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Origins of the Olympics | The Greeks | PBS LearningMedia

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From all over the Greek-speaking world, the best athletes descended on Athens to take their best shot at achieving immortality. Review the archaeological evidence of the first Olympics and the early events such as chariot-racing, boxing, and sprinting, that it depicts.

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How Did The Olympics Start? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS

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How Did The Olympics Start? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS

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How Did The Olympics Start? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS

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Origins of the Olympics | The Greeks | PBS LearningMedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From all over the Greek-speaking world, the best athletes descended on Athens to take their best shot at achieving immortality. Review the archaeological evidence of the first Olympics and the early events such as chariot-racing, boxing, and sprinting, that it depicts.

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Origins of the Olympics | The Greeks | PBS LearningMedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From all over the Greek-speaking world, the best athletes descended on Athens to take their best shot at achieving immortality. Review the archaeological evidence of the first Olympics and the early events such as chariot-racing, boxing, and sprinting, that it depicts.

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Origins of the Olympics | The Greeks | PBS LearningMedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From all over the Greek-speaking world, the best athletes descended on Athens to take their best shot at achieving immortality. Review the archaeological evidence of the first Olympics and the early events such as chariot-racing, boxing, and sprinting, that it depicts.

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Ancient Greece | Did women compete in the Olympic Games?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Origins of the Olympics | The Greeks | PBS LearningMedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From all over the Greek-speaking world, the best athletes descended on Athens to take their best shot at achieving immortality. Review the archaeological evidence of the first Olympics and the early events such as chariot-racing, boxing, and sprinting, that it depicts.

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Table of Contents

1. The Olympics Begin in Ancient Greece

2. Decline and Revival of the Olympic Tradition

3. The Olympics Through the Years

The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world's preeminent sporting competition. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Games were held every four years in Olympia, located in the western Peloponnese peninsula, in honor of the god Zeus. The first modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and featured 280 participants from 12 nations, competing in 43 events. Since 1994, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games have been held separately and have alternated every two years. The 2022 Winter Olympics will be held from February 4 to February 20, 2022 in Beijing, China and feature figure skating, ice hockey, curling and more.

The Olympics Begin in Ancient Greece

The first written records of the ancient Olympic Games date to 776 B.C., when a cook named Coroebus won the only event-a 192-meter footrace called the stade (the origin of the modern "stadium")-to become the first Olympic champion. However, it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years by that time. Legend has it that Heracles (the Roman Hercules), son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, founded the Games, which by the end of the 6th century B.C had become the most famous of all Greek sporting festivals.

The ancient Olympics were held every four years between August 6 and September 19 during a religious festival honoring Zeus. The Games were named for their location at Olympia, a sacred site located near the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Their influence was so great that ancient historians began to measure time by the four-year increments in between Olympic Games, which were known as Olympiads.

Did you know? The 1896 Games featured the first Olympic marathon, which followed the 25-mile route run by the Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. Fittingly, Greece's Spyridon Louis won the first gold medal in the event. In 1924, the distance would be standardized to 26 miles and 385 yards.

After 13 Olympiads, two more races joined the stade as Olympic events: the diaulos (roughly equal to today's 400-meter race), and the dolichos (a longer-distance race, possibly comparable to the 1,500-meter or 5,000-meter event). The pentathlon (consisting of five events: a foot race, a long jump, discus and javelin throws and a wrestling match) was introduced in 708 B.C., boxing in 688 B.C. and chariot racing in 680 B.C. In 648 B.C., pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling with virtually no rules, debuted as an Olympic event. Participation in the ancient Olympic Games was initially limited to freeborn male citizens of Greece; there were no women's events, and married women were prohibited from attending the competition.

Decline and Revival of the Olympic Tradition

After the Roman Empire conquered Greece in the mid-2nd century B.C., the Games continued, but their standards and quality declined. In one notorious example from A.D. 67, the decadent Emperor Nero entered an Olympic chariot race, only to disgrace himself by declaring himself the winner even after he fell off his chariot during the event. In A.D. 393, Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, called for a ban on all "pagan" festivals, ending the ancient Olympic tradition after nearly 12 centuries.

It would be another 1,500 years before the Games would rise again, largely thanks to the efforts of Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France. Dedicated to the promotion of physical education, the young baron became inspired by the idea of creating a modern Olympic Games after visiting the ancient Olympic site. In November 1892, at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris, Coubertin proposed the idea of reviving the Olympics as an international athletic competition held every four years. Two years later, he got the approval he needed to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which would become the governing body of the modern Olympic Games.

The Olympics Through the Years

The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. In the opening ceremony, King Georgios I and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed 280 participants from 12 nations (all male), who would compete in 43 events, including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, tennis, weightlifting, shooting and fencing. All subsequent Olympiads have been numbered even when no Games take place (as in 1916, during World War I, and in 1940 and 1944, during World War II). The official symbol of the modern Games is five interlocking colored rings, representing the continents of North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The Olympic flag, featuring this symbol on a white background, flew for the first time at the Antwerp Games in 1920.

The Olympics truly took off as an international sporting event after 1924, when the VIII Games were held in Paris. Some 3,000 athletes (with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time the Games featured a closing ceremony. The Winter Olympics debuted that year, including such events as figure skating, ice hockey, bobsledding and the biathlon. Eighty years later, when the 2004 Summer Olympics returned to Athens for the first time in more than a century, nearly 11,000 athletes from a record 201 countries competed. In a gesture that joined both ancient and modern Olympic traditions, the shotput competition that year was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.

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The Olympic Games: Locations, Facts, Ancient & Modern

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The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece, were revived in the late 19th century. They are now the world's preeminent sporting competition and are held every two years, alternating between Summer and Winter Games. The Winter 2022 Olympics will take place in Beijing, China.

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The ancient Olympic Games were initially a one-day event until 684 BC, when they were extended to three days. In the 5th century B.C., the Games were extended again to cover five days. The ancient Games included running, long jump, shot put, javelin, boxing, pankration and equestrian events.
Pentathlon

The Pentathlon became an Olympic sport with the addition of wrestling in 708 B.C., and included the following:

Running / Jumping / Discus Throw
Running
Running contests included:
the stade race, which was the pre-eminent test of speed, covering the Olympia track from one end to the other (200m foot race),
the diaulos (two stades - 400m foot race),
dolichos (ranging between 7 and 24 stades).

Jumping

Athletes used stone or lead weights called halteres to increase the distance of a jump. They held onto the weights until the end of their flight, and then jettisoned them backwards.

Discus throw

The discus was originally made of stone and later of iron, lead or bronze. The technique was very similar to today's freestyle discus throw.

Wrestling

This was highly valued as a form of military exercise without weapons. It ended only when one of the contestants admitted defeat.

Boxing

Boxers wrapped straps (himantes) around their hands to strengthen their wrists and steady their fingers. Initially, these straps were soft but, as time progressed, boxers started using hard leather straps, often causing disfigurement of their opponent's face.

Pankration

This was a primitive form of martial art combining wrestling and boxing, and was considered to be one of the toughest sports. Greeks believed that it was founded by Theseus when he defeated the fierce Minotaur in the labyrinth.

Equestrian events

These included horse races and chariot races and took place in the Hippodrome, a wide, flat, open space.

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Ancient Olympic Sports - running, long jump, discus, pankration

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The ancient Olympic Games were initially a one-day event until 684 BC, when they were extended to three days. In the 5th century B.C., the Games were extended again to cover five days. The ancient Games included running, long jump, shot put, javelin, boxing, pankration and equestrian events.

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'No biting and no gouging' - but all else fair game in "brutal" pankration

A combination of boxing and wrestling with barely any restrictions, pankration was the wild, no-holds barred centre of the Ancient Olympic Games. Boasting huge men of incredible strength, it became a fountain of wondrous stories and stirring myths.

Pankration was a magnificently simple sport.

"You could do pretty much anything you could possibly imagine in order to incapacitate your opponent," Paul Christesen, Professor of Ancient Greek History at Dartmouth College, USA, explained.

"And the Greeks thought this was the coolest thing ever."

As with all sports, the Greeks believed a god or a hero to be responsible for inventing the rules, and in the case of pankration it was down to Theseus. The mythical man came up with a combination of wrestling and boxing to defeat the Minotaur, the half-man half-bull said to have lived in a labyrinth below the palace of King Minos of Crete.

No biting and no gouging were just about the only restrictions in Theseus' sport, although, the ever hard-core Spartans allowed both in training in order to ready their warriors for war. Unlike boxing, hands were left bare in pankration. Typically tall men favoured punching as their go-to-tool while a stocky competitor was more likely to wrestle. Both types sought the key move, a stranglehold with one arm, leaving the other free to repeatedly punch the unfortunate opponent.

The first to fall was in trouble, liable as he was to being disabled by his adversary who would then be free to implement the feared stranglehold. There are, however, accounts of smaller, more agile fighters tricking their rival by seeming to fall to the ground in distress in order to lure their cumbersome opponents into a position whereby they could use their legs and arms to destabilise them before leaping off the floor and administering a bout-winning blow.

"We know that some people died," Christesen said. "Our guess is that there were a lot of really nasty injuries but probably not a lot of deaths because either you passed out or you surrendered before you died.

"For example, if someone broke all the fingers in your right hand, which was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in pankration, at that point you probably said, 'Listen, I think that is probably enough for me'."

The tale of Arrichion of Phigaleia neatly expresses why, for the Greeks, this was one of the most hotly anticipated events on the Ancient Olympic programme.

Caught in a terrible stranglehold, Arrichion seized the foot of his opponent and, with the last of his strength, crushed it, dislocating the ankle. Unable to bear the pain, the unnamed man raised his index finger to signal submission. At the very same moment Arrichion gasped his last breath. He was posthumously awarded the victory because his rival had surrendered.

"The Greeks were willing to tolerate a much higher level of violence in sports than we are for the most part," Christesen explained. "This goes back in part to the issue that people who were athletes tended to be soldiers and vice-versa. So there was, in some sense, a habituation to violence.

"You were expected to be ready to do that sort of thing on the battlefield, so there was less squeamishness about doing it during sports."

Seven athletes won the heavy combat double of wrestling and pankration at the same Games, including the unfortunate Arrichion. But Theagenes of Thasos is the ultimate symbol of this brutal and wildly popular sport.

Born to a priest in the temple of Herakles on the island of Thasos, the locals came to believe Theagenes' true father was the god Herakles himself. Famous from the moment he tore a bronze statue from its base in the square in Thasos and carried it home aged just nine, Theagenes went on to win the boxing at the 75 th Olympiad (480BC) and the pankration at the 76 th. Subsequently, he toured the Mediterranean basin reportedly winning more than 1400 victory wreaths. A life-size statue of the man stood in Olympia itself.

The nature of the sport naturally encouraged legends to grow up around its fearless heroes. None more so than for Polydamas of Skotoussa. The Olympic champion in 408BC is said to have killed lions with his bare hands, pulled the hoof off a ferocious and furious bull and brought a speeding chariot to a standstill with just one hand.

As an amused Christesen points out, there was one other hugely beneficial outcome to this obsession with heroic deeds and brutal one-to-one combat.

"The Greeks invented sports medicine, probably in part because of all the injuries all the time," he said.

"They became experts in trying to solve injuries incurred during sport."

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The all-time greats of the Ancient Olympic Games

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The first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to Olympia in 776 BC. Full passion and extraordinary feats of athletic endeavour, the Olympic Games were the sporting, social and cultural highlight of the Ancient Greek calendar for almost 12 centuries.

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Table of Contents

1. The Olympics Begin in Ancient Greece

2. Decline and Revival of the Olympic Tradition

3. The Olympics Through the Years

The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world's preeminent sporting competition. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Games were held every four years in Olympia, located in the western Peloponnese peninsula, in honor of the god Zeus. The first modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and featured 280 participants from 12 nations, competing in 43 events. Since 1994, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games have been held separately and have alternated every two years. The 2022 Winter Olympics will be held from February 4 to February 20, 2022 in Beijing, China and feature figure skating, ice hockey, curling and more.

The Olympics Begin in Ancient Greece

The first written records of the ancient Olympic Games date to 776 B.C., when a cook named Coroebus won the only event-a 192-meter footrace called the stade (the origin of the modern "stadium")-to become the first Olympic champion. However, it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years by that time. Legend has it that Heracles (the Roman Hercules), son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, founded the Games, which by the end of the 6th century B.C had become the most famous of all Greek sporting festivals.

The ancient Olympics were held every four years between August 6 and September 19 during a religious festival honoring Zeus. The Games were named for their location at Olympia, a sacred site located near the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Their influence was so great that ancient historians began to measure time by the four-year increments in between Olympic Games, which were known as Olympiads.

Did you know? The 1896 Games featured the first Olympic marathon, which followed the 25-mile route run by the Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. Fittingly, Greece's Spyridon Louis won the first gold medal in the event. In 1924, the distance would be standardized to 26 miles and 385 yards.

After 13 Olympiads, two more races joined the stade as Olympic events: the diaulos (roughly equal to today's 400-meter race), and the dolichos (a longer-distance race, possibly comparable to the 1,500-meter or 5,000-meter event). The pentathlon (consisting of five events: a foot race, a long jump, discus and javelin throws and a wrestling match) was introduced in 708 B.C., boxing in 688 B.C. and chariot racing in 680 B.C. In 648 B.C., pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling with virtually no rules, debuted as an Olympic event. Participation in the ancient Olympic Games was initially limited to freeborn male citizens of Greece; there were no women's events, and married women were prohibited from attending the competition.

Decline and Revival of the Olympic Tradition

After the Roman Empire conquered Greece in the mid-2nd century B.C., the Games continued, but their standards and quality declined. In one notorious example from A.D. 67, the decadent Emperor Nero entered an Olympic chariot race, only to disgrace himself by declaring himself the winner even after he fell off his chariot during the event. In A.D. 393, Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, called for a ban on all "pagan" festivals, ending the ancient Olympic tradition after nearly 12 centuries.

It would be another 1,500 years before the Games would rise again, largely thanks to the efforts of Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France. Dedicated to the promotion of physical education, the young baron became inspired by the idea of creating a modern Olympic Games after visiting the ancient Olympic site. In November 1892, at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris, Coubertin proposed the idea of reviving the Olympics as an international athletic competition held every four years. Two years later, he got the approval he needed to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which would become the governing body of the modern Olympic Games.

The Olympics Through the Years

The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. In the opening ceremony, King Georgios I and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed 280 participants from 12 nations (all male), who would compete in 43 events, including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, tennis, weightlifting, shooting and fencing. All subsequent Olympiads have been numbered even when no Games take place (as in 1916, during World War I, and in 1940 and 1944, during World War II). The official symbol of the modern Games is five interlocking colored rings, representing the continents of North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The Olympic flag, featuring this symbol on a white background, flew for the first time at the Antwerp Games in 1920.

The Olympics truly took off as an international sporting event after 1924, when the VIII Games were held in Paris. Some 3,000 athletes (with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time the Games featured a closing ceremony. The Winter Olympics debuted that year, including such events as figure skating, ice hockey, bobsledding and the biathlon. Eighty years later, when the 2004 Summer Olympics returned to Athens for the first time in more than a century, nearly 11,000 athletes from a record 201 countries competed. In a gesture that joined both ancient and modern Olympic traditions, the shotput competition that year was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.

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The Olympic Games: Locations, Facts, Ancient & Modern

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The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece, were revived in the late 19th century. They are now the world's preeminent sporting competition and are held every two years, alternating between Summer and Winter Games. The Winter 2022 Olympics will take place in Beijing, China.

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Ancient olympia Greece Travel Guide 2007 all the informations about hotels history taxi transfers tours and more........

Ancient olympia archeological site

The stadium of Olympia, situated east of the sacred Altis enclosure, was where the ancient Olympic Games and the Heraia, the women's games in honour of Hera, were held. Before the sixth century BC the running events were held on a flat area along the treasuries' terrace, east of the great altar of Zeus. A first stadium (Stadium I) was formed in the Archaic period (mid sixth century BC) by leveling the area south of the Kronios hill inside the Altis. The west short side of the stadium faced the altar of Zeus, to whom the Games were dedicated. In the late sixth century BC a new stadium (Stadium II) was created east of its predecessor, with a racetrack extending beyond the treasuries' terrace; an artificial bank, three metres high, was formed along the south side, while the hill side formed a natural seating area along the north. The stadium received its final form (Stadium III) in the fifth century when the great temple of Zeus was built. By then the Games had become very popular, attracting a great number of both visitors and athletes, so a new stadium was deemed necessary. The new stadium was moved eighty-two metres to the east and seven metres to the north, and was surrounded by artificial banks for the spectators. After the construction of the Echo-hall in the mid-fourth century BC the stadium was isolated from the Altis, which shows that the Games had lost their purely religious character and had become more of an athletic and social event.

The racetrack is 212.54 metres long and 30-34 metres wide. Two stone markers 192.27 metres apart - that is one Olympic stade or six hundred Olympic feet (1 foot=32.04 metres), indicate the starting and finishing lines. On the south bank is a podium for judges, and opposite this, on the north bank, the altar of Demeter Chamyne, whose priestess was the only woman allowed to watch the games. The stadium could accommodate approximately forty-five thousand people, but the banks never had permanent seats. There were a few stone seats for the officials, and wooden benches may have been added in Roman times when the stadium was repaired (Stadium IV-V). A stone drain round the track opened at intervals into small basins where rain water collected. A vaulted entrance for the athletes, thirty-two metres long, the so-called Krypte, was built in the late third century BC and a monumental portico was added to its west extremity in the Roman period. A large number of votive offerings, mostly of bronze, were found inside the wells along the embankments. Originally there to supply the spectators with drinking water, these wells, which date to the Archaic period, were subsequently used as votive pits.

The early German excavations first investigated the race track, but the recent German excavations of 1952-1966 uncovered the entire monument. In 2004, the ancient stadium of Olympia will re-live its former glory, since it will host the shot put event of the Athens Olympic Games.

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archeological site of olympia greece temple of zeus olympia greece

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Ancient olympia Greece Travel Guide 2007 all the informations about hotels history taxi transfers tours and more........ Ancient olympia archeological site The stadium of Olympia, situated east of the sacred Altis enclosure, was where the ancient Olympic Games and the Heraia, the women's games in honour of Hera, were held.

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In Ancient Greece, art and sport went hand in hand, with the ideal way to achieve harmony considered to be by exercising both body and mind. When the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, laid out his plans for the future of the Games, he wanted there to be a strong connection between athletes, artists and spectators. And so, art competitions dedicated to sports began to appear on the Olympic programnme.

Writing in Le Figaro in 1904, De Coubertin said: "The time has come to take the next step, and to restore the Olympiad to its original beauty. In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again."

De Coubertin's plan was discussed at the Olympic Congress of 1906, however, due to the short amount of time before the 1908 Games in London, the idea only came to fruition at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. At first, the Swedish art community expressed concern about how fairly such a competition could be judged, but eventually the events were added to the Olympic programme.

Medals were awarded in five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. At first, the categories were general but they were later divided into specific categories such as literature in a drama, lyric or epic; orchestral and instrumental music, solo and chorus singing; drawings, graphic arts and paintings; statues, reliefs, medals, plaques and medallions. Even architecture made an appearance on the programme, with its own town planning category.

One fun fact is that in certain circumstances medals were not awarded. If the judges were unable to determine a champion, they might only award a bronze medal.

Medal presented to the Olympic Art Contest at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin

Who had the most success

German competitors won 24 medals, 12 of which were won at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Italian competitors won 14 medals in art Olympic events, with French competitors winning 13.

Finland's Aale Tynni is the only woman to win an Olympic title in art (literature)

A total of 33 people participated in the inaugural art competition in 1912, with gold medals awarded in all five categories. Judges were only allowed to score works that had never been exhibited anywhere else, and those that were dedicated to sports. De Coubertin himself participated in a literature competition in Stockholm under a pseudonym. His "Ode to Sport" received a gold medal.

One interesting fact from the 1912 Games was that the USA's Walter Winans, winner of an Olympic gold medal in shooting just four years earlier, became the Olympic champion in sculpture. In Sweden, he also won a silver medal in shooting. Other than Winans, only one person has won medals in both art and sports competitions, with the Hungarian swimmer Alfred Hajos winning two golds at Athens 1896, followed some years later by a silver medal in architecture.

At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, the art competition did not garner a great amount of attention. However, that all changed at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Some 193 participants submitted works including three Soviet artists, even though at the time the Soviet Union did not participate at the Games. The Paris Games also stood out due to the distinguished jury, which included the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, Sweden's Selma Lagerlöf, and the famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

The popularity of the art competition continued at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam where more than 1,100 items were exhibited in the Municipal Museum. One of the participants at that Olympics, France's Paul Landowski, won Olympic gold for a sculpture of a boxer. He is now best known for his work on the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

The arts competition continued to be a feature of the Olympics through to 1948. However, in 1949 the IOC congress concluded that since almost all contestants in the art competitions were professionals, it didn't reflect the amateur status of the Olympics. The IOC attempted to revive art competitions at Helsinki 1952, but the idea was rejected by the hosts. In 1954, the competitions were once and for all replaced by art exhibitions.

Many works awarded with Olympic medals have been lost. Architectural projects are easiest to track, although not all have been built but some of the buildings definitely left their mark on history and are still in use today. For example, the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, designed by architect Jan Wils (Olympic gold in 1928), Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale University designed by architect John Russell Pope (Olympic silver in 1932), who is best known for his work on the Jefferson Memorial, or the Olympic Stadium in Wroclaw designed by architect Richard Konwiarz (bronze at the 1932 Olympics).

London 1948 saw the last of the Olympic art medals - in which Finland topped the table with two gold, one silver and one bronze - instead, a non-competitive art and cultural festival is now associated with each Games.

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Look to the past: When Olympic medals were awarded for architecture, music and literature

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Did you know that until the middle of the 20th century art competitions were held at the Olympics? Find out how these competitions came to be part of the Games and why they aren't still around today.

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THE WOMEN: WERE THE ANCIENT OLYMPICS JUST FOR MEN? Along with the athletic contests held at ancient Olympia, there was a separate festival in honor of Hera (the wife of Zeus). This festival included foot races for unmarried girls. Although it is not known how old the festival was, it may have been almost as old as the festival for boys and men.

Little is known about this festival other than what Pausanias, a 2nd century AD Greek traveler, tells us. He mentions it in his description of the Temple of Hera in the Sanctuary of Zeus (model, courtesy of British Museum, shown above and plan shown below), and says that it was organized and supervised by a committee of 16 women from the cities of Elis. The festival took place every four years, when a new peplos was woven and presented to Hera inside her temple.

Plan of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in the 5th century BC showing the Temple of Hera, the Hera Altar, and the

stadion.(Plan from H. V. Herrmann, Olympia, Heiligtum und Wettkampfstatte, fig. 111. )

Pausanias gives us a description of a girl's attire for the Hera games of the 2nd century AD. The girls wore their hair free down their back and a tunic hanging almost as low as the knees covering only the left shoulder and breast. The costume that Pausanias describes may have been the traditional costume at Olympia and possibly elsewhere for centuries.

Unmarried girls had a number of advantages at Olympia. They not only had their own athletic contests of the Hera festival in which to participate, but they were also allowed to watch the men's and boys' contests of the festival of Zeus. Married women, on the other hand, were not allowed to participate in the athletic contests of the Hera festival, and were barred on penalty of death from the Sanctuary of Zeus on the days of the athletic competition for boys and men. We don't know whether or not the women allowed the men to watch the girls' contests!

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The Women | The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games - Penn Museum

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Learn about the festival in honor of Hera, including foot races for unmarried girls

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Kids learn about women during the civilization of Ancient Greece including their jobs, poor and wealthy women, legal rights, marriage, slaves, women in Sparta, and interesting facts.

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At their heart, the Games were a religious festival and a good excuse for Greeks from all over the Mediterranean basin to gather for a riotous barbeque. On the middle day of the festival a vast number of cows were slaughtered in honour of Zeus, King of the Greek Gods - once he had been given a small taste, the rest was for the people.

For the first 250-plus years all the action took place in the sanctuary of Olympia, situated in the north-western Peloponnese. Pock-marked by olive trees, from which the victory wreaths were cut, and featuring an altar to Zeus, it was a hugely sacred spot.

The Games lasted a full five days by the fifth century BC and saw running, jumping and throwing events plus boxing, wrestling, pankration and chariot racing. At least 40,000 spectators would have packed the stadium each day at the height of the Games' popularity, in the second century AD, with many more selling their wares outside.

But first, here are our 10 favourite facts to get you started:

All athletes competed naked

Wrestlers and pankration (a sort of mixed martial art which combined boxing and wrestling) competitors fought covered in oil

Corporal punishment awaited those guilty of a false start on the track

There were only two rules in the pankration - no biting and no gouging

Boxers were urged to avoid attacking the on-display male genitals

There were no points, no time limits and no weight classifications in the boxing

Athletes in the combat sports had to indicate their surrender by raising their index fingers - at times they died before they could do this

Boxers who could not be separated could opt for klimax, a system whereby one fighter was granted a free hit and then vice-versa - a toss of a coin decided who went first

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The first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to Olympia in 776 BC. Full passion and extraordinary feats of athletic endeavour, the Olympic Games were the sporting, social and cultural highlight of the Ancient Greek calendar for almost 12 centuries.

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The Getty Villa Guide to the Ancient Olympics

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Learn the essentials about nudity, oil, core events, and victory in the ancient Greek Olympics—plus where to read more

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Question: When the women of ancient Greece were banned from competing in the Olympics, what did they do?

Answer: They started their own

While some of the most celebrated Olympians today are fearless and powerful women, this hasn't always been the case, and certainly not in the days of the ancient Greek Olympics. Since the days of the first games in 776 B.C.E., women were not allowed to compete-not for a lack of physical strength, but because of their positions in society. However, instead of being deterred by this rule, the young women of Greece took matters into their own hands and started their own version of the Olympics known as the Heraean Games.

Despite ancient Greece's democratic government and forward thinking, their society was far from equal for the female citizens, and many of their societal advancements only benefited men. Women at the time were not given any legal, political, or personal freedoms, and were essentially treated as second-class citizens along with slaves and foreigners. They were considered to be part of the oikos, a term translated to mean "the property of the house" which was owned and headed by the male patriarch.

Due to the religious and political significance of the Olympic games, women were viewed as not worthy of competing. In the states of Delos and Athens, women were allowed to watch, but in the city of Elis, where the games originated, married women were barred from attending altogether-this was mostly because the male athletes competed completely naked. If a married woman was caught sneaking in to watch the games, she could be punished by death. While unmarried maidens could spectate upon the festivities, throughout Elis and the other city-states, the governments all agreed: no woman could take the field.

Since they couldn't compete at the Olympics that didn't have to mean they couldn't compete at all. Fitness was a highly valued quality in women, and they were already competing in other sports like swimming and acrobatics, just not the Olympics. Honoring the goddess Hera (the wife of Zeus), they established the Heraean Games which consisted of a footrace between 16 young, athletic, and unmarried women and took place every four years.

The runners let their hair hang long and freely, and they wore a shorter tunic than what they were usually allowed to wear. Those who won were crowned with a headdress of olives and were awarded with a portion of the cow used in a sacrifice to Hera. The date of when the Heraean Games began is unknown, but some historians estimate they could have been practiced with the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C.E. There's very little information on the individual athletes who competed, and the only recorded victor of the games is the mythical Chloris who was Zeus's granddaughter. This lack of information suggests how insignificant society viewed women's sport.

Nevertheless, the Heraean Games are the first documented athletic competition held for women in history. When we see the heroic women dominating their events in the Olympic games, we can thank the women of ancient Greece who competed in the Heraean Games for leading the charge.
9 Things to Know About Life for Women in Ancient Greece

Unlike other ancient societies such as Egypt, Greek women did not enjoy the societal status and privileges of their male counterparts did. The philosopher Aristotle even wrote that "the male is by nature superior and the female inferior."

Other intellectuals at the time even argued that men and women were two separate species as "men had more in common with the gods, while women had more in common with the animal kingdom."

There were many differences in the way the Greek city-states treated women. For example, Sparta granted many more freedoms to women than Athens. In Athens, women were not allowed to receive an education while boys attended intellectually advanced schools. All women were expected to marry, usually around the age of 14, as there was no role in society for single adult females.

Women in Athens were viewed as even lower in status than slaves because they had no chance of becoming citizens and could not own property, while slaves could become citizens if they were freed. Women couldn't even walk down the street on their own without a man accompanying them.

In the military society of Sparta, women were given more rights because the men were often away at war. Women were able to own property, they could receive an education, and they were allowed to walk wherever they pleased.

In all city-states, the role of the woman was to give birth to sons. In Sparta, the women were given greater respect if they had strong and healthy sons who became great warriors in the military.

Even though women were treated as unequal in society, many of the most powerful figures in Greek mythology were women, including Athena, Demeter, and Persephone. Other women characters in mythology were deemed as troublemakers trying to derail male heroes, such as Aphrodite and Medea.

Due to a loophole in the rules, a woman named Kyniska became the first woman to win an event at the Olympics, although she herself didn't compete. In chariot racing, the winner was the owner of the horses, rather than riders. So Kyniska, the daughter of a Spartan King, became the first female winner in history when her horses won the race.

Despite the barriers, a few women rose above and gained acclaim such as the poet Sappho of Lesbos, the philosopher Arete of Cyrene, and physician Agnodice of Athens.

Explore ancient Greek ruins and learn more about ancient Greek society when you travel aboard our Hidden Gems of the Dalmatian Coast & Greece Small Ship Adventure.
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