OLYMPIA
The Greeks invented
athletic contests and held them in honour of their gods. The
Isthmos game were staged every two years at the Isthmos of
Corinth. The Pythian games took place every four years near
Delphi. But the most famous games were those at
Olympia, a town in south- western Greece. These took place every
four years. The ancient Olympics seem to have begun in the early
700 BC, in honour of Zeus. No women
were allowed to watch the games. Pottery dating from around 550
BC shows men taking part in the games naked or wearing only a
thong. The games were greatly expanded from a one-day festival of
athletics and wrestling to, in 472 BC, five days with many
events. The order of the events is not precisely known, but the
first day of the festival was devoted to sacrifices. On the
second day, the foot-race, the main event of the games, took
place in the stadium, an oblong area enclosed by sloping banks of
earth. On other days, wrestling, boxing, and the pancratium, a
combination of the two, were held. In wrestling, the aim was to
throw the opponent to the ground three times. Boxing became more
and more brutal; at first the pugilists wound straps of soft
leather over their fingers as a means of deadening the blows, but
in later times hard leather, sometimes weighted with metal, was
used. In the pancratium, the most rigorous of the sports, the
contest continued until one or the other of the participants
acknowledged defeat. Horse-racing, in which each entrant owned
his horse, was confined to the wealthy but was nevertheless a
popular attraction. After the horse-racing came the pentathlon, a
series of five events: sprinting, long-jumping, javelin-hurling,
discus-throwing, and wrestling.
these pictures are of the original site at Olympia - the ruins of the temples the greeks worshipped at and the gymnasiams they practised in......there are pics of the original stadium and one of the place where the original flame was lit - this is where the torch is lit for present day Olympic games
the tiny port of Katakolon - Olympia is about 25 miles from there
the spot the original Olympic torch was lit about 700BC
