History of The Olympics: Ancient and Modern

Emblem of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Image: Wikipedia

HISTORY OF THE OLYMPICS: ANCIENT AND MODERN

The Summer Olympic Games open on July 26, 2024, in Paris, France. While the modern Olympic Games date back to 1896, the ancient Olympic Games date back as far as 776 B.C. and before.

We will examine the Olympics in terms of religion, politics, war, nationalism, and internationalism.

Though historians place the beginning in 776 B.C., it seems the Games had been going on for several centuries before the 8th century B.C. Held initially in Olympia, Greece, the games were dedicated to Zeus, leader of the Olympian gods.

The site was one of Greece’s most important religious centers. The Olympia-base Olympics became part of another larger class of competitions: the Sacred Games, known as the Panhellenic Games or Crown Games.

The ancient Games were more religious than sporting. For five days during the first full moon in August, religious worship included sacrificing hundreds of oxen, grand processions, temple adornment, and banquets to honor the Olympian gods. Over time, this changed as commerce became increasingly significant, with greater emphasis on athletic competitions.

CONTENT

• Paris 2024
• Olympics’ First Sport
• Olympic Games Expanded
• Politics and the Olympics
• Olympics Decline
• Olympics Revived
• Glory of the Olympics

Paris 2024

But before we go any further, let’s discuss the Paris Games. This is the third time Paris has hosted the Olympics. The first was in 1900 when the games took five months to complete. The second was in 1924 (think: Chariots of Fire).

This year, Olympic events will take place above, around, and in the River Seine, where public swimming has been banned for over a century.

Paris Mayer Anne Hidalgo swims the River Seine. Image: ABC News

Nevertheless, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a long-awaited dip in the River Seine nine days before the opening of the games to prove the water is clean enough from E. coli bacteria to host the outdoor swimming events at the Olympics.

“Olympics: We are not ready,”

… read a message projected in giant letters on the face of the Arc de Triomphe during an anti-Games protest, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, according to SFGate.com, the security perimeter along the Seine River — slated to host a boat parade for the 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris on July 26 was initiated on Thursday, July 18. The scene could best be described as chaotic; thousands of people trying to cross the Seine ahead of the games — on bikes, cars, and on foot. They were frustrated by a blockade of security checkpoints along the river, restricting access for Parisians and tourists alike unless they had a preapproved QR code that justified the need to travel within the perimeter.

Evidently, locals and visitors were expected to know that they needed to do extensive online research on security perimeter dates and interactive maps before July 18.

These summer games, officially The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, in French, Les Jeux olympiques d’été de 2024, but branded as Paris 2024, are to be held in and around the Paris metropolis and Marseilles or on French land elsewhere. The surfing competition will occur in Tahiti, an island in French Polynesia some 10,000 miles away.

Tourists are avoiding Paris this summer for other vacation destinations. However, the European leg of Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tours concerts, kicked off May 10 in Paris, will bring five times more US luxury travelers to the city than the Olympics, according to Bloomberg. In Paris, 20% of tickets were snapped up by Americans, as ticket prices there are significantly lower than in the US.

The cost of hosting the Olympic Games in Paris is high, but not as high as in previous cities.

• Paris 2024: $10B projected (97% private funding)
• Rio de Janeiro: $13B
• Athens 2004: $15B
• Tokyo 2020: $15B
• Beijing 2008: $44B
• Sochi, Russia 2014: $51B

Olympics’ First Sport

Greek athletic sports and festivals. Image: Wikipedia

The first and only sport was the foot race; this stade was held in a stadium. Legend has it that Heracles (Greek: “Hera glory,” Latin: Hercules) measured out 200 of his steps to inaugurate this race in honor of his father, Zeus.

For the winner, this 200-yard sprint brought fame. Additionally, it became a form of an international system of relative dating methodology, as the 5th century B.C. sophist philosopher Hippias began recounting:

“…in the XXth year of the YYth Olympiad, when ZZ was the victor in the foot race.”

Kotinos, awarded to the winner of the Olympic race. Image: Wikipedia

There was only a single prize, and only for first place. Rather than a medal, it was the kotinos, the intertwined branch of a wild olive tree formed into a circle or a horseshoe. According to legend, this was introduced by Heracles and taken from an olive tree in Olympia for the winner in honor of his father, Zeus.

The award was fleeting; another winner would receive the glory four years later. But the value of the prize was not lost on the ancients. When a victor returned to his home city, he was showered with additional rewards. In Athens, a local winner was awarded 50-100 amphorae (ceramic containers) of olive oil. They could gain lifetime seats at amphitheatres, government positions, pensions, meals, parades, and their picture on the Wheaties box.

Gold, silver, and bronze medal prizes were not introduced for first, second, and third place until the 1904 St. Louis Games in the U.S.

Olympic Games Expanded

Within a few hundred years  – with the games judged by ten highly trained judges every four years – there were competitions in wrestling, javelin throwing, boxing, long jumping, and baklava eating. Any free Greek man could compete, but was required to train for 10 months before the games and stay for a month in Elis for an intense training program. Sponsorship from wealthy families and cities was not uncommon for athletes. Women competed in the separate Heraean Games, designed specifically for women. It was an alternative to the Olympics but not part of the official festivities.

The Marathon footrace was not part of the original games and did not become part of it until the 1896 games. Previous, the longest footrace was the Dolichos, about three miles long.

Because nudity during sporting competitions was common, there was a “leveling effect” to the clothing, or rather lack thereof, regarding class. This also prevented sponsorship from clothing endorsements, though some competitors painted a “swoosh” on their chest in honor of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

Politics and the Olympics

Much has been made of the Olympic spirit of freedom, peace, friendship, and fair play.

Have the Olympics always been free of politics?

Olympic Truce

History tells us of the “Olympic Truce,” where heralds were sent out months ahead of the Games to declare that athletes, their supporters, and visitors could travel safely to the Games. The Ekecheiria was the personified spirit of truce, armistice, and the cessation of hostilities. While true, this does not mean warring city-states or nations would cease hostilities. The Greeks continued to fight their wars. However, the host city was safe from invasion by outside armies, and travelers could expect safe passage.

Removing Politics from the Olympics?

In modern days, there is a call to return to the halcyon days of the apolitical games of the past. But the games have always been political; indeed, they served as a stage to air political differences.

Stadium at Olympia, Greece. Image: Wikipedia

The fifth-century B.C. Greek historian and Athenian general Thucydides, from whom we learn about the Peloponnesian War, records that political alliances were announced at Olympia.

His contemporary Greek historian and geographer Herodotus describes how the champion Cimon, who was in exile at the time, won the four-horse chariot race. When he won again at the next Olympiad, he resigned his victory and was allowed to return to his property under a truce.

Herod the Great. Image: Wikimedia

Israel’s King Herod the Great, a client king under Rome, sponsored the Olympic Games of 12 B.C. for political purposes. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote of his lavish gift,

“a donation not only in common to all Greece, but to all the habitable earth, as far as the glory of the Olympic games reached… For when [Herod] perceived that they were come to nothing, for want of money, and that the only remains of ancient Greece were in a manner gone, he not only became one of the combatants in that return of the fifth-year games… but he settled upon them revenues of money for perpetuity.”

Herod was named “President of the Olympic Games” for life for his contribution. His dedication to the games and his payment for the sacrifices to Zeus would elicit gratitude from his patron, Caesar Augustus when Herod visited Rome later that summer.

In recent times, a host of political opportunities have been taken with the games: boycotts, reactions to boycotts, protests, banned countries or athletes, terrorism, kidnapping, and postponements due to violence.

The Olympics were suspended in 1916 during World War I and again in 1940 and 1944 during World War II. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey were not permitted to participate in the 1920 games due to their defeat in WWI. Germany and Japan were not invited to participate in the 1948 games; they were not invited back until 1952. The 1948 Olympics in London were called the “Austerity Games” as there was no funding for a lavish spectacle.

Olympics Decline

Bust of Theodosius I. Image: Wikipedia

In A.D. 394, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, who made Christianity the state religion of Rome, issued a series of decrees designed as part of wide-ranging reforms against pagan religion, rituals, and festivals. Economically, civic funding for the games declined as monies were directed elsewhere.

Though the last official Olympics were recorded in 393 A.D., there is evidence that some games continued after that. Following the sack of Rome in the early 5th century by Alaric I, the first king of the Visigoths, the Games finally came to a halt.

They had survived for over a millennium. See my previous article for a contributing factor to the ending of the gladiatorial games in Rome.

Olympics Revived

In 1892, a young French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, proposed reviving the Olympics as a major international competition to occur every four years, as the original Olympics had. At an international sports conference in Paris in 1894, he recommended it to delegates from nine countries, who unanimously approved it.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was formed to organize the first modern Games in Athens two years later, in 1896. While the ancient Olympics in the 8th century B.C. represented competitors from 12 locations across Greece, these Games in 1896 came from 13 nations with 280 athletes in 43 events, including the first Marathon competition.

While Coubertin emphasized international competition among amateur athletes, the definition of amateur evolved. Note the subplot of “amateur” with Olympic athlete Harold Abrahams in the 1981 Academy Award-winning movie Chariots of Fire.

Athletes from all five continents competed in 1912. Two years later, Coubertin designed the Olympic symbol of five interlocking rings. This symbol was used for the first time at the 1920 games in Antwerp, Belgium.

Glory of the Olympics

Back in the mid-70s, I skied at Squaw Valley, California, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. It was not a city but a winter sports resort. Even into the ’70s, it was still living off its past glory.

In tribute to the ancient Olympics, for the 2018 XXIII Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Olympic torch was lit at the Temple of Hera in Olympia on October 24, 2017, marking the traditional start of the Greek phase of the torch relay.

Lighting of the flame ceremony held in ancient Olympia in March 2020, by Greg Martin. Image: X/Twitter

This custom, first introduced at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, hearkens back to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. During the original Games in Olympia, a continuous flame was common in the altar of the Greek goddess Hestia and the temples of Zeus and Hera in ancient Olympia.

This year, the Olympic torch was lit in Olympia, Greece, on April 16 and then carried across Greece to Athens on April 26. There, it left the port to arrive in Marseille on May 9. Then, it traveled to dozens of historic locations in France. From there, it traveled to the French Caribbean before returning to France to light the Olympic cauldron in Paris.

Let the Games begin!

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com