History of the Olympics: Origin, Myths, Rebirth | Early European History And Religion

OLYMPICS IN ANCIENT GREECE

Opening Ceremon of the first modern Olympics in 1896

The ancient Olympic Games was a religious sporting event dedicated to Zeus held at Olympia located near the west coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula in southern Greece. The Greek attributed mythological origins to it and permitted any freeborn Greek men to participate. Most athletes didn’t receive much reward; the clothing they wore was skimpy if they wore any at all; and the audience was mostly male (the death penalty awaited any married woman who entered the Sanctuary of Zeus on the days of the games). While unmarried women could participate in foot races in the Heraean Games, and married ones could enter chariot races by proxy (but they weren’t allowed to actually compete), the Olympics themselves were an almost exclusively male gathering. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, August 21, 2016; July 25, 2021]

The ancient Olympics officially began in 776 B.C. in Olympia, Greece. They were held every four years for over 1150 years — from 776 B.C. to A.D. 393., quite a remarkable feat when one considers the modern Olympics have been around since 1896 and the Mediterranean region experienced great changes and upheavals during the time the ancient Olympics were conducted. Festivals and games were celebrated at Olympia long before 776 B.C., after which its regular recurrence was used for expressing the date of the year and was regarded as a national festival.

Olympia, where the ancient Olympics, were held, was “a sacred site dedicated to Zeus, king of the gods. Located in the Alpheus river valley in southern Greece, it should not be confused with Mount Olympus, located in northern Greece and legendary home of the major Greek gods. Olympia was not only the original site of the Olympics; it was the permanent venue for 293 successive Olympics. Because it was a pagan festival it conflicted with the growth and spread of Christianity and Roman emperors, who were Christian, banned the Olympics in A.D. 393.

What is known about the ancient Olympics comes from ancient texts and excavations at Olympia and other sites. There are many depictions of athletes and sporting events on vases and sculptures. Many of the texts were written by people who did not witness the events themselves and sometimes wrote them centuries after they happened.

Websites on Ancient Greece: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Lives and Social Culture of Ancient Greece Maryville University online.maryville.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org; British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org; Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu

Books: “The Ancient Olympics” by Nigel Spivey (Oxford University Press, 2004); “The Olympics: Myth, Fraud and Barbarism” by Kyriakos Simopouls; “The Naked Olympics” . By Tom Perrottet (Random House 2004); “A Brief History of the Olympics” by David Young, a classics professor at the University of Florida (Blackwell Press, 2004).

Early History of the Olympics in Ancient Greece

Ancient Olympic starting line
We don’t know why or how the Olympics games began. One hypothesis is that they began a ceasefire during the semi-legendary Trojan war. The first named winner was apparently Koroibos, a cook from the city of Elis, who won the stadion (See Below). [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 25, 2021]

For the first dozen or so Olympic games there was only one athletic event and that was the stadion or 200 meter (210 yard) race. The distance corresponded to the length of the stadium track. Later, other events were added. In the beginning the athletic contest lasted only one day but that was later increased with the addition of other competitions. The athletes, all male, competed naked. Since there were no stopwatches, there are no records of the winning times but the names of the winners and the various events they won over the years were carefully documented. Records show that in 724 B.C. a 400 meter (420 yd.) race was added and then, in succeeding years, other events (wrestling, boxing, chariot races, pentathlon, and longer distance races) were also included, increasing the success and popularity of the games. [Source: Canadian Museum of History]

Some say that ancient Greek history began with the first Olympiad in 776 B.C. Pythagoras said life is "like the great and crowded assembly at the Olympics Games." They were so important that yearly time was marked in four year units between Olympics. Year one was the year first quarter of the 195th Olympiad. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast Like most ancient rituals, the Olympics were a religious event, and this dictated their timing: they were held every four years between August 6 and September 19. The influence of the games was so pronounced that some historians measured time in four-year increments, known as Olympiads. The second century CE writer Phlegon of Tralles (best known for On Marvels his collection of tales of revenants and vampires) wrote a whole book called Olympiads. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 25, 2021]

Informal games had been held for several centuries before the Olympics began. The Olympics themselves grew out of funerary games held in honor of the Greek god Zeus. A cult to worship Zeus formed sometime the 10th century B.C. There are several myths describing how the Olympics came into existence. In one, Kronos and Zeus fought for possession of the Earth at Olympia, and the games became a commemoration of Zeus's victory. Another says the Olympics were instituted by a warrior named Pelops to celebrate his marriage to Hippodamia. Pelops had won his bride by killing her father in a chariot race in which the warrior bribed a charioteer to pull a pin out of the axle on the father's chariot.◂

Origin of the Olympics

Stephen Instone wrote for the BBC: “Traditionally it has always been said that the Games started at Olympia in 776 B.C. about the time that Homer was born. But for several centuries before that date Olympia had been a cult site for the worship of Zeus, a numinous location away from human dwellings, overlooked by a hill, with the sacred River Alph flowing through it. [Source:Stephen Instone, BBC, February 17, 2011. Instone is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He has written widely on Pindar and ancient Greek athletics, and was an advisor to the BBC TWO programme 'First Olympians'.|::|]

“What was it that caused people to change from honouring Zeus solely with dedicatory offerings, to honouring him through athletics? Several factors seem to have been involved. One is the rise of the Greek polis, or city-state. As city-states in different locations grew, each wanted a means of asserting its supremacy, so would send representatives to Olympia to become supreme in physical competition. |::|

“Connected with this is the development of military training. The Games were an attractive means of getting men fit. Another factor is the traditional Greek view that the gods championed a winner, so by establishing a competition aimed at producing supreme winners, they were thereby asserting the power and influence on humans of the supreme god, Zeus.” |::|

Mythical Origin of the Olympic Games

There are competing legends that describe the origin of the Olympics. One legend, attributed to the poet Pindar, claims the games were established by Herakles (Hercules), the son of Zeus, who brought a sacred olive tree to Olympia According to Pindar, Heracles established an athletic festival to honor his father, Zeus, after he had completed his labors, because Zeus helped him conquer Elis when he went to war against Augeas.[Source PBS, Wikipedia]

According to the International Olympic Committee: The oldest myth which concerns the beginning of the Olympic Games is that of Idaios Daktylos Herakles. The Greek historian Pausanias gives us a story about the dactyl Heracles (not to be confused with the son of Zeus Hercules) and four of his brothers, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius and Idas, who raced at Olympia to entertain the newborn Zeus. He crowned the victor with an olive wreath. Other Olympian gods engaged in wrestling, jumping and running contests.

Another myth has the hero Pelops (from which the name of the Peloponnese region of Greece originates) establishing the festival after defeating King Oenomaus in a chariot race. Oenomaus, the king of Pisa, had a daughter named Hippodamia, and according to an oracle, the king would be killed by her husband. Therefore, he decreed that any young man who wanted to marry his daughter was required to drive away with her in his chariot, and Oenomaus would follow in another chariot, and spear the suitor if he caught up with them. The king's chariot horses were a gift from the god Poseidon and therefore supernaturally fast. The After Pelops fell in love with king's daughter he persuaded Oenomaus' charioteer Myrtilus to replace the bronze axle pins of the king's chariot with wax ones. Naturally, during the race, the wax melted and the king fell from his chariot and was killed. After his victory, Pelops organized chariot races as a thanksgiving to the gods and as funeral games in honor of King Oenomaus, in order to be purified of his death. It was from this funeral race held at Olympia that the beginnings of the Olympic Games were inspired.

Later History of the Olympics in Ancient Greece

Hoplitodromos
The golden age of the Olympics was the late 6th century to the early 5th century B.C. with the peak was perhaps in 476 and B.C. After that the games were marred by refusal of the city states to accept Olympia’s authority over the games, divisions within Greece and war. The games went through a period of ups and downs after the Romans took over Greece in 146 B.C., with a low reached when Nero was emperor (See Below).

Contrary to myth wars were not called off during the Olympics but there appeared to have been times when truces were called during fighting to accommodate the Olympics. For a brief period in the 5th century an Olympics appeals board settled disputes involving the city states that participated in the Olympics.

Many of the political problems that have tarnished the modern Olympics were present in the ancient Greek games. In 424 B.C., during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans were banned. Once during a wrestling match, spectators had to run for cover when a military force from Elis chose that moment to launch an attack. Fighting went into the night in the middle of some of Olympia’s most sacred temples with spectators cheering the combatants. But no matter how bad things got the Olympics were never canceled, not even as the Persians prepared to invade and Athens and Sparta fought in the Peloponnesian War.

Olympia

Olympia (10 kilometers from Pirgos in western Peloponnese) held its first competitions over 3000 years ago. The early events included wrestling, chariot racing and horse racing as well artistic and literary competitions. The prize given to the winners was a crown of olive branches that was always cut from the same tree. A common practice for the winners in his home town was to knock down the city walls.

Nestled in a verdant valley nourished by the Alpheios and Kladeos rivers and encircled by rolling hills, according to Reuters, “the sacred site of Olympia was once home to an array of buildings, grand temples, and various venues dedicated to the celebration of athletic competition. While the current dimensions of the site were well-documented, the precise expanse of ancient Olympia remains elusive due to the transformative effects of earthquakes, floods, and other natural events over the centuries. Landmarks included the Hill of Kronos. Structures were typical classical Greek buildings and temples with ochre and reddish-colored roofs. There was a surrounding forest. A hippodrome, an athletics track, and a meadow with spectator camps were the main sports sites.[Source Adolfo Arranz and Han Huang, Reuters, August 1, 2024]

Olympia
When you visit the archeological site of Olympia the first place you come to is the Prytaneion where the winners ceremonies took place. To the south is the Doric temple dedicated to the Hera, goddess of the Seasons. Special running races were held here that only virgins from Eleia were allowed to participate in. Nearby is a Temple dedicated to Zeus that used to house an ivory and gold statue of the god.

Another set of ruins located a short distance away includes the wrestling school, gymnasium and baths. At the foot of a small mountain small edifices were raised by each city-state to house jars which contained the blood of sacrificed animals. Next to this is a semicircular marble tank that held Olympia's water supply and near hear is the stadium where the events where held. It is possible to walk through the same tunnel used by the naked athletes as entered the stadium with up to 40,000 spectators cheering.

End of the Ancient Greek Olympics

In the 291st and last ancient Olympiad in 388 A.D. and Armenian prince won the boxing event. Six years later, in A.D. 393, the Christian Byzantine emperor Theodosius I (A.D. 379-395) halted the Olympics as part of an effort to crack down on paganism and make Christianity the state religion.

The reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine (306-337) saw a consolidation of the social position of Christianity within the huge Roman Empire. His actions beginning in A.D. 311 paved the way for the toleration of Christianity but Christianity did not become the legal religion of the Roman Empire until the reign of Theodosius I. He not only made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, he declared other religions illegal.

The Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, required the cessation of any non-Christian celebration. The Codex Theodosianus reads: “XV.xii.1: Bloody spectacles are not suitable for civil ease and domestic quiet. Wherefore since we have proscribed gladiators, those who have been accustomed to be sentenced to such work as punishment for their crimes, you should cause to serve in the mines, so that they may be punished without shedding their blood.

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast Christianity didn’t crush the ancient Olympic spirit, or if it did it wasn’t only because of a single monarch. Prior to Theodosius actions regional games had sprung up around the Mediterranean but as tastes changed and coffers were drained there was no longer the material or social support for the formal Olympics. Athletic events, however, continued and one view sees the jousting contests of the Middle Ages as the medieval successor to the games. Competitors travelled a circuit of tournaments looking to prove themselves just as modern Olympians compete at more than just the Olympics. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 25, 2021]

relief of the pentathlon

Birth of the Modern Olympics

Ancient Olympia was rediscovered in 1766. The revival of the games was first suggest by a Greek poet named Panagiotis Soutsos in 1835. Much of the mythology about amateurism and sportsmanship that lies at the foundation of the modern Olympics is rooted more in Victorian England than ancient Greece.

The Olympics were revived in Athens in 1896 due to the efforts of Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin who felt his country needed to shape up after their defeat by the Prussians in 1870. the International Olympic Committee was established in 1894 and the first modern Olympics was held in Athens in 1896 Thirteen countries competed in mostly track and field events. Greece was without a winner until the marathon. The first modern Olympics almost didn't come off at all for financial reasons, but Greek merchant George Averoff came through with $184,000 at the last moment to save the day.◂

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast Even before Courbertin re-founded the games, wealthy Greek philanthropist Evangelos Zappas offered to sponsor a revival and paid for the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so it could serve as a venue in the future. The Zappas Olympics were held in 1870 and 1875. Courbertin’s direct inspiration was an organization called the Wenlock Olympic Society. It was founded in Shropshire, England by William Penny Brookes, in order to promote “the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the inhabitants of the town and neighborhood of Wenlock and especially of the working classes.” Initial events at their annual meetings included running, cricket, hurdles, and “fun” events like an “Old Women’s Race.” The society still exists in a modernized form and has, of course, shed the classist and sexist perspectives of the nineteenth century. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 25, 2021]

The modern games feature athletes from more than 200 countries and territories. Over 14,000 athletes competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics combined, in 40 different sports and 448 events. The Modern Olympic motto is ““citius, altius, fortius” — (swifter, higher, stronger”).

Muscular Christianity Behind the Founding of the Modern Olympics?

The modern Olympics owe much to a Victorian aristocratic athletic movement known as “muscular Christianity”. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: Muscular Christianity — the idea that sports, and team sports in particular, have spiritual and moral benefits — burst to life in England in the latter half of the 19th century. Its origins owe much to the Industrial Revolution and the rising wealth of the upper classes, but if one man can be credited for Christian athleticism, it is Thomas Arnold, headmaster of the Rugby School, an all-boys private secondary school in the early 19th century. Arnold believed that in order to create Christian gentlemen he had to replace bad impulses with good. Arnold himself wasn’t a particular fan of sport but he preferred it to fighting or poaching. If you exhaust young men and promote the idea of sportsmanship, you will keep them out of trouble. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, August 21, 2016]

Arnold’s influence was felt most acutely in Thomas Hughes’s 1857 Tom Brown’s School Days, a novel that extolled the idea of athletic chivalry and the character-developing properties of athletics. In the novel, Tom’s character is fashioned by participation in sports. Hughes’s book made Rugby famous and sold the importance of Christian athletics to rest of the English-speaking world. Organized games spread throughout English private schools and further afield to the United States. In a series of lectures delivered in America in 1874, Charles Kingsley told audiences that the body is the temple of the living God and that it was their duty to recapture the Greek heroic form through “drama, lyric, sculpture, music, exercises, the dignity of man.”

Proponents of muscular Christianity traced its origins to the writings of the Apostle Paul, who used athletic metaphors to promote adherence to Christ. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was raised in a family that adhered to the principles of muscular Christianity. Despite suffering from asthma, he was encouraged to engage in strenuous physical activity and embrace the robust masculinity inherent in the Protestant Christianity of his day. Elements of the philosophy stuck with him. In a speech he gave in 1903 to the Holy Name Society, then-Colonel Roosevelt said, “I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings.”

Arguably the best-known offshoot of the muscular Christianity philosophy was the founding of the Young Men’s Christian Organization in 1844. George Williams, a London draper, was concerned about the lack of wholesome activities for young men and disturbed that urban workers spent their time in pubs or brothels. He and his friends established the YMCA to promote a healthy “body, mind, and spirit.” The YMCAs promoted evangelical Christianity in their services and sportsmanship in the gyms. In fact, the YMCA is credited with producing the modern versions of basketball and volleyball.

What was common to all of these figures was the idea that athletic endeavors could be overlaid with morality and masculinity. In particular, advocates of muscular Christianity thought that focusing young men on athletics would distract them from the perceived vices of masturbation and homosexuality.

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games, founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894 he did so with muscular Christianity in mind. He visited Rugby in 1886 and was deeply impressed with their athletic philosophies. Professor John Lucas told the XVth Session of the International Olympic Committee, “There is absolutely no way to adequately understand sport philosophy in the western world without knowing something of nineteenth century Victorian ‘Muscular Christianity.’”

We Can Thank Hitler for Olympic Torches

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast Surprisingly, some of the things we associate with the Olympic spirit were passion projects of the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler. Torches were certainly not a feature of ancient events. As Sarah Bond has written, torches were a perennial fire hazard that were more likely to be carried by rioters and soldiers as weapons than by athletes. When people take up torches — as they did after the assassination of Caesar in 44 B.C. or during the martyrdom of the Christian Bishop Polycarp in the mid second century — it was not a good thing. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 25, 2021]

Hitler, on the other hand, loved the things. Though they were first introduced at the 1928 games, it was Hitler who exoticized them by introducing the famous relay. This was the first time that a 12-day-run opened the games. As Tony Perrottet the author of The Naked Olympics wrote in his book, while “most people today assume it was a revival of a pagan tradition …it was actually concocted for Hitler’s Games in Berlin.”

For Hitler the Olympics and the mythology of ancient Greece gelled perfectly with his beliefs in Aryan supremacy and the mythic origins of the German people. Greek sculpture and male bodies featured on stamps produced by the Third Reich and Nazi tv and radio reports repeatedly touted the ancient origins of the games. You can imagine Adolf’s disappointment when black American athlete Jesse Owen won four gold medals and, according to ESPN.com reporter Larry Schwartz, “single-handedly crush[ed] Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.” Suppress those patriotic sentimental sniffles, though, as Owens wasn’t treated better back home. As Owens himself put it “I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024