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Ancient Olympia and the Olympics, past and present.
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olewyvern, classicist and friend extraordinaire, who was on the trip to Greece with me in 2006. Happy Birthday!
Via![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oyceter, a post evaluating the concept of an indigenous Olympics. Unsurprising evaluation is unsurprising, though I do think that the Vancouver Olympics have inaugurated a new level of indigenous participation, and hope that future Games will build on this beginning.
The following is a collation of the photos, journal entry, and notes taken from our licensed tour guide's talk by me at ancient Olympia on 15 January 2005, salted with a few links and later comments. Short version: Ancient Olympia was one of my favorite sites in all of Greece, one of the places at which I felt closest to the past in the present. It's also, not coincidentally, one of the best preserved. And the ancient Olympics were fascinating.
1/15 - A delicious breakfast from the dining room, with great views. Never put warm milk in coffee. Then down the mountain to ancient Olympia. First was the Museum, which was redone for the Olympics and is now quite nice. The coolest things where the pediments from the Temple of Zeus--the Classical group is vastly better--the Nike of Pausanias (sadly faceless), and the Hermes of Praxiteles. It's an amazing sculpture. I really liked the Nike though. We also saw bis from Phidias' workshop, including his wine cup--pretty cool. Then we went to the actual site, which is huge and really cool. The colonnades of the palaestra were reconstructed, and they looked really cool among the trees. They've begun reconstructing the Phillippeion, which made me happy, and one column from the Temple of Zeus is standing again. That must have been a huge earthquake [that toppled the structure in, iirc, the 6th century CE] because the column drums are monumental. We saw the Altar of Hera where the Olympic flame is lit and trooped down the stadium. Oak trees everywhere. Gabe won the dialos, and then we played Ultimate Frisbee. My team lost miserably, but hey, in the stadium at Olympia! After wandering around we went down to the new museum, which is small but well done--it's of the Olympic and the other PanHellenic games. They had an almost-complete mosaic on display in the floor that was awesome. Then we got on the bus and went to eat freshly killed chicken in Aghios Georgios--we'd called ahead the night before. Best chicken dinner of my life.
I can't get the map to embed properly, but this satellite photo shows the site well: the hill is at the top, the stadium to the right.
The earliest games were prehistoric; in the classical era the Olympian games were the first in the cycle of the PanHellenic games, which were:
--Olympian games, in honor of Zeus (olives)
--Nemean games, in honor of Zeus (celery)
--Pythian games, in honor of Apollo (laurel)
--Isthmian games, in honor of Poseidon (pine)
Only free Greek men were allowed to enter the competition in all of the games, and throughout most of their history women were barred from viewing them. My notes tell me that a woman named Kallipatara was the first woman to do so, but not who she was or why. The one exception to the rule was the priestess of Chythymne Demeter, who was responsible for the eternal flame. (juniperphoenix has video of the torch-lighting ceremony, which takes place at the altar of Hera in Olympia approximately eight months before each modern Olympiad.) Despite the fact that women were barred from attending, one woman was in fact an Olympic victor: since the victor in the chariot race was accounted whoever owned the chariot team (the charioteer was working for money), in the classical era a team owned by a woman did win, and she was thus an Olympic champion. Naturally after that the rules were changed to close the loophole in question.
The Olympian games were the biggest and most popular event in the PanHellenic cycle because the ancient Greeks dated the beginning of history from the first recorded games in 776 BCE. Greek records speak of "three years after the games in which so and so was champion" rather than dates; luckily, lists of the victors survive. The Olympian games lasted five days (around the August-September full moon), and followed this schedule:
First day: take the oath; process into stadium
Second - fourth days: Athletic events (first event: the stade or sprint--a stadium was always 600 stades, the distance from a man's elbow to wrist, but the stade varied at each stadium, so that the sprint was 192 meters at Olympia, the longest, but only 178m at Delphi, the shortest). Then the dials (down and back the stadium); the pankration (boxing, only rules no gouging or biting); and the pentathlon (discus, stade, wrestling, javelin, longjump).
Fifth day: Winners crowned with the kotinos. Winners gave their names to the Olympiad, and could be expected to be hugely rewarded by their poleis
The Olympic eirene (peace) was declared to bracket the games for one month before and one month after; no poleis ever violated the truce, which would have been a grave act of sacrilege. I'll note here in passing that in ancient Greek, one does not declare war, but rather peace; war is assumed to be the default state. This is actually not unlike the current state of world affairs. Fittingly enough, since it was the practice of ancient Greek warriors to dedicate their arms to Zeus, the museum is chock-full of weapons and armor that were excavated from the site.
Because Olympia was sacred to Zeus, only priests were allowed to live on-site. (The site was selected due to its position between the triangular hill at the top of the map and the river. The triangular hill is posited to have some sort of connection with Indo-European divinity/fertility triangles, as I recall, but I have no idea what.) My photos, and what remains, give only the barest suggestion of what Olympia was like in its heyday: Antus, the sanctuary, had more than 70 altars inside it; the stadium seated 45,000 people and their attendants; 3000 statues of athletes in bronze were displayed throughout; Phidias' statue of Zeus, 40 feet high (seated), made of wood covered with ivory and gold, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
The games lasted continuously for 1200 years, until the emperor Theodosius (who hated fun, seriously) forbade paganism and the games along with it in 394 CE. A few years later, Olympia was buried under 8m of mud after a massive earthquake, which diverted the river Alpheios over the site. This had the effect of preserving the site, and it was rediscovered in 1800 CE by the French, and excavated by Germans, led by Schliemann. I should note here a little bit of imperialism in action--most archaeological sites in Greece are not administered by the Greek government, but by foreign entities, since most archaeological sites were found, and the rites to the artifacts therein negotiated, before the Greek government valued its classical heritage (i.e. the C19th). Thus some of the greatest treasures of ancient Greece do not reside in Greece but abroad; the Parthenon marbles get all the fame here, but all three of the temple pedimenta that survive intact are in exile too.
The Nemean Games were revived in 1998 (side note: Nemea's cool too) both for educational purposes and to counter the commercialism of the modern Olympics, and have been held every four years since on June 21.
olewyvern, classicist and friend extraordinaire, who was on the trip to Greece with me in 2006. Happy Birthday! Via
oyceter, a post evaluating the concept of an indigenous Olympics. Unsurprising evaluation is unsurprising, though I do think that the Vancouver Olympics have inaugurated a new level of indigenous participation, and hope that future Games will build on this beginning. The following is a collation of the photos, journal entry, and notes taken from our licensed tour guide's talk by me at ancient Olympia on 15 January 2005, salted with a few links and later comments. Short version: Ancient Olympia was one of my favorite sites in all of Greece, one of the places at which I felt closest to the past in the present. It's also, not coincidentally, one of the best preserved. And the ancient Olympics were fascinating.
1/15 - A delicious breakfast from the dining room, with great views. Never put warm milk in coffee. Then down the mountain to ancient Olympia. First was the Museum, which was redone for the Olympics and is now quite nice. The coolest things where the pediments from the Temple of Zeus--the Classical group is vastly better--the Nike of Pausanias (sadly faceless), and the Hermes of Praxiteles. It's an amazing sculpture. I really liked the Nike though. We also saw bis from Phidias' workshop, including his wine cup--pretty cool. Then we went to the actual site, which is huge and really cool. The colonnades of the palaestra were reconstructed, and they looked really cool among the trees. They've begun reconstructing the Phillippeion, which made me happy, and one column from the Temple of Zeus is standing again. That must have been a huge earthquake [that toppled the structure in, iirc, the 6th century CE] because the column drums are monumental. We saw the Altar of Hera where the Olympic flame is lit and trooped down the stadium. Oak trees everywhere. Gabe won the dialos, and then we played Ultimate Frisbee. My team lost miserably, but hey, in the stadium at Olympia! After wandering around we went down to the new museum, which is small but well done--it's of the Olympic and the other PanHellenic games. They had an almost-complete mosaic on display in the floor that was awesome. Then we got on the bus and went to eat freshly killed chicken in Aghios Georgios--we'd called ahead the night before. Best chicken dinner of my life.
I can't get the map to embed properly, but this satellite photo shows the site well: the hill is at the top, the stadium to the right.
The earliest games were prehistoric; in the classical era the Olympian games were the first in the cycle of the PanHellenic games, which were:
--Olympian games, in honor of Zeus (olives)
--Nemean games, in honor of Zeus (celery)
--Pythian games, in honor of Apollo (laurel)
--Isthmian games, in honor of Poseidon (pine)
Only free Greek men were allowed to enter the competition in all of the games, and throughout most of their history women were barred from viewing them. My notes tell me that a woman named Kallipatara was the first woman to do so, but not who she was or why. The one exception to the rule was the priestess of Chythymne Demeter, who was responsible for the eternal flame. (
juniperphoenix has video of the torch-lighting ceremony, which takes place at the altar of Hera in Olympia approximately eight months before each modern Olympiad.) Despite the fact that women were barred from attending, one woman was in fact an Olympic victor: since the victor in the chariot race was accounted whoever owned the chariot team (the charioteer was working for money), in the classical era a team owned by a woman did win, and she was thus an Olympic champion. Naturally after that the rules were changed to close the loophole in question.The Olympian games were the biggest and most popular event in the PanHellenic cycle because the ancient Greeks dated the beginning of history from the first recorded games in 776 BCE. Greek records speak of "three years after the games in which so and so was champion" rather than dates; luckily, lists of the victors survive. The Olympian games lasted five days (around the August-September full moon), and followed this schedule:
First day: take the oath; process into stadium
Second - fourth days: Athletic events (first event: the stade or sprint--a stadium was always 600 stades, the distance from a man's elbow to wrist, but the stade varied at each stadium, so that the sprint was 192 meters at Olympia, the longest, but only 178m at Delphi, the shortest). Then the dials (down and back the stadium); the pankration (boxing, only rules no gouging or biting); and the pentathlon (discus, stade, wrestling, javelin, longjump).
Fifth day: Winners crowned with the kotinos. Winners gave their names to the Olympiad, and could be expected to be hugely rewarded by their poleis
The Olympic eirene (peace) was declared to bracket the games for one month before and one month after; no poleis ever violated the truce, which would have been a grave act of sacrilege. I'll note here in passing that in ancient Greek, one does not declare war, but rather peace; war is assumed to be the default state. This is actually not unlike the current state of world affairs. Fittingly enough, since it was the practice of ancient Greek warriors to dedicate their arms to Zeus, the museum is chock-full of weapons and armor that were excavated from the site.
Because Olympia was sacred to Zeus, only priests were allowed to live on-site. (The site was selected due to its position between the triangular hill at the top of the map and the river. The triangular hill is posited to have some sort of connection with Indo-European divinity/fertility triangles, as I recall, but I have no idea what.) My photos, and what remains, give only the barest suggestion of what Olympia was like in its heyday: Antus, the sanctuary, had more than 70 altars inside it; the stadium seated 45,000 people and their attendants; 3000 statues of athletes in bronze were displayed throughout; Phidias' statue of Zeus, 40 feet high (seated), made of wood covered with ivory and gold, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
The games lasted continuously for 1200 years, until the emperor Theodosius (who hated fun, seriously) forbade paganism and the games along with it in 394 CE. A few years later, Olympia was buried under 8m of mud after a massive earthquake, which diverted the river Alpheios over the site. This had the effect of preserving the site, and it was rediscovered in 1800 CE by the French, and excavated by Germans, led by Schliemann. I should note here a little bit of imperialism in action--most archaeological sites in Greece are not administered by the Greek government, but by foreign entities, since most archaeological sites were found, and the rites to the artifacts therein negotiated, before the Greek government valued its classical heritage (i.e. the C19th). Thus some of the greatest treasures of ancient Greece do not reside in Greece but abroad; the Parthenon marbles get all the fame here, but all three of the temple pedimenta that survive intact are in exile too.
The Nemean Games were revived in 1998 (side note: Nemea's cool too) both for educational purposes and to counter the commercialism of the modern Olympics, and have been held every four years since on June 21.