Page 68 - All About History - Issue 53-17

Ancient Olympics

admitted: “I think you’re happy to put up with part, irrespective of social status. Indeed, the
all of this when you think of the splendour of flamboyant Alcibiades refused to participate in
the spectacles.” any sport except chariot racing, the preserve of
the rich, because it would mean competing with
Athletes people of a lower class.
The only other category involved age. There
Being a masculine religious festival in honour were a handful of contests for boys: boxing,
of dead heroes and the great god Zeus, women, wrestling, the ‘stade’ race, and – for one year only
with the one exception of the Priestess of in 628 BCE – the pentathlon. For every other
Demeter, were forbidden to attend the Games competition, athletes had to be be adults over
— though a parallel four-yearly women’s festival 20. A month before the Games began, all were
was held at Olympia in honour of the goddess required to gather at Elis, the city that controlled
Hera. Gender was not the only restriction. No the Festival. Here, they were compelled to train
convicted murderer could enter unless they had and compete in initial heats under the stern
first undergone a lengthy purification ritual and watch of the Hellanodikai (‘Judges of the Greeks’),
all participants were required to speak fluent while decisions were made about who should The playboy politician Alcibiades of
Athens stunned Olympia by entering
Greek. Theoretically, any free man could take compete in which event. seven chariots at the 416 BCE Games
It was now, too, that age categories were
decided, something that without supporting
documentation could be very sensitive.
Sometimes, judgements were controversial. In
468 BCE, Pherias of Aegina was prevented from
taking part in the men’s wrestling because he
looked too young. Another contestant, Nicasylos
of Rhodes, was so well-developed that he was
made to wrestle as an adult even though he was
only 18. He won his match, as well as others
elsewhere, but so brutal were the contests that
he died at 20.
It was participants in contact sports who
attracted the greatest interest and controversy.
Perhaps the most famous was the wrestler Milo,
victorious at five successive Olympics over 20
years. Stories about his strength were numerous,
and when a neighbouring city attacked his
hometown of Croton in south Italy, Milo dressed
in a lion skin and strode out to meet them
wielding a club. Believing him to be Heracles
The Philippeion, commemorating reincarnated, the invaders fled. Even Milo’s death
Philip II’s victory over Greece, housed was sensational. The travel writer Pausanias
statues of Macedon’s royal family
reports that “somewhere in the Crotonian

From the A second contest, the Arrhichion of Phigalia Pheidias of Athens
first Ancient diaulos, is introduced, wins the pankration (who also designed
the Parthenon)
heralding a flurry of
despite being dead:
Olympics to new events, including his opponent, in pain completes his 13-metre
the pentathlon and
the first wrestling (708 BCE), from a dislocated tall seated statue of
Zeus, faced in gold
toe, gives up just
Modern Games chariot racing (680 before Arrhachion and ivory, carrying
BCE) and horse racing dies from Winged Victory in its
(648 BCE). strangulation. outstretched hand.
776 BCE 724 BCE 720 BCE 564 BCE 458 BCE 430 BCE 416 BCE

The first After Orisippus of Local architect Libon’s Alcibiades of Athens
recorded Megara won the stade Temple of Zeus is appropriates the
Olympic Festival race at the previous completed, paid for Games for his personal
is held. The only games, ‘losing’ his from the spoils of war aggrandisement,
contest, the loincloth as he ran, against a neighbouring entering a record
stade race, is athletes begin to city-state, and adorned seven chariots and
won by a local compete naked, possibly with sculptures treating all the
baker, Coroebus believing that nudity showing Pelops, Apollo spectators to
of Elis. made them faster. and Heracles. a banquet.
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