadium, in the
broad, flat plain north of the Alpheus River. Although the hippodrome has not been
excavated, Pausanias gives us a description of the structure with particular attention
to the mechanical starting gates, designed by one Kleoetas, which provided a fair start
for as many as 40 chariots at one time. The starting line had the triangular shape of the
prow of a ship, with each of the two sides more than 400 feet long. A mudbrick altar at
the tip of the “prow” held a bronze eagle with outstretched wings. The contestants lined
up along the wings of the prow, behind ropes held by officials. They then moved slowly
forward; when they came even with the altar, the ropes were released and the race
began. The hippodrome track was probably about 2,000 feet long and 650 feet wide.
One lap of the hippodrome would have been about three-quarters of a mile long.8
Athletes at ancient Olympia competed to please Zeus. An Olympic champion was the
man most pleasing to the god, and the qualities that made him attractive to the god were
aidos (modesty and self-respect), sophrosune (moderation) and arete (excellence).
Pausanias tells us that the athletes who competed at Olympia had to swear an oath
in the bouleuterion (the archives building), before a statue of Zeus Horkios (Zeus
holding a thunderbolt in each hand) and upon slices of boar’s flesh—that they would
do nothing to dishonor the Olympic Games.9 The athletes also had to swear that
they had followed the regulations for training during the ten preceding months. The
athletes trained at Elis, another town in the western Peloponnesus, for the month
directly before the festival at Olympia.
From the Olympic Register, we have the names of more than 794 ancient Olympic
champions,10 who won a total of 1,029 events.11 The first recorded victor was Koroibos

of Elis, who won the stadion race in 776 B.C. The last champion we know about was
Zopyrus, a late-fourth-century A.D. boxer from Athens.12
Unfortunately, the Olympic Register is incomplete, nor does it include athletes who
competed but did not win. In the 293 Olympiads from 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., 4,760 events
were contested; our known 1,029 victories constitute less than 22 percent of the total
number. If the ratio between victors and victories recorded in the Olympic Register
(794:1,029) is representative of what actually happened over the entire history of the
games, we would expect to have 3,672 ancient victors—meaning that we know noth-
ing at all about 2,878 Olympic champions. Possibly future scholars will discover the
names and deeds of at least some of these unknown heroes.
Is it possible to determine the greatest Olympic champion? We know of seven athletes
who won three times in a single day, the so-called triastes. The only known athlete to
accomplish this feat on more than one occasion was Leonidas of Rhodes, who achieved
triastes status at four different festivals between 164 B.C. and 152 B.C. He was a swift,
powerful runner, winning the stadion (a sprint of 600 feet, or one length of the sta-
dium), the diaulos (a sprint of 1,200 feet, or two lengths of the stadium) and the hoplito-
dromos (a race with armor). Leonidas’s 12 gold medals (or, rather, olive wreaths) may
well make him the greatest Olympic athlete of antiquity, perhaps even of all time.
The ancient Olympic festival, based so completely on the cult of Zeus, came to a
close because of competition from another religion: Christianity. Following Constan-
tine (274-337 A.D.), most Roman emperors embraced Christianity as the state religion
and, as such, sought to end pagan cults and festivals, like the cult of Zeus at Olympia.
The most conspicuous competition for the Christian church came in the form of the
festive, intense and wildly popular Olympic Games. In 393 A.D. the Roman emperor
Theodosius I closed all pagan temples and called for the end of pagan festivals.

Ancient Olympiads: A Glossary of Events
stadion 600-foot sprint, one length of the racecourse.

diaulos 1,200-foot sprint, two lengths of the racecourse.
dolichos distance race of 2-3 miles, 16-24 lengths of the racecourse.
hoplitodromos race in which the men wore armor.
pentathlon competition of five events: discus, javelin, long jump, wrestling
and a stadion race. (The discus, javelin and long jump were only
contested as part of the pentathlon, not separately.)
pancratium combination of boxing, kicking and wrestling—like modern Thai
kick-boxing.
tethrippon four-horse chariot race.
synoris two-horse chariot race.
apene mule-cart race.
calpe a race for mares.
Date Event
776 B.C. stadion (600-foot sprint)
724 B.C. diaulos (1,200-foot sprint)
720 B.C. dolichos (distance race of 2-3 miles)
708 B.C. wrestling, pentathlon
688 B.C. boxing
680 B.C. tethrippon (4-horse chariot race)
648 B.C. pancratium, horse race
632 B.C. stadion and wrestling for boys
628 B.C. pentathlon for boys (discontinued same year)
616 B.C. boxing for boys
520 B.C. hoplitodromos (race in armor)
500 B.C. apene (mule-cart race; discontinued 444 B.C.)
496 B.C. calpe (race for mares; discontinued 444 B.C.)
408 B.C. synoris (2-horse chariot race)
396 B.C. competitions for heralds and trumpeters
384 B.C. chariot racing for teams of 4 colts
268 B.C. chariot racing for teams of 2 colts
256 B.C. races for colts
200 B.C. pancratium for boys

Growth of the Olympic Games
During the span of 1,200 years, from 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., only 23 events were con-
tested as a part of the festival at Olympia. They fall into four categories: men’s com-
petitions (8 events), boys’ competitions (5 events), equestrian races (8 events), and
specialty competitions for trumpeters and heralds (2 events). These 23 events were
not introduced all at once but gradually over time. Following is a list of what events
were added when, according to the Olympic Register:
The Other Olympiad

Games for Girls
In his Description of Greece, the second-
HIP/Scala/Art Resource, NY
century A.D. traveler Pausanias tells of a
second festival held at Olympia, called the
Heraia.
Every four years a committee of 16 mar-

ried women, one from each of the cities
of the region, wove a sacred robe called a
peplos for Hera (the wife of Zeus) and held
games—footraces for unmarried girls—in
three age groups. The three races were
held in the stadium at Olympia, though the
race was only 5/6 the length of the dromos
(the running track in the stadium) for boys
and men.
Pausanias vividly describes the girls

running their races: their hair hangs down
their back, their chiton reaches to just
above the knees, and they bare their right
shoulder as far as the breast (as can be
seen in the early-fifth-century B.C. bronze
figurine, probably from Sparta). Each vic-
tor received an olive wreath, a portion of
the cow that was sacrificed to Hera, and
the right to make an offering to Hera.
The Temple of Hera, the earliest temple at Olympia, was built around 600 B.C. It was
a Doric structure originally with wooden columns, though these were gradually replaced
with stone columns. Some scholars believe that in the beginning this temple was used to
house both the cult of Zeus and the cult of Hera, since the Temple of Zeus at Olympia was
not built for almost 150 years.—D.G.R.

The 12 Greatest Ancient Olympians
Leonidas of Rhodes (stadion, diaulos, hoplitodromos): 12 victories in four festi-

vals from 164 B.C. to 152 B.C.
Herodoros of Megara (competition for heralds): 10 victories in ten festivals from
328 B.C. to 292 B.C.
Hermogenes of Xanthos (stadion, diaulos, hoplitodromos): 8? victories in three festi-
vals from 81 to 89 A.D. (the Olympic Register is somewhat
unclear).
Astylos of Kroton (stadion, diaulos, hoplitodromos): 7 victories in three festi-
vals from 488 B.C. to 480 B.C.
Hipposthenes of Sparta (boys’ wrestling, wrestling): 6 victories in six festivals from
632 B.C. to 608 B.C.
Milo of Kroton (boys’ wrestling, wrestling): 6 victories in six festivals from
536 B.C. to 516 B.C.
Chionis of Sparta (stadion, diaulos): 6 victories in three festivals from 664 B.C.
to 656 B.C.
Nero of Rome (competition for heralds, tragedy, lyre, tethrippon, foals
tethrippon, 10-horse chariot): 6 victories in one festival in 67
A.D. (these games were later declared illegitimate).
Gorgos of Elis (diaulos, hoplitodromos, pentathlon): 6 victories in four fes-
tivals (dates unknown).
Aelius Granianus (diaulos, hoplitodromos, pentathlon): 5 victories in four fes-
of Sikyon tivals from 133 to 145 A.D.
Demetrios of Salamis (stadion, pentathlon): 5 victories in three festivals from 229
to 237 A.D.
Diogenes of Ephesus (competition for trumpeters): 5 victories in five festivals
from 69 to 85 A.D.
Notes
a. There are startling differences as well. Whereas the ancient festival was held in Olympia
over a period of about 1,200 years, the modern games move around the world from city to
city. The modern games, too, are much larger and more extravagant, probably the greatest
secular gathering of peoples in the history of mankind. At the 2000 games in Sydney, Aus-
tralia, for example, 10,651 athletes from 199 countries competed in 300 events, for which
6.7 million tickets were sold. And 3.5 billion people watched the games on television!

b. The Greek word athletes means “one who competes for a prize (athlon)” and could refer to
those who won symbolic prizes as well as prizes of material worth.
c. The altis at Olympia was an enclave of temples, altars and freestanding statuary enclosed
by a wall—the cult center of the sanctuary.
1. Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.5-8.
2. Inscriptiones Atticae, vol. 1 (2), 77.
3. Pindar, Olympian Odes 10.43-45.
4. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5, 8, 4.
5. Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.
6. Helmust Kyrieleis, “Zu Anfangen des Heligtums von Olympia,” Olympia 1875-2000, 125
Jahre Deutsche Ausgrabungen (Mainz am Rhein, 2002), pp. 215-217.
7. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5, 13, 8-11.
8. Pausanias, Description of Greece 6, 20, 10-19.
9. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5, 24, 9.
10. L. Moretti lists a total of 794 individual Olympic victors in two publications: Olympionikai,
i vincitori negli antichi agoni Olimpici (Rome: MemLinc, 1957).
11. This number includes Olympic victories of uncertain date and authenticity.
12. This information comes from a bronze inscription from the clubhouse of the athlete’s
guild at Olympia. The building was constructed in the first century A.D. by Nero and was
in continuous use until the late fourth century A.D. (see U. Sinn, Olympia: Cult, Sport and
Ancient Festival [Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2000], pp. 114-118).

Walking to Olympia
Who Went, How They Got There, and Where They Stayed
Tony Perrottet
There was a man who thought the journey to Olympia would be too much for him, and
Socrates said: ‘What are you afraid of? Don’t you walk around all day in Athens? Don’t you
walk home to have lunch? And again for dinner? And again to sleep? Don’t you see that if
you string together all the walking you do in five or six days anyway you could easily cover
the distance from Athens to Olympia?’”
—Xenophon, Memorabilia
Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis
A
ncient Greek spectators could never be
accused of being couch potatoes: They
had to be in good shape just to get to the
Olympic Games.
Most travelers went on foot, picking their
way over rocky trails that curled snake-like
through mountains and ravines. Including rest
days and stopovers, many people would have
The 200-mile trip from Athens to Olympia began

at Athens’s Dipylon Gate and proceeded past the
Kerameikos Cemetery, with its carved steles and funerary
sculptures. On foot, the journey took roughly two
weeks, and travelers needed both stamina and strength
to negotiate the rocky trails and treacherous mountain
passes along the way. (The large-bellied travelers
depicted on the fourth-century B.C. vase painting might
not have been hardy enough to manage such a trip.)
At least the Greeks didn’t have to worry about being
ambushed by highwaymen: A sacred truce, honored
throughout the Greek world, protected all those traveling
to the Olympics and the other panhellenic athletic
festivals at Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia.

allowed two weeks to reach the

site of the games at Olympia,

located in the Peloponnesus in
southwestern Greece, about 200
miles west of Athens. Along the
way, ancient travelers passed
through a traditional rural world,
dotted with temples full of sacred
relics, encountering vignettes of
eerie piety. According to the sec-
ond-century A.D. travel writer
Pausanias, Olympia was where
the aura of divinity was most
tangible on earth, and the closer
travelers got to their goal, the
more the air seemed to glow with
The 200-mile trip from Athens to Olympia began at a sense of pagan wonder. In this
Athens’s Dipylon Gate and proceeded past the Kerameikos
Cemetery, with its carved steles and funerary sculptures. way, the journey was a kind of
On foot, the journey took roughly two weeks, and travelers pilgrimage.
needed both stamina and strength to negotiate the rocky
Today, the road from Athens to
trails and treacherous mountain passes along the way. At
least the Greeks didn’t have to worry about being Olympia, driven by multitudes
ambushed by highwaymen: A sacred truce, honored of rental cars, follows almost
throughout the Greek world, protected all those traveling to
exactly the same route as it did
the Olympics and the other panhellenic athletic festivals at
Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia. 2,500 years ago—although at
times it takes a serious leap of
imagination to recapture the dreamlike atmosphere of ancient times. The initial escape
from the Greek capital follows a six-lane highway littered with billboards. But after a
few miles, the rural foundation of Greece reasserts itself, and we can at least begin
to see some of the same majestic mountain views that greeted groups of rank-and-file
Greek spectators as they trudged toward the Olympic Games.
Fans traveling from Athens would have left the city through the Dipylon Gate, kissed
their fingertips in homage as they passed the last shrines of the city, and set off past
Kerameikos Cemetery, against whose solemn funerary sculptures prostitutes plied
their trade at night. From here, they could take one last glance back at the Acropolis,
crowned by the Parthenon and a giant bronze statue of the goddess Athena. Athens was
the largest and richest city in mainland Greece, and was universally regarded as the
most artistically graceful in the entire Mediterranean world. Athenians themselves
were the Parisians of antiquity—vain, verbose, divisive, energetic, cerebral, brilliant,
contradictory and, to non-Athenians, unbearable. Deeply superstitious despite their
worship of Reason, they would have made careful sacrifices for a safe journey the
day before.

We can picture a group of those ancient travelers,
Erich Lessing
perhaps a dozen friends and family members, walking
together. The male travelers would all be wearing linen
chitons, the loose, sleeveless tunics made from two
squares of white cloth loosely draped over the body,
leaving one shoulder exposed. These tunics were usu-
ally worn to below the knees, but on the road they were
hitched up by a belt to make walking easier. The men
also wore leather sandals tied up the calves and wide-
brimmed hats called pastasoi. The one or two intrepid
women in the group would have worn brightly-colored
tunics that were ankle-length, with finer hats over their
ribbon-adorned hair. Some wore brooches and jewelry,
and carried parasols.
Greeks tended to travel light, with only a pouch slung
over the shoulder containing a single change of clothes,
a short cape (chlamys), some cooking utensils and a
woolen blanket for bedding. The better-off travelers
would have brought a servant as bearer, or a donkey
with panniers for provisions. Wealthy women brought
The route leading out of Athens was lined with pillars known
as Herms. These representations of Hermes, the patron god
of travelers, show only the deity’s face and erect penis. The
marble Herm shown here, a little more than 2 feet tall, dates
to the sixth century B.C. Found in Siphons, one of the islands
of the western Cyclades, the pillar is now in the National
Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Sonia Halliday
The Doric columns of a mid-sixth-

century B.C. temple rise above the
ruins of ancient Corinth, with the hilltop
site of the city’s acropolis looming
in the distance. After a week on the
road, travelers heading from Athens to
Olympia would have reached Corinth,
where they would have stopped for
a much-needed break. Corinth was
known for its drinking establishments
and its prostitutes, who turned tricks
in the temple to Aphrodite, located on
the crest of the hill. Travelers thus left
Corinth refreshed, ready to take on the
serpentine and picturesque road winding
through the Arcadian mountains.

more luggage, with cosmetics boxes and gowns. The truly rich, as we will see, were a
different breed, traveling across Greece in luxury safaris.
Thanks to the Olympic Truce—a cease-fire honored throughout the Greek world—
travelers enjoyed a degree of safety unheard of elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
They weren’t just spectators going to an over-hyped sports meet. They were holy
pilgrims, and to interfere with them was an act of sacrilege against Zeus himself.
Wars were stalled; feuds were put aside; highwaymen lay low. Even the powerful
king Philip of Macedonia (382-336 B.C.), father of Alexander the Great, had to apolo-
gize when some of his mercenaries shook down an Athenian traveler on the way to
the Olympics.
Most travelers on foot could make 15 miles a day on decent roads. The highway
started out well paved from Athens, the route marked by pillars dedicated to Hermes,
the patron deity of travelers; called Herms, these pillars showed the god’s face and
erect penis. But conditions quickly deteriorated, and the travelers’ pace slowed. To
cross the narrow isthmus connecting the peninsula of the Peloponnesus to the rest
of Greece, wayfarers had to shuffle in single file on a dangerous, narrow trail along
dizzying cliffs. In Greek legend, it was here that a villain named Scyron ordered hap-
less passersby to wash his feet
before giving them a swift kick in
Dan Smith/Getty Images

the face, sending them plunging
down into the turquoise sea. The
crumbling ledges and scree made
this a nerve-wracking trail; trav-
elers could trip and fall to their
deaths, or even be dragged down
the cliff by panicking mules.
(Only in the second century A.D.
did the Roman emperor Hadrian
finally improve the route, turn-
ing it into a fine highway wide
enough for two chariots to
pass abreast.)
Upon finally arriving at Olympia, the truly distinguished
It was a relief, after a week on spectators—ambassadors and officials—avoided the hordes
the road, to reach Corinth, gate- and stayed at an inn called the Leonidaion, a large squarish
way to the Peloponnesus and a building with an open interior courtyard (the remains of the
crossroads to the eastern Medi- building’s foundation are shown). A philanthropist named
terranean. This beguiling rest Leonidas of Naxos built the inn in the fourth century B.C.
Everyone else headed for the altis, or sacred precinct of
stop was renowned for its luxu- Zeus, with aristocrats setting up elaborate tents, equipped
rious marble arcades lined with with marble tiles and mosaic floors, and the poor throwing
drinking shops and a temple to down their bedding wherever they could, turning the site into
Aphrodite that was attended by a kind of sprawling refugee camp.

hundreds of proficient sex work-

From Ancient Olympic Games
ers. Streams of road-weary travel-

ers from Thebes, Argos, Thessaly
and Megara converged here for
some R-&-R, and were joined by
the first contingents of spectators
arriving from across the seas.
These international arrivals
came from Greek colonies as
far away as Spain and the Black
Sea. As Plato put it, the Greeks
perched around the Mediterra-
nean “like frogs around a pond,”
Upon finally arriving at Olympia, the truly distinguished
and for a few silver coins, travel-
spectators—ambassadors and officials—avoided the hordes
ing spectators could sleep on the
and stayed at an inn called the Leonidaion, a large squarish
decks of the innumerable Greek
building with an open interior courtyard (a model of the
merchant ships crisscrossing the
Leonidaion is shown in the foreground). A philanthropist
named Leonidas of Naxos built the inn in the fourth century
seas. The vessels were built for
B.C. Everyone else headed for the altis, or sacred precinct stability rather than speed, glid-
of Zeus, with aristocrats setting up elaborate tents, ing close to shore under a single
equipped with marble tiles and mosaic floors, and the poor square sail. An ancient cruise was
throwing down their bedding wherever they could, turning not without its pleasures: Ser-
the site into a kind of sprawling refugee camp. vants would prepare dinner in the
galley, and wine would be shared
amongst the passengers to fuel learned conversation under the stars.
From Corinth, one could hop a boat west to Elis, but most took the ancient highway
that wound through the mountains of Arcadia. Today, this road is still one of the love-
liest in Greece. Often no more than a single lane, it coils around villages perched on
precipices, past quiet waterfalls and over archaic stone bridges. In shady grottos, men
in peaked caps play backgammon and sip sweet black coffee outside taverns where
sides of lamb are roasted over coals. Orange trees drop their fruit across the byways,
and the road is occasionally blocked by herds of goats driven by white-bearded Ortho-
dox priests in black robes, who emerge momentarily from their isolated retreats.
For ancient travelers, Arcadia was the folkloric heartland of Greece, ruled by the
god Pan, who played his pipes in secret caves and furiously masturbated. They passed
enchanted springs where lepers swam to cure themselves, clusters of holy men car-
ried saplings on their backs as part of a chthonic fertility rite, and crowds of women
wailed and tore their faces in mourning for the hero Achilles, who had been killed
at Troy many centuries before. In the forests were tree stumps roughly carved into
statues of the gods and oaks adorned with the horns of sacrificial animals. Wayfar-
ers could pause at remote temples, where for a modest fee priests would show them
mythological artifacts like the thighbones of giants (actually dinosaur fossils),a the

hides of monstrous Gorgons, and personal artifacts supposedly once belonging to

Ulysses or King Agamemnon, all lovingly burnished by torch-light and framed by
curtains of purple and gold.
For accommodation in these backwaters, travelers stopped at rural inns called
pandokeion (“places that take all comers”)—dark and fetid little boxes with hard, nar-
row beds, leaky roofs and mosquito-filled ceilings. Even the well-to-do often had no
choice but to put up in these grim roadside hovels, whose owners were often associ-
ated with disease and ill omens: It was believed that if a sick person dreamed of an
innkeeper, he or she would soon die. Female hoteliers were widely regarded as witches,
who could turn hapless male travelers into mules or magically string them up to the
rafters by their genitals. And the cuisine at these sordid pit-stops was even worse
than at the cheapest roadside diner today. Rumors circulated of unlucky ancient trav-
elers finding human flesh and knucklebones in the stews.
In a way, the rough conditions of the journey to Olympia were good preparation for
the five days at the festival. When weary travelers finally found themselves gazing
upon the green valley of the Alpheus River, they would have been dazzled by the sheer
beauty of the sanctuary. They would have made their first tour of the site in a daze,
drinking in the illustrious artworks, the sheer color and excitement of the crowd, the
stadium they had heard about all their lives.
So long as one was not too finicky about the conditions.
Of course, the rich had it better than the poor. Ambassadors and officials, for
example, had reservations at the one luxurious inn in ancient Olympia, the Leonid-
aion—a sumptuous two-story complex named after Leonidas of Naxos, the visionary
philanthropist who built it in the fourth century B.C. These lucky guests could
stretch out in one of the 20 suites on each floor—the roomiest, on the corners, were 35
square feet—all with views of a central courtyard garden with flowers, fountains and
Doric columns.
Those without a reservation at the inn were sent out into the fields, to the Sacred
Precinct of Zeus, a walled-off enclave of pagan temples and shrines. The wealthiest
travelers arrived in sumptuous convoys attended by teams of horses, grooms and
stable boys. Their slaves would have already raced ahead to the sanctuary to pitch
silk tents with copious awnings that recreated all the comforts of home—marble tiles
and mosaic floors, favorite artworks and cedar dining tables, ivory wash basins and
statuettes. These high-society sports fans could dine on plates of beaten gold, drink
from crystal goblets and sleep on down pillows, all the while attended by retinues of
chefs, secretaries and retainers. The placement of these aristocratic tents around the
site required as much diplomacy as seating arrangements at a banquet—some spots
being more prestigious than others. The nouveau riche Greeks from Sicily and Asia
Minor were particularly flamboyant. In 388 B.C., the tyrant Dionysios I of Syracuse
set himself up in an enormous tent of golden silk, with lavish carpets and a team of
professional actors to read his poetry. (The extra spending did him little good—he was

denounced by orators for his cruelty as a ruler, his poetry was booed by the crowd as
doggerel, and his tent was looted by an angry mob.)
In 67 A.D., the emperor Nero descended on Olympia like an occupying general, with
a thousand wagons and high-stepping horses shod with silver and bridled with gold.
His route was swept clean by outriders gaily clad as Africans, and handsome Greek
boys with faces painted white were engaged to dance around the emperor’s carriages.
Nero’s banquets at the festival were just as excessive as back home in Rome: Guests
were served on silver plates studded with diamonds, and they drank out of goblets
carved from great chunks of lapis lazuli. His wife brought 500 asses with her on
the trip, so that she could bathe in their milk every morning, thus preserving her
creamy complexion.
As for the less-exalted spectators, most simply flung their bedding wherever they
could, huddling between altars, crowding elegant colonnades, nestling between the
statues of illustrious sporting champions. Others rented space in temporary shelters
or put up their own tents, sprawling like refugees across the surrounding country-
side. The smoke from thousands of cooking fires created a pall of pollution. Crowd
control was enforced by local officials with whips. Not for nothing does our word
chaos derive from the ancient Greek; with its lack of basic sanitation or facilities
and with the rowdy, anarchic throngs it drew, the Olympic festival was the Woodstock
of antiquity.
Even Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.) once slept in a makeshift barracks, head to toe with
snoring, drunken strangers. Plato made fast friends with his new roommates, sharing
simple meals and going to all the contests with them. Only after the Olympics, when
the philosopher’s new friends visited him in Athens, did they discover his true iden-
tity. “They were amazed at having had such a great man amongst them without rec-
ognizing him,” reports the author Aelian (c. 165-230 A.D.) in his Varia Historia. “He
had behaved towards them with modesty and simplicity, and had won the confidence
of them all without even resorting to philosophical discussions.”
By necessity, the ancient Greek sports fan could not have been too finicky about
personal hygiene. The irregular water supply at Olympia was an ongoing problem in
the summer. Rain might not have fallen for several months in this corner of southern
Greece, making the chalky waters of the Alpheus River undrinkable. The nearby Kla-
deus River would have receded to a stagnant trickle.
During heat waves, the lack of water could be dangerous. The plane trees of the
sacred grove gave little protection from the sun, and shelters turned into ovens dur-
ing the day. There was no shade at all in the sports arenas, where for religious reasons
spectators were actually forbidden to wear hats. Not surprisingly, the second-century
A.D. writer Lucian reports that spectators at the games would collapse from heat
stroke. Some would even expire. Ironically, the philosopher Thales of Miletus (c. 620-
565 B.C.)—who once wrote that water was nature’s most precious gift—died of dehy-
dration on the Olympic festival meadow.

The organizers did what they could to ease the drought. Wells were sunk at the
site—nine have been excavated by archaeologists, their interiors lined with shell-
limestone—and local vendors were appointed to bring fresh drinking water on mule-
back from a spring 2 miles up in the valley. But this water could not come close to
providing for the masses; 40,000 people could fit into the stadium, and historians have
estimated that the total crowd, including workers and hangers-on, could easily have
reached 70,000.
As for washing, the athletes and VIPs had decent bathhouses; everyone else went
dirty. Even before the games began, the air was thick with body odor. This pungent
atmosphere was not improved by the thousands of cooking fires lit every morning
and night, sending clouds of smoke and billowing ash into spectators’ eyes.
What could the enterprising organizers provide in the way of personal facilities
for the hordes? Public sanitation, even in the richest Greek cities, was never a top
priority; not until the age of imperial Rome were large-scale sewers developed. At
Olympia, the pine forests and the dry river beds to the south and west became mass
latrines, with odors wafting intermittently over the proceedings.
During the five days of the games, conditions for spectators would continue to dete-
riorate. Rotting garbage was dropped into the makeshift wells, including the bones of
hundreds of sacrificial animals. Not surprisingly, summer fevers ripped through the
crowd. Lucian, perhaps with some exaggeration, noted that spectators “would die in
droves of the epidemics,” presumably gastroenteritis and diarrhea. The huge num-
bers of black flies can hardly have helped. The Greeks did not realize that the insects
transmitted bacteria, but they knew how maddening the pests were—which is why,
before the games, Olympic officials sacrificed at the altar of Zeus Aponymos, “the
Averter of Flies,” to minimize infestations. It seems they had some success. Pliny the
Elder (23-29 A.D.) reported that after this ritual, the flies began to perish in droves.
Aelian says that the swarms voluntarily retired to the opposite bank of the Alpheus
River and only returned to Olympia when the festival was over.
And yet, as the attendance figures suggest, none of these miseries could keep ancient
sports fans away. The games were sensationally popular, the greatest recurring event
in antiquity, held without fail for a mind-boggling run of nearly 1,200 years. For the
Greeks, it was considered a great misfortune to die without having been to Olympia.
One Athenian baker boasted on his gravestone that he had attended the games 12
times. “By heaven!” raved Apollonius of Tyana, a holy man of the first century A.D.
“Nothing in the world of men is so beloved by the Gods.”
What was the secret of the games’ longevity? What kept the hordes coming back,
generation after generation? It was a question that the Athenian philosopher and avid
sports buff Epictetus pondered late in the first century A.D. He argued that visiting
the Olympics was a metaphor for human existence itself. Every day was filled with
difficulties and tribulations: unbearable heat, pushy crowds, grime, noise and endless
petty annoyances.

“But of course you put up with it all,” he said, “because it’s an unforgettable
spectacle.”
This essay is adapted from The Naked Olympics by Tony Perrottet, © 2004 by Tony Per-
rottet. Published by arrangement with Random House, an imprint of Random House Pub-
lishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
Note
a. See Adrienne Mayor, “Sea Monsters and Other Ancient Beasts: A Tale from a Grecian Urn,”
Archaeology Odyssey, March/April 2002.

The Other Games
When Greeks Flocked to Nemea
Stephen G. Miller
T
he Olympics may be the best known of ancient Greece’s athletic competitions,
but the sanctuary at Olympia was only one of four sites where games were
held. Greeks also flocked to games at Delphi, Isthmia and Nemea. These so-
called panhellenic festivals were governed by a sacred truce that protected people
traveling to any of the four sites—where
Photo courtesy of Stephen G. Miller

men from throughout the Greek-speaking
world competed in boxing, wrestling and
track-and-field events. A crown of vegetal
matter was awarded to the victors—olive
at Olympia, laurel at Delphi, pine at Isth-
mia and wild celery at Nemea. The best
athletes were those who won at least once
at each of these games; circuit-victors,
they were called.
In 573 B.C. Nemea became the last of the
four sites to receive panhellenic status.
Nemea sits in a small valley in the Arcadian
mountains of the northeastern Peloponne-
sus. The valley is naturally swampy, viable
only for grazing; indeed, the name “Nemea”
After some 12 weeks of digging through more than

20 feet of earth, author Stephen G. Miller’s excavation
team discovered the fourth-century B.C. stadium floor
at Nemea. A temple dedicated to Zeus was also built
in the fourth century B.C., amid a grove of cypress
trees. Three of the temple’s columns have survived
from antiquity; the other two have been reconstructed
by Miller’s team.

derives from the verb nemein, mean-

ing “to graze.” In the summer, how-

ever, the valley dried out sufficiently
for the Nemean Games to be held.
Myth tells us that the Nemean
Games were founded in memory of
an infant named Opheltes, who was
killed by a serpent when his nurse,
Hypsipyle, set him on a bed of wild
celery. Thus the Nemean Games
were, like all the other panhellenic
festivals, funeral games; the judges
wore black robes as a sign of mourn-
ing, and the wild-celery victory crown
had a direct connection to the story of
the baby’s death.
In the southwestern part of the
Nemean sanctuary are the remains
of the Hero Shrine of Opheltes. This
sixth-century B.C. man-made mound
seems to mimic the Pelopeion, the
shrine at Olympia associated with the
cult of the hero Pelops. The elongated
Nemean mound was built of alter-
nating layers of reddish and whitish
earth; the layers, roughly between 6
and 8 inches thick, seem to have been
After some 12 weeks of digging through more than 20 sieved, since they are almost com-
feet of earth, author Stephen G. Miller’s excavation pletely devoid of stones and pebbles.
team discovered the fourth-century B.C. stadium floor
at Nemea, as shown in this photograph from 1974. Each layer contained one or more
A temple dedicated to Zeus was also built in the fourth
drinking vessels. The most common
century B.C., amid a grove of cypress trees. Three of
type was the two-handled skyphos,
the temple’s columns have survived from antiquity; the
which, in some layers, was buried
other two have been reconstructed by Miller’s team.
along with the wine jugs known as
oinochoai. In one case, an oinochoe was surrounded by four skyphoi—a sort of ancient
martini set. In another, an oinochoe was positioned on its side with its mouth open-
ing onto another jug, as if liquid were still pouring from one vessel into the other.
It appears that the builders first “purified” the earthen fill by filtering it through a
sieve; then they sanctified each layer by the pouring of a libation. The ritual was con-
cluded when the libation vessels were set in the ground, the final step in the process
of sanctification.

The layers were built up in one construction, probably during a single year, but
were subsequently “repaired” in some areas. The parts of the mound that have been
excavated have revealed no evidence of an actual burial.
In addition to serving as a shrine, the mound was also used by spectators, who sat
on its slopes to watch the games. In the sixth century B.C., the stadium at Nemea ran
along the eastern side of the mound. The surface of the stadium’s racetrack seems to
have been a layer of white clay, and letters carved on the track’s stone starting blocks
distinguished the different lanes; these letters are dateable to the late sixth or early
fifth century B.C. A number of weights, which athletes would have held while jump-
ing—have been found alongside the track and are dateable to the same period.
The equestrian events took place at the hippodrome on the western side of the mound,
where a series of clay layers containing chariot tracks have been found. Horse races
might have taken place in the morning, so that the spectators could sit on the mound
with their backs to the sun. In the afternoon, perhaps, the people moved to the eastern
side of the mound, in order to watch the footraces and other athletic events.
Unlike our modern secular Olympic games, the ancient panhellenic festivals were
closely associated with religion. A temple existed at Nemea in the sixth century B.C.,
but around 415 B.C. it was destroyed by a violent conflagration. Arrowheads and spear
points suggest that a battle caused this destruction, a battle that may well have taken
place during maneuvers by the Spartans against the Argives during the course of the
Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). The stadium was abandoned, and the games were
moved to Argos, about 18 miles to the south. The festival did not return to Nemea until
about 330 B.C., when the Temple of Nemean Zeus was constructed about 100 yards
northeast of the Opheltes shrine, upon the remains of an earlier Archaic temple.a
With the return of the games to Nemea, the entire sanctuary underwent major
change. The southern end of the mound was enclosed by a pentagonal wall (again,
apparently in imitation of the Pelopeion at Olympia). A bath was constructed over a
part of the early stadium track, its drain cutting through still more of the track. And
a three-compartment reservoir with a capacity of about 3,500 cubic feet was built in
the area of the earlier hippodrome. The new horse track was likely located a short
distance to the west.
The Nemeans also built a brand-new stadium, which our team from the University
of California at Berkeley began to excavate in 1974.
This new stadium is a quarter of a mile southeast of the Temple of Nemean Zeus,
cut back into a hillside between two natural ridges. The earth dug out from between
the ridges was piled at the open northern end to form an artificial terrace support-
ing the track. Although the contours of the earthen fill made the outline of the sta-
dium clear even before we dug our first trench, we did not know at what depth the
stadium floor would be found.

For 12 weeks we dug carefully through the

accumulated debris, constantly concerned

that we might accidentally dig through the sta-
dium floor without identifying it. This debris,
which had washed into the stadium from the
hill above, produced no artifacts; not until our
13th week did we begin to find some coins and
pottery fragments. On the very last day of the
first season (July 19, 1974), a portion of the
stone water channel that surrounded the track
began to appear. By the end of the day we had
also uncovered a small portion of the stone
starting line, at a depth of nearly 23 feet.
Patience and persistence had been rewarded,
and great celebrations followed that evening.
Soon, however, our mood shifted dramati-
cally, for the next morning Turkey invaded
Cyprus, our local workmen were mobilized
in case of war, and we sent our students back
to California.
If we had continued excavating by hand
Straddling the stone starting line at Nemea’s
with a crew of 20 local workers for 50 weeks a
stadium, three men demonstrate how ancient year, we would have needed 29 years to clear
runners began a race. Almost 2 feet wide, the whole stadium. Fortunately, in 1975 we
with grooves cut into the stone, the starting acquired a Caterpillar front-end loader, which
line is located at the southern end of the removed more than 3,000 truckloads of silted
track. The runner placed the toes of his lead debris; only the final few feet of earth above
foot in the front groove and the toes of his the ancient track required digging by hand.
other foot in the back groove. At Nemea, a
vertical post like this one was set some 17
feet in front of the starting line and was used
for long-distance races; the athletes ran up
and down the track, turning around the post.
The runner placed the toes of his lead foot in

the front groove and the toes of his other foot
in the back groove. The painting, a detail from a

fourth-century B.C. krater in the Athens’s National
Archaeological Museum, illustrates this stance. Also
depicted on the vessel is a turning post. At Nemea,
a vertical post like this one was set some 17 feet
in front of the starting line and was used for long-
distance races; the athletes ran up and down the
track, turning around the post.

Even so, we still needed nine years (which were

not consecutive) to complete the stadium excava-
tion. We finished in 1990, with the removal of the
major road that led into the valley and bisected
the stadium—a project that required a major
diplomatic effort.
During the course of the excavations, we deter-
mined that the track at the Nemean stadium had
been nearly 195 yards long, almost exactly the
same size as the track at Delphi, but shorter than
the 210-yard track at Olympia. (Of course, in an era
when no records of times and distances were kept,
and only the winner’s name was announced, such
differences between the sites were not significant.)
We discovered three rows of stone seats along the
western side of the track. At Olympia, a simple
earth embankment was used for seating. The spe-
cially built seats at Nemea were part of an evolu-
tion of permanent seating, though they were not as
extensive or sophisticated as the elegant stone seats Before the start of a race, runners
that would later come to be used during the Roman at Nemea would line up in front of
a catapult-like starting mechanism
period, at such places as Delphi and Athens. called a hysplex, a reconstruction of
The stone water channel, a part of which we had which is shown. Two cords stretched
along the length of the starting line
uncovered on that last day of the 1974 excavation and were attached to wooden posts.
season at the southern end of the track, continued When a signal was given, the torsion-
northward on both sides of the track and fed basins sprung posts were released, and the
cords fell to the ground. A fair start
was thus ensured for every race; any
over-anxious runners would have
barreled clumsily into the cords.
Scratched on the walls of the stadium

tunnel, a 40-yard-long passageway that
led from a locker room (or apodyterion)
to the arena, are graffiti identifying
several athletes known from antiquity.

One of them was Telestas, who
triumphed in boys’ boxing at Olympia
in 340 B.C.; at Nemea, he marked
his name at the bottom of the stone.
Above Telestas’s name, someone else,
perhaps another athlete, added a word:
niko, meaning “I win!”

placed at regular intervals around the stadium floor. This kind of channel, which has
been found at many other stadiums, including those at Olympia and Delphi, seems
to have provided water both for drinking and moistening the track. The water was
drawn from a natural spring more than a quarter of a mile away.
A row of blocks next to the water channel supported a wooden platform from where
the robed judges oversaw the compe-
tition. The judges were from Argos,

and a concentration of Argive coins
was discovered around and behind the
platform. (Written sources tell us that
the judges came from Argos, though
even in the absence of such evidence,
we would assume this to be the case,
since Argos controlled the site and the
games from the beginning.) On the
opposite (western) side of the track,
the greatest concentration of coins
was from Corinth. So it seems likely
that spectators from the two cities
assembled on either side of the track,
cheering on their own competitors
and fueling one of ancient Greece’s
traditional rivalries.
The starting line, at the southern end
of the track, was almost 2 feet wide,
and was marked with two grooves
cut into the stone, as was typical in
the early Hellenistic period. The rear
edge of each groove was vertical so
that the runner’s toes could gain pur-
chase, and the front edge was beveled
to prevent the runner from tripping.
A runner would place the toes of his
lead foot in the first groove and the
toes of his other foot in the second Clad in a tunic, a barefoot woman strides out of the
groove, which was set back several stadium tunnel at a recent revival of the Nemean
inches. This stance—with one foot Games. In 1995, a group decided to bring back the
ancient athletic festival, allowing participants to change
slightly ahead of the other, arms
in the apodyterion, oil their bodies and proceed through
extended, body leaning forward in the tunnel to the arena—just as athletes did in the fourth
anticipation of an explosive start—is century B.C. About 1,900 people now belong to the
exactly what we see in many ancient Society for the Revival of the Nemean Games, which
paintings and sculptures. will hold the third Nemead beginning on July 31.

A single stone base with a socket for a vertical post lies a little more than 17 feet
in front of the starting line and about 11 feet west of the center of the track. A turn-
ing post—attested in written sources and seen in vase paintings—was located here.
The long-distance races were run up and down the track, probably 20 times, with all
the runners turning around this single post. The sprints were run in lanes with each
runner turning around his own individual post. These individual posts were set in the
sockets of the starting lines.
The starting mechanism used for the footraces was called a hysplex. The hysplex
consisted of two cords stretched along the starting line, one at waist level and one at
knee level. The cords were attached to wooden posts at either end of the starting line.
These posts were torsion-sprung (the catapult was then a recent invention, and its
technology was used in this mechanism), so that when the starter gave the signal, the
posts were released, snapping to the ground and lowering the cords. If an overeager
runner started too soon, he became quickly entangled in the cords and tripped—for
all the spectators to see.
The hysplex would thus guarantee a fair start to every race. Indeed, part of the
attraction of such athletic events, then and now, is that winners are determined by
strictly objective criteria. The first to cross the finish line, the athlete who jumps or
throws the farthest, the wrestler who is still standing—they are the winners.b
The Modern Nemean Games (Chitons Optional)
In 1995 a local group of people formed the Society for the Revival of the Nemean Games.
They wanted to experience the connection with the past that we had felt in 1994, when
we held footraces at the Nemean stadium. The society now has some 1,900 members from
around the world, and revived the Nemean Games in 1996 and 2000. Authenticity has been
one fundamental aspect of the revival; another has been the idea of participation. Anyone
should be able to walk into the apodyterion, remove his or her clothes, oil their bodies and
proceed barefoot through the tunnel and into the fourth century B.C.
The athletes are summoned to swear the oath, modeled on that used at Olympia: “Do you
swear to abide by the rules of the Nemean Games and to do nothing that would bring shame
to you, your family or the spirit of the ancient Games?” The athletes respond, orkizomai,
meaning “I swear.”
Initially, we were concerned about potential damage to the ancient site, but the absence of
shoes dramatically reduces wear and tear, and most of what is touched is earth. The columns
of the locker room are protected by scaffolding and a tent. Life-sized photographs of the
walls of the tunnel provide a place for modern graffiti—a “guest-book” of the new games.
In the two previous Nemeads, more than 1,300 people from 45 countries, ranging in age
from 10 to 93, have walked through the stadium’s tunnel. This year, the third Nemead will
be held, as in antiquity, beginning with the second full moon after the summer solstice: July
31—S.G.M.

The stadium at Nemea was never completed, or at least no wall was ever built to
retain the massive earth fill of the northern end of the track (the lack of a retaining
wall is the principal reason that the northern end of the track has not been preserved).
Why did the Nemeans fail to build such a wall? Probably because, as our excavations
have revealed, the Nemean Games were once again moved to Argos in 271 B.C. For
what reason, we do not know. In any case, the second relocation of the games allows
us to date the stadium and all of the other facilities at Nemea to between about 330
B.C., when the games first returned to Nemea, and 271 B.C.
In 1978 we discovered the stadium’s entrance tunnel, through which the athletes
would pass on their way into the stadium, along the west side of the track. Both ends of
the 40-yard-long tunnel had been silted shut. Scratched on the walls of the tunnel are
numerous graffiti, some of which contain the names of known athletes from antiquity.
One of the names is Telestas, who won the boxing championship in the boys’ category
at the Olympic Games around 340 B.C. By the time he scratched his name at Nemea,
he must have been a mature, seasoned athlete. Above his “autograph” on the tunnel
wall, and scratched in a different hand, is the verb niko, meaning “I win!” The author
of the word niko isn’t known—he might have been rejoicing after the competition or
self-congratulating beforehand—but the sentiment is very appropriate to the place
where athletes passed.c
The tunnel itself was cut through the soft bedrock, and its walls and rounded ceiling
were built with shaped stones. Athletes would enter and depart the stadium through
the tunnel, which led from the stadium floor to a smallish building of about 2,000
square feet with a three-sided interior courtyard. This was the apodyterion, or ancient
locker room. It was here that the athletes undressed, stored their clothes and oiled
their bodies in preparation for competition.
In 1994 we completed our excavations of the stadium.
We landscaped the site, adding paths, signs, benches and water fountains among the
oleander, Scottish broom, pine trees and cypress trees that we had planted in 1979, in
order to hold back the erosion of the earth embankments. A parking lot and a guard’s
house were built at the entrance.
The site was turned over to the Greek state, and it officially opened to the public
on July 7, 1994. The high point of the celebration, for the 1,500 people who had gath-
ered, was to see the track used for races that duplicated, as precisely as possible, the
races that had taken place there more than two millennia earlier. The participants
dressed in the locker room, went through the tunnel, and ran out onto the track when
their names were called. Judges dressed in black and carried long switches to flog
those who committed fouls; and a trumpeter blasted a signal, followed by the herald’s
announcement of each competitor’s name.
A helmet containing marble squares with letters on them was offered to the run-
ners. The letter drawn by each corresponded to one of the lanes. Other judges made

sure that the runners’ toes were firmly in the grooves. Theodosios Zavitsas, whose
pick first touched the starting line during the 1974 excavations, called the start of the
races: “Poda para poda [foot by foot], etim me [ready], apite [go]!” (The words poda
para poda and apite were, in fact, used in the ancient festivals at the start of a race.)
With the call, he pulled the release cords of the starting mechanism, the barrier cords
were hurled to the ground and the race was on.
The finish line, set at the 300-foot mark, was watched by another set of judges, who
tied a ribbon around the winner’s head and awarded him a palm branch. The her-
ald announced the name of the winner, who then ran a victory lap around the track
while the crowd cheered and showered him with flowers—exactly as had been done
in antiquity.
We were not authentic in two respects. First of all, both males and females par-
ticipated, whereas in antiquity women were banned from taking part in panhellenic
games on pain of death. Second, though athletes at the panhellenic festivals competed
in the nude, we provided chitons (tunics) to those who wanted to wear them. Everyone
did. But feet were bare, so that the sense of contact with the ancient soil and the start-
ing blocks was immediate.
At the end of the races, the winners came together to receive their prize—a crown
of wild celery. As the shadows grew long, we left the stadium having shared a thrill-
ing and inspiring experience. With the blast of a trumpet, the thwack of the hysplex,
the thud of feet running down the track and the roar of a real crowd, the stadium at
Nemea had come back to life.
Photos courtesy of the author.
Notes
a. Three columns of the second sanctuary, the Temple of Nemean Zeus, still stand; some of
the columns were taken down about 425 A.D. by Christians seeking building material for a
new basilica in the region; 33 other columns were left lying around, and recently we have
begun to reconstruct some of them.
b. This objectivity was largely missing from the musical competitions that were held origi-
nally at Delphi and Isthmia, and later at Nemea. These were decided by a panel of judges
susceptible to influence and prejudice. Hence the Olympics, which did not include musi-
cal competitions, came to be regarded as the purest, most corruption-free of the games.
c. The tunnel would later be used as a place of refuge by an early Christian attempting to
avoid the onslaught of the Slavic invasion of Greece in 585 A.D. (By this time, the sta-
dium had long been abandoned, and a farming community populated the Nemean valley.)
Before he was caught, he hid his coins under a stone. His scattered skeletal remains and
the traces of a wound on the top of his skull tell the story of his violent end, a fate that
befell the entire Nemean valley.

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The

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society i

About the Biblical Archaeology Society

The articles in this collection originally appeared in Archaeology Odyssey.

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society ii

The Sporting Life: Five Books on Ancient Athletics 1

Ancient Combat Sports 4

When the Games Began: Sport, Religion and Politics 15

Walking to Olympia: Who Went, How They Got There, 27

The Other Games: When Greeks Flocked to Nemea 36

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society iii

Nothing New Under the Sun

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society iv

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society v

© 2017 Biblical Archeology Society vi

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 1

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 2

lucid—accessible to the general reader and suitable as a textbook for courses on

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 3

One of the three ancient Greek combat sports,

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 4

His eyes fixed in an intense, burning glare, a wrestler

controls his opponent in this 6-inch-tall bronze statue

According to some ancient authors, such

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 5

A muscled boxer pauses, perhaps following a

Preparing to fight, a boxer wraps his wrists with

wrestler Tiberius Claudius Marcianus recounts

For when the One Great Scorer comes

“The purpose of these Olympiads is less to win

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 6

Preparing to fight, a boxer wraps his wrists

The ancient Greeks did not view their

half of that weight consisting of padding, and

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 7

Other than biting or eye-gouging, any

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 8

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 9

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 10

Reliving the Death of an Olympian

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 11

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 12

1. Dio Chrysostom 31.110.

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 13

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 14

participate in events also contested in

Nestled in a valley bordered by the Alpheus and

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 15

According to the fifth-century B.C.

If you wish to celebrate great games

Every four years, athletes, dignitaries,

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 16

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 17

Games.5 The region of Greece

where Olympia is found is thus

The Art Archive/Dagli Orti

Only naked athletes and the judges

© 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society 18

An athlete balances on one foot while his trainer