The ancient Olympic Games, or the ancient Olympics, were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and one of the Panhellenic Games of ancient Greece. They were held at the Panhellenic religious sanctuary of Olympia, in honor of Zeus, and the Greeks gave them a mythological origin. The originating Olympic Games are traditionally dated to 776 BC. The games were held every four years, or Olympiad, which became a unit of time in historical chronologies. These Olympiads were referred to based on the winner of their stadion sprint, e.g., "the third year of the eighteenth Olympiad when Ladas of Argos won the stadion". They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC.
Early history
Several groups fought over control of the sanctuary at Olympia, and hence the games, for prestige and political advantage. Pausanias later writes that in 668 BC, Pheidon of Argos was commissioned by the town of Pisa to capture the sanctuary from the town of Elis, which he did and then personally controlled the games for that year. The next year, Elis regained control.
Greek sports also derived its origins from the concept that physical energy was being expended in a ritualistic manner, in which Paleolithic age hunting practices were turned into a more socially and glamorized function, thus becoming sport. The Greeks in particular were unique in the regard that their competitions were often held in grand facilities, with prizes and nudity that stressed the Greek idealisms of training one's body to be as fit as their mind, it is this ideology and athletic exceptionalism that resulted in theories claiming the Greeks were the inventors of sport.
Religion and culture
The ancient Olympics were as much a religious festival as an athletic event. The games were held in honor of the Greek god Zeus, and on the middle day of the games, 100 oxen would be sacrificed to him. Over time, Olympia, the site of the games, became a central spot for the worship of the head of the Greek pantheon and a temple, built by the Greek architect Libon, was erected on the mountaintop. The temple was one of the largest Doric temples in Greece. The sculptor Pheidias created a statue of Zeus made of gold and ivory. It stood 42 feet (13 m) tall. It was placed on a throne in the temple. The statue became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. As the historian Strabo put it,
... the glory of the temple persisted... on account both of the festal assembly and of the Olympian Games, in which the prize was a crown and which were regarded as sacred, the greatest games in the world. The temple was adorned by its numerous offerings, which were dedicated there from all parts of Greece.
Running
The only event recorded at the first thirteen games was the stade, a straight-line sprint of just over 192 metres (630 ft). The diaulos (lit. 'double pipe'), or two-stade race, is recorded as being introduced at the 14th Olympiad in 724 BC. It is thought that competitors ran in lanes marked out with lime or gypsum for the length of a stade then turned around separate posts (kampteres), before returning to the start line. Xenophanes wrote that "Victory by speed of foot is honored above all."
A third foot race, the dolichos ("long race"), was introduced in the next Olympiad. Accounts of the race's distance differ; it seems to have been from twenty to twenty-four laps of the track, around 7.5 to 9 km (4.7 to 5.6 mi), although it may have been lengths rather than laps and thus half as far.
The last running event added to the Olympic program was the hoplitodromos, or "hoplite race", introduced in 520 BC and traditionally run as the last race of the games. Competitors ran either a single or double diaulos (approximately 400 or 800 metres, 0.25 or 0.5 miles) in full military armour. The hoplitodromos was based on a war tactic of soldiers running in full armor to surprise the enemy.