History of the Ancient Olympic Games

With a total cost of $13 billion for the last summer edition in Rio De Janeiro, the Olympic Games are one of the most expensive, biggest and most watched sport events in the world. In 2020 athletes from all over the world will compete in 33 sports in Tokyo, with an estimation of about 4 billion viewers all around the world.

It's easy to forget that the roots of this event go back 3000 years ago to a site on the western coast in the south of ancient Greece. Let us take a look at the history of the ancient Olympic games.

Olympia

The Olympic Games were part of a five-day religious festival that was held every 4 years in Olympia in the southwest of ancient Greece. The event was held in honor of Zeus, the supreme god in ancient Greek mythology. This four year period, or also called an 'Olympiad', was the base for the ancient Greek time management.

The first Olympics date back as far as the 8th century BC, this is based on inscriptions pointing out the first event winners at the site, some evidence even suggests the 10th century BC. In the early beginning the district Elis organized the games, but over the years the district lost most of its power and the festival was taken over by the Pisatans.

The competitions were open to all Greek male citizens and consisted of nine sports: one lap sprint in the stadium, diaulos or twice the length of the stadium, long distance, pentathlon, boxing, chariot race, pankration (a combination of boxing and wrestling), horse race, and a race in armor for the distance of the diaulos.

Female Greek citizens weren't allowed to participate, and although unmarried women could watch the events, if a married woman was caught watching, as fatal punishment she was thrown off a mountain.

It is a common myth that the Greek city-states had a period of peace during the festival, the so-called Olympic peace or truce. Even though religious pilgrims and athletes were allowed safe passage to Olympia and the host city was not attacked, the Greeks never stopped their wars.

Religion

The Olympics had an important role in Greek religion. All athletes prayed to the gods to ask for their victory, and made sacrifices of animals, cakes or produce at one of the hundreds of altars. At the great altar of Zeus, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, there was even an offering of 100 oxen every Olympics.

Another indication of the religious importance is that the winners of the events did not receive money or other valuable objects, but they were celebrated in poems and statues as they were considered touched by the gods themselves, some of them were even declared halfgods or heroes.

The end and the revival

As the power of Rome overtook Greece, the Games opened up to more athletes. Citizens from the whole Roman empire were allowed to participate and some Roman emperors even restored the site in adoration of the Greek tradition. All of this came to an end however when Christianity was adopted by the Roman empire and the first Christian emperor Theodosius I forbade all pagan traditions, including the Olympics, around 400 AD.

After the Greek war of independence in 1821 there was more and more interest in reviving the Olympics and in 1859 the first modern games were held again in Athens. Not much later the International Olympic Committee was founded and organized the games in their current form, rotating between host cities around the world every 4 years and finally at the 1900 Paris Summer Games female athletes were allowed to take part in the competitions. The games started to attract more and more participants and athletes and it grew until its current size.