The first ancient Olympic games were first recorder in 776BC, but they were originated at least a century before that and possibly as early as the 13th century BC.
There are four Greeks legends about how the ancient Olympic games begun .
The more credent story is that the Olympic festival was a local religious event until 884 BC, when Iphitus, the king of Elis, decided to turn it into a wider , pan-Hellenic festivals. To achieve that, he entered into a temporary truce with other rulers, giving the athletes and others to travel peacefully to Olympia while the festival was going on.
The Greeks consecrate the Olympic games on every four year periods called Olympiads , and the Olympic festival the beginning of each Olympiad. Obviously, the festival was re-organized in 776 BC, which was considered the start of the first Olympiad.
A single foot race was the only athletic event until the fifteenth Olympiad. The race was the length of the stadium, approximately 200 yards. As time went on, the games associated with the festival expanded and became increasingly important. A race of two stadium lengths was added in 724 and a long-distance race of 24 stadium lengths (about 2.5 miles) was added in 720.
Other types of sports followed quickly: Wrestling and the pentathlon in 708, boxing in 688, chariot racing in 680, and the pankratium, a combination of boxing and wrestling, in 748. At one time or another, there were 23 Olympic sports events, although they were never all held at the same festival.
Athletes had to arrive in Elis a month before the games to undergo spiritual, moral, and physical training under the supervision of the judges, who then decided which of them were genuinely qualified to compete. Each competitor had to swear an oath that he was a free-born Greek who had committed no violation against the gods.
The first games took up only one day of the festival. That was extended to two days in 680, with the addition of chariot racing, and to five days in 632. However, during the five days only three of those days were actually devoted to competition. The first day was devoted to religious sacrifices, the second day was the registration of athletes, and the third day was the taking of the Olympic vow. Prizes were awarded and thanksgiving sacrifices were offered on the fifth day.
authentic prize
A branch of wild olive ( the winner was wearing a branch of wild olive on his/her head which was in shape of a circle) was the only authentic prize for an Olympic winner, but there were also usually some informal prizes awarded by the city of the Olympic winner. These informal prizes would be living or economical matters. For example, Athens allowed an Olympic champion to live free of charge in the Pyrtaneum, a special hall set aside for distinguished citizens. Other city-states exempted winners from taxes for an Olympiad, and in some cases citizens contributed to a cash award.
costume
Athletes usually competed nude. At first place they originally wore shorts but, according to one ancient writer, Pausanias, a competitor deliberately lost his shorts so that he could run more freely during the race in 720 BC, and clothing was then abolished.
WOMEN FORBIDDANCE
Women were not allowed to watch the games (also see rules of participation about women) and that is not because the men were nude during the Games but because the Olympia was dedicated to Zeus and was therefore a sacred area for men. The chariot races, which were held outside the sacred periphery, were open to women spectators. (Women had their own sacred festivals from which men were banned, most noteworthy the Heraean festival at Argos, which included a javelin throwing competition.)
At its peak during the 4th century BC, the Olympic festival drew crowds not only from the Peloponnesian Peninsula but from colonies as far away as Libya and Egypt. Poets and other writers recited naturally, sculptors worked on statues while surrounded by spectators, vendors sold food from stalls, traders from throughout the peninsula sold horses.
Travelling to Olympia took on the nature of a pilgrimage, which attracted some of the greatest names of Greece's classic period. Plato attended the festival when he was seventy. Demosthenes, Diogenes the Cynic, Pythagoras, and Themistocles all visited Olympia at one time or another. The young Thucydides was in the audience when Herodotus, the "father of history," read from his works.
Even after the glory that was Greece vanished, the Olympics lived on, but in a debased form under the Romans, who replaced the traditional games with their own gladiatorial contests, in which slaves replaced free-born Greeks as the competitors.
In 394 AD, Theodosius the Great decreed an end to the Olympic Games. But they had lasted more than a thousand years, perhaps as long as 1600 years, and certainly longer than any other secular institution in history. And they left behind an ember that was to burst again into flame in the late 19th century
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