Olympic Games: An Ancient Tradition Passed Down to Modernity
Student paper for credit in HIST 2210, LC
Written by: A. P. Velazquez
Competitive sporting events are one of the many costumes and traditions that the Greek and modern societies have in common. Both, the first ancient Olympic games and the first modern Olympic games were held in Greece, in the cities of Olympia and Athens. It is the ritual with the biggest impact on modernity, turning into a worldwide event that takes place every 4 years such as the original costume.
Back in 776 BC when the tradition began with the stadion race, 600 feet running contest. Such sporting competitions were part of a series of religious events as an offer to Zeus, the king of the gods. As years kept going new sports were being introduced to the event: long jump, javelin, boxing, shot put, disc throw and equestrian events, expanding the ceremony for up to five days.
Aside from being a ritual of faith, being a competitor or a spectator was key for the Greek sense of identity. Travelling from all over the Mediterranean, it is assumed that Olympia hosted the games for at least 50,000 male citizens to enjoy the competitions, it is worth mentioning that married women and children were not allowed to attend the games.
Any free male citizen of Greece (social status was unimportant) was welcomed to spend years preparing himself to participate at any of the disciplines included in the Olympic celebration, still competitors were soldiers mainly, and all athletes had to perform naked. Winners would be crowned with olive leaves and received amphoras or other types of valuable containers filled with olive oil, which represented a monetary prize. Winners and participants received the recognition and respect of their home cities as every athlete was a sample of the power, strength and discipline of the polis they represented.
Another reason why the Greeks loved the Olympic celebration was that it meant times of peace for every empire. During the months it took to prepare the hosting polis and the 5 days of competition, all Greek cities agreed to a truce; as spectators, athletes and staff had to constantly travel long distances to make it to Olympia, Greek cities agreed to give free way to everyone and to stop the war during those months in order to focus properly into the offering to the king of gods.
In 1894 Baron Pierre de Coubertin succeeded with his idea of reinstalling the Olympic tradition, forming the International Olympic Committee and celebrating the first modern Olympic games in 1896 in Athens with 43 different disciplines including swimming, gymnastics, cycling and tennis among many others, and 13 nations competing.
Although modern Olympic games have a different meaning to the ancient ones, they are still a heritage from antique societies and employ many disciplines and patterns from the original games. So, in this research I am aiming to respond the following question: what was the impact of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece that made them transcend to a present-day tradition? And this wonder is because knowing the significance and influence that sport competitions had in ancient societies, will help us understand why now a day’s Olympic games are a worldwide event and what they represent for the participant nations. To understand the present, the past must be recalled. Therefore, I will be elaborating onto the origin, structure and essence of the antique Olympic games, as well as looking at its similarities and differences from the present form of the Games in order to find what is the substance that keeps the tradition alive.
Antique Olympic games as a topic has been reviewed by many historians throughout the time. Yet I’ve mainly found writings that describe the events rather than the significance or traits given to the Olympic tradition. There are as well many pieces of physical remains representatives of the games, such as pottery that victors would receive full of olive oil and few remainings of the decorations installed in the city of Olympia to receive tens of thousands of attendants. Nevertheless, the area between Antique and modern games is somewhat limited to comparing them rather than finding similarities or the common value among the two versions of the tradition. In order to contribute into my research, I looked into two main sources.
The first one is the ancient source Pausanian’s “Description of Ancient Greece”. This translation of the Pausanian writings focuses on describing the physical display of Greek cities, Olympia, to be more specific. This text is important to scholarship as it creates a detailed image of the Greek city-states which allows to give a background to other sorts of research, learning the lifestyle of the Greeks for example. Therefore, I now reconsider this as a not so useful source as I would rather dive deeper into the characteristics of the ceremonies themselves sooner than visualizing the place where they were held as that does contribute the purpose of my research.
On the other hand, my second and modern source “Sport and society in Ancient Greece” by Mark Golden, approaches the link of the Greek athletics to other areas of society and lifestyle itself, for example, the natural Greek sense of competitiveness, the relationship between the games and religion, and it also meets the origin of the Olympic tradition. This text provides to both, my research and scholarship, a better understanding of how meaningful competitive sports could be and the purpose of these events, this will then allow us to dig into the current significance of the same. Still, Golden didn’t miss the chance to mention how difficult it has been for historians and archeologists to construct evidence of the true essence and display of sporting competitions, however, he uses the work of Herodotus, who was not any sports enthusiast, but he briefly goes over the Olympic tradition in his writing Histories, where he describes the importance of sports related to the Greek identity, politics, and warfare. Also, with this source is now of our knowing that sports were included in the educational and military systems of Greek polis.
So as to achieve a major approach to the ancient form of what we know as the Olympic Games, I have completed an artefact analysis in which we are looking at a Panathenaic Amphora, a Greek piece of pottery, dated between 530-520 BC. On one side we can see Athene, the goddess of wisdom and war, standing with a power pose between two columns while in the other side, there are four men representing 3 of the 5 events of the pentathlons, a discus-thrower and javelin-throwers and a jumper. The vase also has inscribed “One of the prizes from Athens”.
Deferred from the modern Olympic games, where there are three winners who receive a prize, in ancient Olympics there was only one, this is where significance of the artefacts is held, as the inscription says, it is the prize the one victor received in one of the disciplines of the event.
The victory vases had an extra material value: they were filled with forty litres of olive oil, which due to its monetary worth, was extremely precious and was the actual jackpot. This award represents part of the prestige it had to be an Olympic champion. Successful athletes received between 6 and 140 pitchers depending on the discipline they competed on and the age of the competitor. These amphoras were always inscribed at the bottom with a quote and the number of pitchers the victor received, this is how we can know now that horse races were prized the best and that older competitors always received more pitchers than the younger ones.
Amphoras had a big impact on Athens reputation, as winners received way more oil than what they could need, they would often sell the excess of the prize and it was distributed in typical Greek amphoras, therefore, when other cities looked at the amount of that sort of pottery filled with olive oil, they assumed Greece was a rich polis that could afford to give its citizens valuable prizes.
After a whole semester of research that expanded my perspective and increased my curiosity about ancient Greek way of life, it is difficult to collect all my reconsiderations but fortunately now I’m able to recall some conclusions. The Olympic Games tradition is a topic that certainly cannot be fully covered in only four months, especially because in the beginning, I was aiming to dig deep into both, the ancient and the modern form. I recall that being able to understand the process of how and why the Olympic tradition passed down to modernity it is necessary to emphasize the concept of what competitiveness among athletes and the honour to represent their home city-state meant back then and now, rather than to display the experience of competitors arriving to the location of the competition (just as the ancient source I chose was describing everything in detail). Also, at the beginning of the semester I thought Olympic games was one of probably 5 or 10 things modernity inherited from the Greeks, but although I was focused on sporting events, I was able to recognize many more things we as a society have drawn from them. Anyway, to wrap this up, I must say that this project has been one of the most enjoyable works I’ve invested my time into and definitely it has changed my perspective towards ancient history and its importance.
Bibliography
Ancient Olympic Athletes. (2020, November 10). Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://www.olympic.org/ancient-olympic-games/the-athlete
Golden, M. (1998). “Sport and society in ancient Greece.” Cambridge University Press.
Leuven. (2012). Panathenaic Amphoras. Retrieved November 18, 2020, from http://ancientolympics.arts.kuleuven.be/eng/TE002EN.html
Papakonstantinou, Z. (2009). Sport in the cultures of the ancient world. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Pausanias. (1918). “Pausanias Description of Greece” with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd.
The Games: The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games - Penn Museum. (2020). Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://www.penn.museum/sites/olympics/olympicorigins.shtml
