The Getty Villa Guide to the Ancient Olympics

The Olympic Games began almost 3,000 years ago as an athletic contest held during Greek religious celebrations.

The Olympics continued for over a millennium, setting a standard for athletic excellence that has lasted into the modern era. 800 years into the Games, the historian Dio Chrystostom dramatically expressed the enduring power of an Olympic victory: “You know that the Olympian crown is olive leaves, and yet many have preferred this honor to life itself” (The Rhodian Discourse 31.110).

While there is much we don’t know about the ancient Games and their context, there are many fascinating facts we do know, thanks to historical texts, archaeological finds, and depictions in art. As an Olympics fan, archaeologist, and specialist for academic audiences at the Getty Villa, I’ve used objects from our collection to illuminate salient and surprising facts about the ancient Games. (For a far less serious look, watch this BuzzFeed video about the ancient Olympics.)

Origins

The original games were held in 776 BC in a sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, at a festival in honor of the god. The festival started small, but eventually grew to last five days and include processions, sacrifices, award ceremonies, and a victory party. There were far fewer events than today, and only men could compete (but keep reading to learn about women and horses).

Olympiads—the four-year periods from one Olympic Games to the next—were so important that eventually they were used as a calendar for dating important political and historical events. Many victors’ names survive from 776 BC to AD 385.

Why did the Olympics exist? Ancient authors disagreed on this question—and scholars still debate the reasons for competitive sports today. One rationale for the competitions was that they helped keep men fit for war. (See Nigel Spivey’s chapter on sports as “War Minus the Shooting.”) Since the Greeks associated physical excellence with moral superiority, victory was a worthy tribute to the gods, and the games also brought Greeks together in relatively peaceful competition, for a change. An Olympic truce in the months before the festival even allowed athletes and visitors to travel safely.

When did the Games start? A man from Elis, the city that oversaw Olympia, calculated backwards around 400 BC to figure out the 776 date, which has been cited ever since (see Paul Christesen on Olympic victor lists). Long before that official date, though, there were probably celebrations and competitions at the site. The Games lasted almost 1,200 years, ceasing in the late fourth century AD under Christianity, and were later reinvented for the modern world in 1896.

Competitors

The games brought competitors together from all over the Greek world (Greece and its colonies). Only male citizens competed, in two categories: men and boys (future citizens, in the case of boys). Women, foreigners, and slaves were not allowed. Women did, however, have their own games in honor of Zeus’s wife, Hera.

Women could win at Olympic chariot racing, but not by active participation. If a charioteer won, the person who paid for the chariot and horses also won, so rich women snuck in that way.

All educated Greek males trained in the core events of the Olympics as part of their schooling, and each town of any size had at least one gymnasium (which has gymnos, “naked,” as its root) that offered space for running, long-jumping, throwing the discus and javelin, and the “heavy contests” (barea athla), like wrestling. Only the really rich could pay for a chariot, but almost any youth in school could theoretically become an Olympian!

Spectators

People also came from all over the Greek world and beyond to Olympia to attend the games. Foreign visitors and dignitaries, officials from the Greek city-states, trainers and families of athletes, and people who simply wanted to watch—just as they do today—came to Olympia to brave searing summer heat, dust, and extremely limited facilities.

“People” mostly means “men.” Pausanias, a second-century AD travel writer who provides invaluable descriptions of Olympia, says that a law existed to throw women (by which he means married women) off a nearby cliff if they trespassed on the sacred grounds! A priestess of Demeter and unmarried women (virgins) could, however, watch the Games. (See Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.6.7 and 6.20.9.)

The largest space for viewing the events was the outdoor stadium, which held about 40,000 people, standing packed together in the heat. Olympia was famous for being miserably uncomfortable; the events were for glory, not for comfort. Pliny (first century AD), Pausanias (second century AD), and others reference the need to pray to Zeus as Averter of Flies! (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.14.1.)

Nudity

Athletes competed naked, although they started out wearing some sort of loincloth or “shorts.” Even the ancients were not clear about the origins of naked competition.

At the earliest games, the only event was the sprint, and Pausanias says in his Description of Greece 1.44.1 that the first naked runner simply lost his garment on purpose, because running naked was easier. His theory seems fairly reasonable when we consider that there were, as yet, no stretchy fabrics to reduce drag and wick moisture away. Greeks also equated nudity with athletics, athletics with beautiful male bodies, and beautiful male bodies with excellence—so nudity was natural.

Unlike athletes, trainers (again, always men) were clothed at first—until one was revealed to be a woman when she jumped out of the trainers’ enclosure upon her son’s athletic victory. After that, trainers also had to go naked at the events. In art, however, referees and judges are shown dressed.

The Gym Bag

An athlete’s “gym bag” held a container of oil, a scraper, and a sponge. Olive oil was used as a skin protectant, but it made things worse in some ways. There is no doubt that athletes got really dirty, since they rubbed the oil fairly thickly on their bodies before competition. It was thought to safeguard the skin from the elements and keep it supple, and it was also used to clean the body.

After competition the athlete scraped off the dirty oil, gloios, with a stlengis, a curved bronze scraper. He also took the equivalent of a shower, using his sponge. Some gymnasia, at least by the second century BC, would collect and sell the dirty oil as a medicine for inflammation. We don’t know if Olympic trainers or athletes saved the used oil from Olympic competition, but it probably would have been worth money. (For more on this fascinating practice, see a great post by classicist Jason Konig, Sweat Collectors in the Gymnasium, and sources in Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources, pages 18, 20, 141, and 218.)

The Athletic Cup?

Not to belabor the point, but...were they really, totally naked? No protection? Yes. In fact, instead of using an athletic cup, a Greek athlete sometimes tied a string (kynodesme) around his foreskin and pulled his penis back. Not all athletes did this, but we see the practice in ancient art. We’re not entirely sure about all aspects of the tying. Although there is much experimental archaeology, this is one area that has not received a lot of attention (or at least it has not been published!), except in medical contexts.

Curious? See the article on The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome; footnotes 22 to 31 link to classical illustrations of tied penises.

The Olympic Oath

Although we don’t have a copy of the text of the ancient Olympic oath, Pausanias summarized it in his time, the second century AD. The athletes, their trainers, and their fathers and brothers held the flesh of a boar sacrificed to Zeus Horkios (Zeus of the Oaths), and swore that they would do nothing to dishonor the games.

The athletes also swore that they had trained for 10 straight months, and judges of boys’ events swore that they would judge fairly, would not accept bribes, and would keep information about the athletes private. (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.24.9–10.)

Cheating

Many Olympic officials shown in art are carrying a symbolic stick or switch for hitting those who cheated or misbehaved. Some of the names of the officials also indicate their function of dishing out physical punishment. Ancient historians including Herodotus, Thucydides, and Lucian all commented on these Olympic beatings and whippings.

In the fourth century BC, on two separate occasions cheaters who had offered bribes to win, and who had taken bribes to lose, paid large fines to cover the cost of setting up statues of Zeus at the competitors’ entrance to the stadium. These served as reminders to the athletes that cheating had financial consequences as well as physical ones.

Olympic Events

From 776 to 724 BC, athletes only competed in one sport, the sprint or stadion (about 200 meters). Between 724 and 396 BC, organizers added the following events to the men’s category, in this order (I’m omitting sports that were added but later dropped):

• Double sprint (diaulos)
• Distance race (dolichos)
• Wrestling (pale)
• Pentathlon (pentathlon)—this included discus (diskos), long jump (halma), javelin (akon), and running and wrestling separate from the events outside the pentathlon
• Boxing (pyx or pygme)
• Four-horse chariot racing (tethrippon)
• Horseback racing (keles)
• Ultimate fighting (pankration, meaning “all power”)
• Two-horse chariot racing (synoris)
• A race in armor (hoplitodromos)

The heralds (kerykes) and trumpeters (salpinktes), who were essential for announcing events and victories, were allowed to compete in 396 BC. The winners were then put to work for the rest of the Olympics! (For more on Olympic events, see Donald Kyle, Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, chapter 6.)

The Sprint

The most important event at Olympia, to judge from the victor’s long-term glory, was the sprint (stadion), which as I noted above was the only competition for many years. Officials didn’t time the runners and list records— the race was simply about who was fastest to the finish line in a given year. Officials could whip a runner who false started, and they ensured a fair start by letting down a rope from a starting gate (hysplex). If you tripped over it, you had false started.

The Olympiad, the four-year period between games, was named after the winning athlete. When a writer would date a political or historical event to an Olympiad and victor, he would say, for example, that it happened “in the year (or the second, third, or fourth year) of the Olympiad in which X won the stadion.”

Awards: Olympia vs. Athens

At Olympia, there was only one winner...and many losers. Right after the win, an athlete was awarded a palm of victory (basically, a palm frond), and ribbons were tied around his head, legs, or arms. During a “victory lap,” he might be showered with leaves (phyllobolia). His final and biggest reward was an olive wreath from Zeus’s sacred tree. He got no medals, no money, and no endorsement deals.

Winners—always just first place—did better than “just a wreath” back home. Athletes represented their city-states at this prestigious Panhellenic festival, and the victor’s town was very excited about his victory—just as our athletes’ home towns are today. Cities rewarded their victorious Olympic athletes with many different benefits, from lavish welcome-home receptions to money and free meals.

Other athletic competitions also awarded wreaths and some prizes of more value. The major stephanitic (“crown” or wreath) games began after those at Olympia, and an athlete was especially honored if he won all four; this was like winning an ancient Grand Slam. The crown games were held at the cities of Olympia, Nemea, Isthmia, and Delphi, and there was crossover in the core events at all the major game sites. (For more on the various Games, see Games and Sanctuaries in Ancient Greece).

The Athenian games were well known, but they were not part of the stephanitic group. Athens offered the usual events and also some just for local competitors. The city awarded monetary prizes, even for second place (and up to fifth place for some musical events). We have a number of Athenian prize vessels (Panathenaic amphorae) at the Getty Villa that were awarded for victories at Athens.

These look a lot like trophies today, and they signified glory—but perhaps even more importantly, they were filled with 30 to 40 gallons of olive oil worth a lot of money, and useful for cooking, lighting lamps, and oiling and cleaning the body.

No one could beat the Olympics for sheer prestige, but the Athenians knew that good prizes would bring good competitors. An inscription surviving from the fourth century BC tells us that the stadion winner at Athens won 100 amphorae of oil, and the man who came in second won 20. Athletes probably gave away or sold some of their prizes, but they would have used some of the oil themselves and buried some of the vessels in their tombs as a reminder of former glory. Possibly the only known skeleton of an Olympic athlete, who may have been a pentathlete, was buried with four Panathenaic amphorae; but confusingly, all depict different events.

Why There’s Still More to Learn

Art, literature, artifacts, and archaeological sites give us a lot of information about the ancient games—but there is still much scholarly debate. Since the original Olympic Games lasted over 1,000 years, and people designed buildings and equipment for them and discussed them for most of that time, what’s the problem?

• Things change over a millennium! Applying information from one century to another is dangerous, but we have to do it to paint a picture of the Games.
• Many written sources talk mainly about their own time or cite (sometimes badly) lost, older authors. And they leave a great deal unsaid, because their readers already knew a lot.
• Texts written on inorganic materials are mostly lost. Inscriptions on stone are often cut off at the top or the bottom, or along one side—usually at places where you were just about to find out what you wanted to know.