History | July 15, 2024

Nine Things You Didn’t Know About the Ancient Olympic Games

With an intensive athletes’ boot camp and the threat of execution for unwelcome spectators, the Greek sporting event was a serious affair

An illustration of ancient Greek statues of athletes

From the real reason behind the Games' collapse to a breakdown of who was eligible to compete, here's what you need to know about the ancient Olympics. Illustration by Meilan Solly / Images via Wikimedia Commons / Full illustration credit at the bottom of article

Sonja Anderson

Daily Correspondent

In 776 B.C.E., spectators gathered in Olympia, Greece, to watch a simple footrace. Thus began the ancient Olympics, the classical sporting competition that continued for more than a millennium, attracting athletes and spectators from across the Mediterranean.

Within a few hundred years, the Olympics expanded far beyond a single running event: More sports were added, and Olympia established strict rules and regulations for the increasingly popular competition. Every four years, ancient Olympians evaluated by ten highly trained judges faced off in the mind-numbing heat of southern Greece. Like their modern counterparts, they competed in wrestling, javelin throwing, boxing and long jumping; unlike today’s athletes, they also raced to the finish line in chariots. While the ancient Games’ main focus was athleticism, they also incorporated philosophies of fairness, peace, development and education—values that permeate our own Olympic era, which began 1,500 years after the original ended in 393 C.E.

The first modern Olympic Games took place in Athens in 1896, thanks to the organizational efforts of one Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron who foresaw the value of a multinational sporting competition. “Olympism is not a system,” Coubertin once said. “It is a state of mind.” Ahead of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, here are nine surprising facts about the famed ancient sporting competition that inspired both Coubertin and later iterations of the Games.

1. The Olympic Games weren’t exactly one of a kind.

An artistic depiction of ancient Olympia Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Olympia wasn’t the only ancient Greek city to host an organized athletic competition. Many communities held their own games, but these contests differed in prestige. Around 150 B.C.E., about 200 “prize games” regularly took place across Greece, with Athens, Megara and Boeotia emerging as the most prominent venues. Athletes competed for money and valuable rewards like pots of oil.

The Olympia-based Olympics were part of another class of competitions: the Sacred Games, also known as the Panhellenic Games or the Crown Games. Four places—Nemea, Delphi, the Isthmus of Corinth and Olympia—took turns holding the annual contest, meaning the actual Olympics only came around every four years, as the Summer and Winter Games do today. The Sacred Games were less lucrative for victors than the prize games: Winners received glory and a crown of leaves but little else from the events’ organizers. Of the four Sacred Games, Olympia’s were unrivaled in renown. No matter how many competitions an athlete won across Greece, an Olympic victory was revered above all.

2. The Olympic truce is nothing new.

At the opening ceremony of the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, Juan Antonio Samaranch, then-president of the International Olympic Committee, spoke of peace. “Our message is stronger than ever,” he said. “Please stop the fighting. Please stop the killing. Please drop your guns.” Samaranch’s words—an allusion to the ongoing Siege of Sarajevo—evoked the modern Olympic truce, then newly revived by the committee and the United Nations. Since 1994, the U.N. has adopted a resolution titled “Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal” before each edition of the Games.

The history of the Olympic truce goes back much further than the 1990s, all the way to the Games’ invention. In the ninth century B.C.E., Iphitos, the ruler of the Greek city of Elis, grew fed up with the region’s never-ending conflicts. When he consulted the oracle of Delphi, a priestess who served as the earthly voice of the god Apollo, she told him to begin a peaceful athletic competition. Iphitos and other Greek monarchs—one of whom he was at war with at the time—signed a truce, the Ekecheiria. Contrary to popular legend, the agreement didn’t call for all conflicts in Greece to cease during the Games. Instead, it allowed athletes and other individuals involved in the event to safely travel to and from Olympia. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “There is only one known case of the truce being invoked, and then the complaint came from Athens, not Olympia.”

3. The torch relay wasn’t an ancient Olympic event.

A lighting of the flame ceremony held in ancient Olympia in March 2020 Greg Martin / International Olympic Committee

Today, the lighting of the Olympic flame is the centerpiece of the Games’ opening ceremony. A few months prior, a fire is lit in Olympia, and over the weeks that follow, a flame “travels” from receptacle to receptacle before finally illuminating a large torch in the Olympic stadium. While this torch-to-torch relay has emerged as an enduring symbolic and theatrical charade, the tradition didn’t originate in ancient Olympia. Instead, the Olympic flame first made such a journey in 1936, when the German architects of the Berlin Games arranged for a flame to be lit in Olympia and transported to the Nazi capital.

Broadly speaking, fire was an important part of the ancient Olympics. During the Games, a blaze was kept burning constantly at the altar of the goddess Hestia. Sacred flames were also lit at the temples of Zeus and Hera. While the torch relay was never actually held in ancient Olympia, sporting competitions in other cities sometimes featured the event. In Athens, participants were tasked with keeping a baton of reeds aflame while racing in relay teams from a seaport to the Acropolis.

4. Not just anyone could compete in the ancient Olympics.

An ancient Greek statue known as the Charioteer of Delphi — An ancient Greek statue known as the *Charioteer of Delphi* RaminusFalcon via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 3.0

A list of ancient Olympic victors Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Women were explicitly barred from competing in the Games at Olympia, though they could earn accolades as the owners of horses that won big at chariot races. (The Heraean Games, a separate competition specifically for women, emerged as an alternative to the Olympics but wasn’t part of the official festivities.) Technically, any free Greek male citizen could compete in the Games—the first Olympic victor was reportedly a cook named Coroebus—but they needed to have sufficient time and resources to do so.

Olympia required every athlete participating in the competition to train for ten months prior to the Games. Such a commitment excluded most dreamers who needed to spend their time supporting their families. Some poor but talented athletes caught a break via sponsorships from wealthy men, who supported them with stipends during their training. Others received a sort of athletic scholarship from authorities. In 300 B.C.E., the coach of a boxer named Athenodorus appealed to the city of Ephesus for financial aid for his trainee.

5. The ancient version of the Olympic Village had a less hedonistic reputation than the modern one.

The Palaestra at Olympia, an ancient site devoted to athletic training Bgabel via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

The last phase of preparation for an Olympian was a mandatory monthlong stay in Elis, a militaristic city that hosted athletes for an intense training program. Athletes’ private coaches sat quietly on the sidelines while Olympic trainers and judges ordered around the would-be competitors. This boot camp-like setup cleansed the group of unworthy athletes before the Games began. It also allowed participants to size each other up. If a man arrived and found himself unfit to compete with the counterparts he found there, he could drop out without shame.

Today, Olympic athletes only live together during the Games themselves, in a purpose-built Olympic Village that has a reputation for sexual promiscuity and fun. Comparatively, Elis was rather tame. But it wasn’t entirely devoid of sensuality: Residents of the all-male boot camp either indulged by having sex with each other or slept with “flattened leaden plates over their loins, hoping that the chill and weight of the metal would dampen their nocturnal desires,” writes Tony Perrottet in The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games.

6. The marathon wasn’t an ancient Olympic event.

The stadion in ancient Nemea — The *stadion* in ancient Nemea Robin Iversen Rönnlund via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

The 26.2-mile footrace included in the Games today—and held frequently around the world—has been part of the modern Olympics since the competition’s revival in 1896, albeit with slightly varied lengths over time. But no such race was run in ancient Olympia. In fact, the longest footrace completed by ancient Olympians was the dolichos, which might have topped out at three miles. Still, the marathon does have mythical origins in ancient Greece. According to legend, Pheidippides, an ancient Greek courier, ran 26 miles from a battlefield in Marathon to Athens to announce Greece’s military victory over the Persians—then died on the spot. Running is also the oldest Olympic event. The very first Games, in 776 B.C.E., consisted of a single contest: the stadion, a one-lap sprint just over a tenth of a mile long.

7. Ancient Olympians received no medals, but their victories weren’t materially worthless.

A palaestra scene, circa 520 to 510 B.C.E. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

First-place victors in the Sacred Games at Olympia, Nemea, Delphi and the Isthmus of Corinth won crowns of olive, parsley, laurel and pine, respectively. (The ancients didn’t acknowledge second or third place.) But these official prizes weren’t their only winnings: As Olympians do today, ancient athletes traveled from far and wide to compete in the Olympic Games. Victors’ home cities were immensely proud of them and showered them with additional rewards upon their return.

Athens, for example, furnished local winners of Olympic events with between 50 and 100 amphorae (tall ceramic jars) of olive oil. Other rewards included parades, lifetime seats at amphitheaters, pensions, government positions, meals and more. An accomplished athlete who racked up wealth from both prize games and Olympic victories could live a luxurious life indeed.

8. Ancient Olympians performed nude.

Athletes competing in the hoplitodromos, an ancient foot race — Athletes competing in the *hoplitodromos*, an ancient foot race held at the Olympics Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.5

The ancient Greeks were quite accustomed to public nudity, including at sporting competitions. The practice especially suited the Olympics, Perrottet writes, as it “stripped away social rank,” leaving the competitors to be represented solely by their physical prowess. Greek writers also noted clothing’s potential to inhibit athletic ability: Apparently, a runner once tripped on his fallen loincloth during a race.

Today, historians continue to debate athletes’ true motivation for competing nude. According to Perrottet, they might have simply wanted to show off their bodies, which they liberally coated in oil, to their peers, gods and adoring fans.

Athletes weren’t the only ones who needed to be bare at the Olympics. Once, a widow snuck into the stadium, disguised as a trainer so she could watch her son compete. (Married women couldn’t attend as spectators, though maidens were permitted to watch the events.) After that, all trainers were required to be as undressed as the athletes so an unwelcome woman could be clearly spotted.

9. The ancient Games weren’t crushed by Christianity, but by the economy.

A fanciful depiction of the Phidian statue of Zeus in Olympia, with the Olympic Games taking place in the foreground Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The ancient Olympics were held in honor of Zeus, king of the Greek gods. By the mid-second century B.C.E., the Roman Empire had taken control of Greece, including Olympia. The Games continued, popular but diminishing in honor and glory.

In the early 300s, Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion. Later that century, Theodosius I issued a series of decrees banning pagan religion, rituals and festivals. While some observers blame the emperor’s edicts for the end of the Olympic Games, historians point out that the measures didn’t explicitly mention Olympia’s competition.

While newly Christianized Roman ideals might have influenced the Games’ collapse, the competition’s real downfall was probably accounting. According to historian Sofie Remijsen, Olympia’s Games were once supported by civic funds. But by the fourth century, this money was being diverted elsewhere, meaning it was up to wealthy individuals to sponsor the event. Eventually, organizers reached a point where they couldn’t afford to continue. After more than a thousand years, the ancient Olympics fizzled out, and Greece’s athletic scene came to resemble something more like a bunch of local recreational sports teams than a few big, sacred, semiannual competitions.

The ancient Games may have met a petering end, but it’s difficult to exaggerate their importance to the Greeks, says Paul Christesen, a historian at Dartmouth College. In fact, the Games were so important that the Greeks even risked their country’s safety for them. When Persians invaded in 480 B.C.E., “a lot of the Greek city states agreed that they would put together an allied army, but they had a very hard time getting one together because so many people wanted to go to the Olympics,” Christesen says. “So, they actually had to delay putting the army together to defend the country against the Persians.”

Lead illustration credit (clockwise from top left): Metropolitan Museum of Art under public domain, Livioandronico2013 via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0, public domain via Wikimedia Commons, Carole Raddato via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0 and Getty Center under public domain