The Real Olympics – The Guessing Games

Dr Martin Brookes

July 2004

While there are some compelling clues, all efforts to reconstruct what life was really like in the birthplace of the Games, ancient Olympia, are seriously hampered by the fragmentary nature of the evidence on offer. To put things into perspective, imagine an American trying to piece together the culture of cricket with nothing more to go on than a Geoff Boycott biography, a chest of used jockstraps, and the weathered foundation of the Lords Pavilion, and you get some idea of the scale of the task confronting today's Greek archaeologists.

Even when evidence does present itself, there's still plenty of scope for different interpretations of it. Ancient Greek art, for instance, remains a key visual source of information on Olympic culture and Greek athletics. But are the illustrations that adorn the vases and urns accurate depictions of actual events, or just idealised images?

Beyond the pottery and the statues, we have ancient literature to guide us through the maze of classical history. Literary references to the Games are ubiquitous. They come from such disparate sources as the letters of Cicero, the plays of Euripides, the political studies of Plato and the biographies of Plutarch. But while the literature provides some important snapshots of the past, there remain large and significant gaps. Just as Nick Hornby wisely omitted to tell us all about the rules of football in his best-selling book Fever Pitch, so the Greek writers of the age often felt no need to explain what was, to them, the obvious. References to the rules of Greek athletics are scarce. It's one of those perennial annoyances for historians that the familiar is rarely written down.

City of the Games

But even allowing for these big gaps in our knowledge, there's still sufficient material to provide some vivid insights into what was one of the greatest and most important spectacles in Ancient Greek life. The ancient city of Olympia, for instance, represents one of the most archaeologically fruitful Greek sites, despite successive assaults from barbarians, Christians, earthquakes and a deep layer of river silt.

Nestled in a remote outpost of the Peloponnese, some 300 kilometres from Athens, Olympia may seem an unlikely spot for a mass gathering of ancient sports fans. But getting there was all part of the ritual: a pilgrimage to a sacred pagan site. Every four years, on the second full moon after the summer solstice, people would come in their tens of thousands, from all corners of the Greek empire, for an extravagant and often decadent celebration of all things Greek.

This was a festival of religion as much as sport, although the two were almost synonymous in the minds of most Ancient Greeks. Sporting champions were objects of reverence; the subjects of great statues, paintings and shrines. The athletes themselves were a fiercely competitive, hardworking, and professional bunch. And Olympic success not only meant iconic status but also unimaginable wealth.

Training regimes

Olympic training was taken extremely seriously. All athletes had to undergo an intensive 10-month training programme in order to qualify for the Games. Some athletes would take on the task of training themselves, but most Olympic hopefuls employed personal trainers to assist them in their quest for fame and fortune. The trainers were usually ex-athletes, each with their own ideas about the ideal route to Olympic glory. They were hard taskmasters, enforcing strict regimes of diet and exercise.

Sports medicine (dealing with athletes' injuries and illnesses) of antiquity may not have been subjected to the rigorous scientific scrutiny that it undergoes today – hardly surprising given that this was still the time of the 'four humours'. But the discovery of ancient training manuals such as Philostratus' Handbook for a Sports Coach and Galen's How to Stay Healthy gives us a window on just how comprehensive the Greek training techniques could be.

There were peculiar massages, for instance, to treat overeating, and specialised treatments for insomnia, anxiety and excessive sweating. Sex was discouraged, while those prone to 'excessive nightly emissions' had a whole workout routine devoted to them. Separate exercises were designed to treat the legs, arms and abdomen. These exercises were further developed to address the characteristics of muscle tone, speed and strength that individual athletes needed to focus on. The overall picture that emerges is of a culture at the cutting edge of sport and science.

But this image of those wise old Greeks, while perennially attractive, is probably not an entirely accurate one. The Greeks were prone to fads just like the rest of us. Many of the sports coaches were uneducated men, patently ill-qualified in the arena of sports medicine.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the varied diets that were dished out to the young athletes. Galen espoused beans, while Pythagoras forbade them. Charmis of Sparta, himself an Olympic sprinting champion, advocated a diet of nothing but dried figs. In some quarters, pork was considered good, provided that the pigs hadn't been raised by the sea. Coaches' control over their charges seems to have been total and could even extend to the belching techniques that were exercised after completion of these monotonous meals.

Programme of events

While training regimes were limitless, the number of sporting events open to aspiring Olympians was extremely small. The ancient Olympics shared little of the diversity that we see today.

Common consensus suggests that the games began in Olympia in 776 BC as a sprinting contest that expanded into the classic multifaceted competition early on. After that, it remained more or less the same until the games were abolished in the 4th century by the Christian Roman Empire on the grounds that they were pagan. That's a thousand years without any significant change in the programme of events. It seems that the Greeks, passionately progressive in other areas, were fiercely conservative when it came to sport.

So what would a typical ancient Olympic schedule look like? If you could survive the crowds, the flies, the heat and the latrines, this is a taste of what you'd expect to see.

Day one

More a day of ceremonies and sacrifices than any actual sport. Athletes, trainers and judges were all sworn in before the statue of Zeus Horkios, the God of Oaths. Later in the afternoon, athletes would make sacrifices at one of the 70 or so religious sites in Olympia. The shrines to Nike (the God of Victory), Poseidon (the God of horses) and Hermes (the patron of runners) were some of the more popular places to declare your piety.

With nothing going on in the stadium, spectators could amuse themselves in various ways. There was the Sacred Grove of Zeus, a sort of Olympic hall of fame, with its statues of celebrated champions. Further afield, in the great tented village that sprang up for the festival, there were food outlets and bars, poetry readings, fringe theatre, philosophical oratory, acrobats, sword swallowers, dancers, and a sex trade to suit all tastes.

Day two

Events got off to a flyer with the four-horse chariot race in the Hippodrome. Fast and furious, this exercise in violent chaos was, for many, the highlight of the whole games. Spectators packed the grassy banks of the huge arena, 200 metres wide by 600 metres long, to see the 40 or so chariots take their place on the starting line. There were no lanes and no circuit, just a straight dirt track with a turning post at each end, around which the charioteers had to make 180-degree turns – 23 of them in total. With so many vehicles converging on the same point accidents and fatalities were guaranteed.

Once the dust had settled, and the carnage was cleared away, more horses were brought into the arena for the slightly more sedate bareback races.

By afternoon, everyone's attention would shift to the stadium for the start of the pentathlon. This gruelling event comprised the discus, the javelin, the long-jump (performed with weights and accompanied by flute music), running and wrestling; although the final two disciplines were only played in the event of a tie after the first three.

Day three

Sport was suspended for the morning to allow for the festival's pivotal religious moment – a procession to the altar of Zeus and the sacrifice of 100 oxen. Later that evening the meat would be cooked and served at a huge public feast.

Athletes got going again in the afternoon with running and boxing events and boys' wrestling.

Day four

A big day for athletics fans, with footraces (running) kicking off the morning's entertainment. There were three races in all: the stadion – a sprint down the full length of the track (about 200 metres); the diaulos – an exhausting sprint covering two lengths of the track; the dolichos – a long distance race covering 24 lengths of the track with turns. The stadion (from which the word stadium is derived) was considered the premier event of the Olympics; much as the 100-metre sprint is today.

Wrestling, boxing and an anything goes bloodfest called the pankration would take over the afternoon session, when more deaths among competitors could be expected.

In the evening the mood shifted again with the hoplitodromia, a race in armour. A two-length sprint of the track in full soldiering gear, this seems to have been a light-hearted event to end the day's activities.

Day five

Ceremonies and celebrations concluded the five-day festival. There were presentations of wreaths to the champions, a victory parade, and a lavish evening banquet for the victors and officials. Revellers would continue to party through the night, before waking up to a 200-kilometre trek home.

And that's it. Barely a dozen events, all over in five days flat. No women's events, no marathon and, as far as we're aware, no synchronized swimming. Of course, new information could change our understanding at any time, but our basic grasp of the old Olympics seems established – the Ancient Greeks were sports fanatics who followed only a handful of favourite events.

Now bursting with hundreds of events, the modern Olympic Games that kicked off in Athens in 1896 may bear little relation to its ancestor. But sport can stir up ancient emotions that link us directly to the past, and many of us are sure to indulge ourselves in the thrill of competition this summer. And that's surely something the Ancient Greeks would understand.

Find out more

Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third party sites

Websites

The Ancient Olympics
www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/
US site with an online tour of Olympia, athletes' stories, a history of the games, FAQs and more. Nice, accessible introduction to the ancient Olympics.

Greeks
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/
BBC site with lots of articles and information on Ancient Greece.

How much do you think you know?
www.users.globalnet.co.uk/%7Eloxias/athletics02.htm
Fun online quiz that offers some insight into the ancient Games.

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/
asbook07.html
Comprehensive resource of Ancient Greece with hundreds of links and articles.

Official Website of the Olympic Movement
www.olympic.org/uk/index_uk.asp
As the official site, this has all the information you would expect, although it is maddeningly disorganized.

Paralympic Games
www.paralympic.org
The International Paralympic Committee is the representative organization of elite sports for athletes with disabilities. The site has lots of useful information for anyone wanting to find out more.

For Kids

Ancient Greece
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ancientgreece/
main_menu.shtml
A fun look at the lives of the Ancient Greeks. You can also visit the ancient Olympics in the 'Cartoon Classics' section.

History for Kids – Greek Olympic Games
www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/
games/olympics.htm
US site that has lots of easy to understand information on the Ancient Greeks and the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games
http://www.ancient-greece.co.uk/festivals/story/olympics.html
A new interactive site from The British Museum. A day-by-day guide to the ancient Olympics, its events and how they have shaped today's Olympics.

Books

	The Ancient Olympics: War minus the shooting by Nigel Spivey (Oxford University Press, 2004) The word 'athletics' is derived from the Greek verb 'to struggle/suffer for a prize'. The author paints a portrait of the Greek Olympics as fierce contests between bitter rivals, in which victors won kudos and rewards, and losers faced scorn and even assault. Victory was almost worth dying for, and a number of athletes did just that. Get this book
	Naked Olympics: The true story of the Olympic Games by Tony Perrottet (Random House, 2004) Held without a break for over 1000 years, the Olympic Games remains one of the greatest institutions of the civilised world. Piecing together ancient eyewitness accounts, this history is a fascinating mix of the familiar and the wildly exotic, exploring the often harsh conditions that the spectators endured, the bizarre events that were held, and even Plato's changing room pick-up lines. Get this book
	Olympics in Athens 1896: The invention of the modern Olympic Games by Michael Llewellyn Smith (Profil Books, 2004) In 1896 Athens hosted the Olympic Games for the first time in 1500 years. Inspired by British public schools it was planned to promote peace and internationalism. This is a story of the making of the modern Olympic Games. Get this book