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THE ANCIENT GAMES

The Ancient Games
Holding hands

According to legend the original Olympic Games were founded by the Greek hero Herakles (Roman Hercules), better known for being obliged to complete twelve apparently impossible tasks, the ‘Labours of Hercules’ – known as his ‘athla’ – which is one contender for the origin of the word ‘athlete’ though one of the rivals is mentioned below.

NOT LIKE NEWMARKET

One of Herakles’ labours was that of cleaning the stables of King Augeus. According to this legend Herakles, having completed the task by diverting a river through the ‘Augean’ stables, was denied his reward by the king whom Herakles then defeated (or possibly killed) in a wrestling match. According to the legend this wrestling match was the first Olympic event.

Herakles

The first clear record of the games credits them to King Iphitos of Elis, a small state on Greece’s Peloponnesian peninsula, south of Corinth. It included the site of Olympia on which, according to an equally convincing legend, a thunderbolt had landed, tossed from Mount Olympus by Zeus, king of the gods, in one of his frequent bouts of irascibility. Consequently Olympia contained a shrine and temple to Zeus including a famous statue of the god, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was made of ivory and gold by the most celebrated of Greek sculptors, Phidias, who had also carved the statuary on the Parthenon in Athens. There is, however, some earlier evidence that games involving several cities began as early as 1300 BC under King Aethlius, also of Elis. Some sources suggest that the word ‘athlete’ owes its origin to King Aethlius rather than to the athla of Hercules. King Iphitos conceived the idea of the games as a means of securing a ‘truce’, or period of peace, amongst the warring Greek city states. The Greek word is ‘ekecheiria’ which literally means ‘holding hands’. Wars were suspended during the peace and no death penalties were carried out.

Four horse chariot

THE TROJAN WAR

War and games were strongly associated in Greek culture. According to Homer’s Iliad, the Greek hero Achilles, after killing the Trojan prince Hector at the siege of Troy, curbed his wrath by organizing games which included chariot racing, ‘hurtful boxing’, wrestling, running, hurling a weight, archery and throwing the javelin, events incorporated into the early Olympics which date from about the time of the Trojan War. Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato rationalized athletic competition as a preparation for military prowess.The games of King Iphitos are first recorded in 776 BC and were preceded by the reading of the ‘sacred truce’ whose preamble read: ‘May the world be delivered from crime and killing and freed from the clash of arms.’ Cities which broke the truce were excluded from the games and fined.

Zeus

21ST CENTURY OLYMPIC PEACE

In July 2004 the Turkish football club Galatasaray of Istanbul and their Greek rivals Olympiakos of Athens signed an ‘Olympic Truce’ as a sign of goodwill to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games in Athens. This was a symbolic act of friendship between their two nations and signified the warming of relations following a long period of hostility.

Throughout the games a fire burned, marking the theft of fire by Prometheus from Zeus, king of the gods. There was no torch in the Ancient Games. As the years passed, the site at Olympia became more elaborate, with the stadium itself surrounded by temples to Zeus and Hera, his wife, a refectory and a workshop for the sculptor Phidias. In 1958 archaeologists found a drinking vessel of the right date at the site engraved with the words ‘I am Phidias’s’. The site also contained the ‘Leonidaion’. This was built by Leonidas of Naxos in about 350 BC as accommodation for the athletes and may thus be regarded as the first ‘Olympic Village’, though lavatories were not introduced until two centuries after it was built! In 12 BC the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia was refurbished following a gift of money from King Herod of Judea, a king not normally associated with charity or with religious tendencies.

At the first Olympic Games there was only one event, a race over a distance known as a ‘stade’ (about 192 metres, supposedly sixty times the length of Herakles’ stride) which was won by a local cook called Coroebus who, running naked as was the custom, thus became the first Olympic champion (despite the claims of Herakles as noted above). A standing long jump of over 7 metres by Chionis of Sparta in the following century would be creditable in the 21st century though he was probably helped by the use of weights held in the hands to propel himself forward. Within two centuries cities from throughout the Greek world were sending competitors, only men of Greek descent being admitted to the games. Other events were gradually introduced. In 708 BC the pentathlon was contested, supposedly devised by Jason when he was not searching for the Golden Fleece. In AD 67 at a special event to please Nero, the emperor himself won the chariot race, being the only competitor. Other entrants withdrew and who can blame them? Women were not allowed to participate or even watch the Greek games on pain of death, though presumably the truce meant that the execution would have to wait until the games ended. The only exception was the priestess of the goddess Demeter whose marble seat in its place of honour may still be seen at Olympia. Women could, however, win prizes as a result of owning horses which won the chariot race. There were also separate games for maidens, in honour of the goddess Hera, held at a different time and consisting, it seems, just of a 160 metres foot race. Leonidas of Rhodes was the first multiple medallist; he won the stade (192 metres), the diauos (4 stadia) and the hoplitodromus (24 stadia) in 164, 160 and 156 BC, a record unbeaten in the Ancient Games.

Olympia

OLYMPICS AND OLYMPIADS

From 776 BC the games were held every four years. An ‘Olympiad’ was a four-year period which began with the celebration of the Olympic Games. This tradition continues, following the revival of the Olympic Games in the modern era, even when the games themselves do not take place because of external influences. Thus the period from 1916 to 1920 remains the 6th Olympiad of the modern era even though the 1916 Olympics did not take place because of the First World War. The term ‘Olympiad’ does not apply to the Winter Games.

In 330 BC the Panathenaic stadium, which had hosted games in Athens since 566 BC, was rebuilt in marble in a natural hollow between two hills near Athens by Lycurgus, a Greek politician and pupil of the philosopher Plato. This stadium was restored in the 19th century and used for the first Modern Olympics of 1896. The Ancient Games continued for almost 1,200 years until in 393 AD they were abolished by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius who considered them to be a pagan festival. They were always held in Greece except for the year 80 BC when they were moved to Rome by the Roman general and dictator Sulla. Every four years messengers were sent to all the Greek states (including colonies in Spain, Italy, Libya and Turkey) inviting them to send competitors to the games at Olympia, their safe passage being guaranteed by the Olympic Peace. As the Games developed, a system of pre-qualification was introduced. Greek judges would screen those who wished to participate in order to eliminate those who were not of the required standard (like qualifying times for the Modern Olympics). There was even some rudimentary seeding but the usual way of determining contests was for competitors to draw clay tokens from a vessel, each marked with a letter of the Greek alphabet. For example two wrestlers drawing the tokens marked with an alpha would fight each other and others followed this pattern with further letters. One of the athletes from Libya, Eubotas, was so confident of winning a foot race in 408 BC that he commissioned a victory statue beforehand and dedicated it on the day of his victory. The games were attended by thousands of spectators, amongst them the philosopher Plato and the Athenian statesman Themistocles.

Plato

PINDAR

Plato was one of many scholars of the Ancient World who were drawn to the Olympic Games. On one occasion the mathematician Pythagoras attended, ran into the centre of the arena and bared his right thigh which, he claimed, was made of gold. The Geek poet Pindar wrote several odes to celebrate Olympic achievements including the following:

If ever a man strives

With all his soul’s endeavour, sparing himself

Neither expense nor labour to attain

True excellence, then must we give to those

Who have achieved the goal, a proud tribute

Of lordly praise, and shun

All thoughts of envious jealousy.

Alexander the Great was an enthusiastic supporter of the Games, one of his soldiers winning the pentathlon. From about 700 BC the competitions included foot races of varying lengths, wrestling, jumping, throwing (discus, javelin), while Jason’s Pentathlon involved running, jumping, discus, javelin and wrestling. In 680 BC ‘quadriga’ races were introduced, between chariots drawn by four horses like those memorably depicted in the film Ben Hur There was a brutal version of boxing in which the hands were covered in hard leather, weighted with metal strips. There were no ‘rounds’, the contest continuing until one man collapsed, bloody and exhausted, or acknowledged defeat by lifting a finger. There was also ‘pankration’ (literally ‘all force’) in which no holds were barred: boxing, wrestling, kicking and strangling were all permitted – but no gouging of the eyes! The Greek word for ‘contest’ is ‘agon’ from which our word ‘agony’ is derived; there was no room for wimps in the sports of the Ancient Greeks! Gymnastics were also introduced. In 396 BC contests were introduced for trumpet-blowers which would presumably have made the occasion as deafening as the ‘vuvuzelas’ which became such a prominent feature of the World Cup football tournament held in South Africa in 2010. In accordance with the instructions given to the king of Elis by the sacred oracle at Delphi, victors were garlanded with crowns of wild olives, and such was the prestige associated with victory that they were sometimes awarded pensions by their home cities even though they were competing as individuals and not as representatives of any state. In 412 BC Exainatos of Akragas in Sicily, after triumphs at the games, was welcomed home by 300 chariots which passed through a hole in the city wall since his fellow citizens thought that with such men they needed no walls to protect them. He also received a lifetime exemption from taxation. On the other hand, according to the poet Pindar, those who had performed poorly had to creep home surreptitiously and in one case a boxer called Alis had a mocking statue erected by his opponents ‘because he never hurt anyone’.

CHEATING

The first recorded cheating was in 388 BC at the 98th games when a boxer called Eupolos of Thessaly was found to have bribed his opponents in order to secure his victory. They were all fined and the money was used to build bronze statues of Zeus which lined the road to the stadium at Olympia.