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The history of the ancient Olympic games is extraordinarily rich. The Olympic Games appeared in the ninth century B.C. At that time, the Greek states were ravaging each other in endless wars. Iphitheus, king of Aelis, came to Delphi to learn from the Oracle how he, the ruler of a small country, could protect his people from wars and plunder. The Oracle of Delphi, whose predictions and advice were considered absolutely correct, answered Iphitus:
It is necessary that you found the Games that please the gods!
Iphitheus set out without delay to meet the king of neighboring Sparta, the mighty Lycurgus. Apparently, Iphitheus was a good diplomat, because Lycurgus decided (and all the other rulers agreed with him) that Aelis was from now on a neutral state. Immediately, to prove his peaceful intentions and to thank the gods, Iphitheus instituted the Athletic Games, which were to be held at Olympia every four years. Hence their name – the Olympic Games.
At first the games were attended by athletes from the two cities of Elis – Elis and Pisa. The year 776 BC, the year of the first all-Greek Games, was first recorded in the annals of the Games. Only thanks to the ancient Greek tradition of carving the names of the Olympians on marble columns set up along the banks of the River Althea, the name of the first winner, Koreb, a cook from Elis, came down to us.
With the approach of the Olympic Games messengers (pheors) were dispatched from Elyda in all directions to announce the day of the feast and the “sacred truce”. They were greeted with triumph not only in Hellas itself, but also everywhere the Greeks settled. The warriors put aside their weapons and set out for Olympia. When the envoys of all the Greek states gathered together, they surely felt their national unity.
Then a unified calendar was established for the Olympic Games, which they decided to hold regularly every four years “between the harvest and the grape harvest. The feast of athletes, consisting of numerous religious ceremonies and athletic competitions, lasted first one day, then five days, and later an entire month. In order to take part in the games, one had to be “neither a slave nor a barbarian, not to commit a crime, not to commit blasphemy or sacrilege. (Barbarians were considered those who were not citizens of the Greek states.)
History of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece – the emergence of new spectacular events
At the first 13 Games the only competition was the stadiodromos – the one-stadium race. In 724 BC the dioulos (a distance of 384.54 m) was added as a double race. Then, in 720 BC, at the 15th Olympiad, the pentathlon, or as the Greeks called it, pentathlon, consisting of simple running, long jump, throwing discus and javelin, wrestling, appeared. Seven more Olympiads later, in 688 BC, the program was enriched by fist fights, 12 years later by chariot fights and finally, at the 33rd Olympiad, in 648 BC, by pankration, the most difficult and cruel kind of competition.
The contestants wore a special bronze cap on their heads and wrapped leather straps with metal cones around their fists when they entered the fistfight. The fighter, preparing to strike, took precautions: protected his head with his hand; tried to stand so that the opponent was blinded by the sun, and then with all his might struck his ribs, face and torso with his fist, virtually shackled in iron. The fight continued until one of the two men declared himself defeated. Usually the athletes left the battlefield disfigured, maimed, and bleeding. Often they were carried out of the stadium half-dead.
Pankration combined wrestling and fist fighting. It was forbidden to use teeth and to twist or break fingers of the opponent, to put metal armbands on hands. But any blows, grapples, kicks, painful holds were allowed; you could tip your opponent on the ground and squeeze his throat.
Later the program of the Games included a run with weapons, a race of trumpeters and heralds, a competition in a chariot pulled by mules, a competition for children in wrestling, horse racing, pentathlon), and in 200 BC, at the 145th Olympiad, there was even a children’s pankration.
On the eve of the opening of the Olympics the spectators admired the marble statues of the winners of the previous Games, which were located between the stadium and the River Althea. The statues were erected at the expense of the towns from which the new “demigods” came: the first Olympian Co-Reb of Aelida, “the strongest of the strong” Milon of Croton, Polytes of Corina, the fastest athlete of the 212th Olympiad, Lasphenes of Te-bei, who ran 156 stadia in a race against a horse, Nicola of Akria, who had won five races at the two Olympics and many other great athletes.
The young men were also shown the statues of Zeus, which rose near the hill of Crone. Each of these statues was ordered and placed on the fines imposed on those competitors in the Games who cheated, tried to bribe their opponent or maimed them during the competition.
