The Real History of the Olympics — Older, Weirder, More Violent

The modern Olympics are a beautiful re-imagining of something that actually existed. The ancient Games ran for 1,200 years — from 776 BC until Emperor Theodosius closed them in 393 AD — at a single sanctuary in the western Peloponnese called Olympia. They were older, longer, weirder and more violent than the modern version. Athletes competed naked. One event was essentially legalised murder. The Games paused Greek wars.

Here is the actual history and how to visit Olympia today. See our Greece travel guide.

How the Games started

Traditional founding date: 776 BC, the year the Olympic Games first appear in Greek record-keeping. Historians now think athletic contests had been held at Olympia for perhaps 500 years before that, but this is the first year we know a winner’s name (Coroebus of Elis, a cook, who won the sprint).

The Games were held every four years, always in late summer, always at Olympia in the sanctuary of Zeus. The four-year interval (Olympiad) became the standard way of dating events across the Greek world — “in the third year of the 47th Olympiad” was how a Greek would refer to a date.

Olympia was chosen because it sat in a politically neutral zone. Greek city-states were constantly at war with each other, but during the Games a formal Olympic truce (ekecheiria) was declared. Any state that broke the truce was fined and its citizens barred. The truce ran for one month before and one month after the Games, letting athletes and spectators travel safely.

Who could compete

Any free-born Greek man could enter. Women, slaves and non-Greeks (called barbaroi) were barred. In fact women could not even attend as spectators, on pain of being thrown off the cliffs of nearby Mount Typaion — though one exception existed for the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, who had a reserved seat.

Athletes had to arrive at Elis (the city that ran the Games) a full month early for supervised training. Any athlete who was late, sick, or unfit was barred. Weight class and age divisions existed for some events; ages were determined by inspection, not documentation.

Athletes competed naked — gymnos, which is where “gymnasium” comes from. Traditionally this started around 720 BC when a runner named Orsippus won by shedding his loincloth mid-race. Naked athletics became a distinctively Greek practice, ostentatiously different from Egyptian and Persian custom, and part of Greek cultural identity.

The events

The programme grew over time. By the classical period it included:

• Stadion — 192-metre sprint, the original and always most prestigious event
• Diaulos — double stadion, 384 metres
• Dolichos — long distance, about 4-5 km
• Pentathlon — sprint, long jump, discus, javelin, wrestling
• Wrestling — no time limit; won by three throws
• Boxing — no rings, no rounds, no rules against punching a downed opponent. Bouts continued until one man was knocked out or surrendered
• Pankration — the killer. A no-holds-barred mixed combat combining wrestling and boxing. Only eye-gouging and biting were banned (though frequently attempted). Fights lasted until one man surrendered or died. Death of an opponent was considered unfortunate but not illegal.
• Hoplitodromos — a sprint in full armour
• Chariot races — four-horse and two-horse events on a nearby hippodrome, spectacularly dangerous, often with multiple deaths per race

The prizes

Officially, an Olympic winner received only an olive-branch crown cut from a sacred grove at Olympia. But back home, the rewards were enormous. Athens gave Olympic victors free meals for life at the Prytaneion and 500 drachmas — six years of a labourer’s wages. Statues were erected in the winner’s honour. Poems were commissioned (many of Pindar’s surviving odes were written for Olympic victors). Some cities knocked down a section of the city wall to let the victor enter, on the reasoning that a city with such a citizen needed no walls.

Winners became national heroes. Milo of Croton, a wrestler, won at six consecutive Olympics between 540 and 516 BC and became so famous he served as a general in his hometown’s army. Diagoras of Rhodes, a boxer, watched two of his sons win at the same Olympics and died of joy on the spot — a scene celebrated by Cicero five centuries later as the perfect way to die.

Cheating and scandals

Ancient athletes cheated. They bribed opponents, faked their birthplaces (Astylos of Croton famously ran for Croton in 488 BC, then switched to Syracuse for a bigger payout in 484 and 480), and drugged their opponents’ food.

The Zanes were bronze statues of Zeus placed along the tunnel leading into the stadium at Olympia, funded by fines paid by cheating athletes. Each statue was inscribed with the cheater’s name and offence — the ancient equivalent of a walk of shame. About 16 Zanes had accumulated by the imperial Roman period.

The end

The Games ran continuously for over a thousand years — through the Peloponnesian War, Alexander’s conquests, and the Roman takeover. Roman emperors (Nero especially, who competed in a specially rigged chariot race in 67 AD and was declared the winner even though he fell out of the chariot) exploited them for political theatre but did not stop them.

What ended them was Christianity. In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius I banned all pagan festivals, and the Games — held in the sanctuary of Zeus — were on the list. The last recorded ancient Olympics were held that year. The temples were closed, then in 426 AD dismantled on Theodosius II’s orders. Two centuries of earthquakes and flooding finished the site off, burying it under seven metres of silt.

Olympia was rediscovered by a British antiquarian in 1766 and systematically excavated by German archaeologists from 1875. The modern Games were revived in Athens in 1896, largely through the efforts of Pierre de Coubertin. The Olympic torch relay from Olympia was invented in 1936 for the Berlin Games.

Visiting Olympia today

• The site — the ruins are extensive: the Palaestra (wrestling school), the Gymnasium, Phidias’s workshop (where he carved the giant statue of Zeus), the Temple of Zeus itself (columns down but foundations clear), the Temple of Hera (older, partly upright), and the stadium (walk in through the same tunnel the athletes used)
• Archaeological Museum of Olympia — houses the surviving sculpture, including the Hermes of Praxiteles (one of the few original Classical Greek statues that survive), and the reconstructed pediments of the Temple of Zeus
• Museum of the History of the Olympic Games — a smaller museum focused on the ancient Games’s history

Olympia sits in the western Peloponnese, about 4 hours’ drive from Athens or 90 minutes from Patras. Combine with Delphi, Mycenae and Epidaurus for a classic 5-day Peloponnese loop. See our 7-day Greece itinerary.

Frequently asked questions