48 Fun Facts About Ancient Olympics

At the ancient Olympic festival's greatest sacrifice, a hecatomb, 100 of which animal were offered to Zeus?

Oxen: the Greek hekatombe joins the words for 'hundred' and 'ox', and the offering was on such a scale that 'hecatomb' now means any great slaughter.

Greek historians named each four-year Olympiad after which person?

The sprint champion gave each four-year Olympiad its name, so the Games became a shared calendar: historians counted their years from the first one, traditionally placed in 776 BC.

Which modern Olympic ritual, often assumed to be ancient, was actually invented for the 1936 Berlin Games?

The torch relay was first run for Berlin 1936, under organiser Carl Diem. The ancient Olympics never had one, though torch races were run at other Greek festivals.

Delphi crowned its winners with laurel, but the champion's wreath at Olympia was cut from which sacred tree?

Olive: the leaves came from a sacred wild olive at Olympia. Told that this was the only prize, a Persian officer is said to have cried out in alarm at men who competed for honour, not money.

The bronze statues of Zeus lining the way into ancient Olympia's stadium were paid for by whom?

Athletes caught cheating: their fines paid for the statues, each inscribed with the offence as a warning to competitors walking in. The first went up in 388 BC, after the boxer Eupolus bribed his opponents.

Which Christian emperor, who outlawed pagan worship, was reigning when the last recorded ancient Olympics were held in AD 393?

Theodosius I banned pagan festivals in the 390s, which is traditionally taken as the end of the ancient games. In 426 a later emperor, Theodosius II, ordered Olympia's temples destroyed.

The only event at the first ancient Olympics was a sprint of about 190 metres, known by what Greek name?

The stadion, one length of the track, gave English the word 'stadium'. Its first recorded winner, in 776 BC, was a local cook named Coroebus.

After the Olympic champion Theagenes died, his bronze statue was tried and thrown into the sea for which crime?

Murder: the statue toppled onto a man who came every night to flog it, and his sons took it to court. Thasos later fished it back out of the sea when an oracle blamed a famine on its exile.

Where did nearly all of the 40,000-odd spectators in ancient Olympia's stadium watch from?

Bare earth banks: the greatest games in Greece never built stands, so the crowd packed the stadium's sloping sides in the summer heat and only a handful of people had a seat.

Never run at the ancient Olympics, the marathon was invented for which modern Games?

Athens 1896: French scholar Michel Bréal proposed a race from Marathon to recall a legendary messenger's run, and a Greek runner, Spyridon Louis, won it.

In the hoplitodromos, the last footrace added to the ancient Olympics, what did the runners carry?

A soldier's shield: runners in this 'race of the hoplites' also wore a helmet and, at first, leg guards, and the event is thought to have doubled as training for war.

What was the all-in ancient Olympic combat sport of punches, holds, kicks and chokes, introduced in 648 BC?

Pankration put only biting and eye-gouging off limits, and legend said the hero Theseus devised the style to overcome the Minotaur.

When Arrhichion died just as his rival submitted, what did the Olympic judges do?

Crowned the dead man: caught in a stranglehold, Arrhichion wrenched his rival's foot so hard that the man signalled surrender at the very moment Arrhichion himself died.

Which wrestler from Croton won six Olympic titles and reputedly trained by carrying a calf every day until it was full-grown?

Milo is also said to have led Croton's army into battle wearing his Olympic crowns and a lion skin, like Heracles. In legend he died trapped by a tree he tried to split, a meal for wolves.

After the discus, javelin, long jump and a sprint, which event came last in the ancient Olympic pentathlon?

Wrestling came last, and it seems only the leaders got that far: Xenophon writes of pentathlon finalists who had qualified for it. How the overall winner was decided is no longer known.

Ancient Olympic long jumpers swung what in each hand?

Stone weights, or lead ones: jumpers swung these halteres forward as they took off, then thrust them behind and let go before landing, turning the backward throw into extra distance.

Instead of gloves, ancient Olympic boxers bound their fists in what?

Leather straps, called himantes: at first simple ox-hide thongs that spared the boxer's own knuckles, later harder 'sharp thongs' meant to do the other man more damage.

Ancient Greeks trained and competed in the nude, a habit behind which English word, from the Greek for 'naked'?

Gymnasium comes from gymnos, 'naked'. One tradition says the habit began at Olympia in 720 BC, when the sprinter Orsippus let his loincloth fall mid-race and won.

With no rounds or points, what ended an ancient Olympic boxing match?

One man unable to go on: bouts ran until a boxer was knocked out or raised a finger to concede. With no weight classes and opponents drawn by lot, a small man might face a giant.

Which was the first equestrian event added to the ancient Olympics, in 680 BC?

The four-horse chariot race ran twelve laps of the hippodrome. Teams burst from a staggered gate shaped like a ship's prow, released as a bronze eagle rose and a bronze dolphin dropped.

How did Cynisca become the ancient Olympics' first female victor?

Owning a chariot team: victory went to the owner, not the hired driver. Cynisca won in 396 and 392 BC, and her monument at Olympia boasted that she was the only woman in all Greece to have done it.

Which Athenian, according to Plutarch, entered a record seven chariots in a single Olympic race?

Alcibiades took first, second and either third or fourth place with his seven teams in 416 BC, a show of wealth that helped him talk Athens into sending its great expedition to Sicily the next year.

Which Roman emperor was thrown from his chariot at Olympia in AD 67 yet was declared the winner anyway?

Nero fell from a ten-horse chariot, gave up before the finish and was crowned anyway. He also made Olympia add a music contest, against all custom, and won that too.

Which Roman general looted Olympia in 86 BC and staged the 175th Olympic Games in Rome?

Sulla took Olympia's treasures to pay for his war with Mithridates. In 80 BC he summoned the athletes to Rome for his victory shows, leaving Olympia with nothing to hold but footraces.

What were the judges of the ancient Olympic Games, all drawn from the host region, called?

Hellanodikai means 'judges of the Greeks'. Though every one of them was a local, they were famed for fairness and spent ten months before each festival being schooled in the rules.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders, was made by which sculptor around 435 BC?

Phidias had already made the colossal Athena for the Parthenon. His workshop at Olympia was unearthed in the 1950s, and in it lay a cup scratched with the words 'I belong to Phidias'.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was made of which materials over a wooden frame?

Ivory and gold: ivory for the god's skin, gold for his robe. Strabo wrote that the seated Zeus so nearly touched the ceiling that if he stood up he would take the roof off the temple.

In one version of an Olympic founding myth, which hero won his bride Hippodamia by having King Oenomaus's chariot sabotaged?

Pelops had the king's charioteer tamper with the axle pins, in the less flattering telling, and Oenomaus died in the crash. The Peloponnese, 'island of Pelops', is said to take its name from the winner.

The sacred precinct at Olympia was known by what name, from a local word for 'the grove'?

The Altis was a walled, wooded enclosure that held the temples and altars, but not the games themselves: the stadium and the racecourse lay just outside it.

Which of the four great Panhellenic Games was held at Delphi in honour of Apollo?

Pythian: the games began as a contest for musicians, and athletic events were added only in the 580s BC. Their winners were crowned with laurel.

Unmarried girls ran their own footraces at Olympia in a separate festival honouring which goddess?

Hera: at her festival, the Heraea, girls raced in three age groups with their hair loose and the right shoulder bared, on a track shortened by a sixth. Winners shared the cow sacrificed to the goddess.

Kallipateira of Rhodes was caught at the ancient Olympics doing what?

Attending disguised as a male trainer: she gave herself away leaping a barrier when her son won, but was spared because her father and brothers were Olympic victors too. Trainers had to strip from then on.

From 632 BC the ancient Olympics added separate events for which group?

Boys got events of their own from 632 BC, starting with a sprint, and boxing followed in 616. A boys' pentathlon was tried once, in 628 BC, and dropped straight after its first winner was crowned.

Which city-state in Olympia's own region ran the ancient Olympics for most of their history?

Elis ran the festival and supplied its judges. Its neighbour Pisa seized the sanctuary more than once, and Elis struck the games held without it from the official list.

On what grounds did rivals try to bar Alexander I of Macedon from the Olympic sprint?

Not Greek, they said: the games were for Greeks only, so Alexander had to prove descent from Argos before the judges let him run. By the oldest account he then tied for first place.

Runner Astylos of Croton caused outrage by switching allegiance to which city, to please Hiero?

One scholar suggests Hiero 'simply bought Astylos' services'.

Diagoras of Rhodes, the great boxer, supposedly died how?

Of joy, borne on his victorious sons' shoulders, the story goes: a man in the crowd had just told him to die there and then, since no greater happiness was left for him to reach.

The champion Dioxippus won an Olympic crown 'akoniti', literally 'dustless', which meant what?

Without a fight: no rival dared face him, so he took the crown without raising any dust. He later beat a fully armoured Macedonian soldier with nothing but a club, in front of Alexander the Great.

From 396 BC the ancient Olympics held a contest for players of which instrument?

Trumpet: the loudest player won, and Herodorus of Megara did so at ten Olympics running. He was said to blow two trumpets at once, a blast that once spurred on an army besieging a city.

Which Greek historian is said to have read his new work aloud to the crowds at the ancient Olympics?

Herodotus is said to have stood on a temple porch at Olympia and read from his Histories. With Greeks gathered from every city, the festival was the fastest way for an author to be heard everywhere.

Athens rewarded its own Olympic victors with which perk for the rest of their lives?

Free meals at public expense, served in the city hall. At his trial Socrates proposed the same reward as his own 'punishment', saying he had earned it more than any Olympic chariot winner.

During which Roman emperor's reign did King Herod the Great of Judea rescue the ancient Olympics from money troubles?

Augustus was emperor when Herod found the games 'in a very low condition' for want of funds. He endowed them so generously that inscriptions named him a president of the festival for life.

The ancient Greek word for a contest at the games is the root of which English word?

Agony comes from agon, a contest, by way of agonia, the struggle to win one at the games. Only later did the word come to mean the suffering rather than the striving.

Visitors to ancient Olympia sacrificed to 'Zeus Averter of' what, a summer festival plague?

Flies: the story went that Heracles, pestered by them while sacrificing at Olympia, made an offering to Zeus Averter of Flies, and the swarm withdrew across the river.

In 420 BC which city was fined and barred from the ancient Olympics for attacking during the sacred truce?

Sparta refused to pay and was shut out. One Spartan, Lichas, entered his chariot under another city's name, won, and was flogged by the judges when he stepped up to honour his driver.

Which modern founder added an artistic competition to the revived Olympics to imitate the ancient games?

Pierre de Coubertin got his arts contests in 1912 and won the first literature gold himself, with a poem entered under a false name. When he died, his heart was buried at Olympia.

Which ancient Olympic event is frozen in a famous Greek statue of an athlete, a lost bronze known from Roman copies?

The discus throw: the statue is the Discobolus, cast around 450 BC. At Olympia the discus was never a contest of its own, just one of the pentathlon's five events.

In the ancient Olympic trotting race for mares, what did the riders do on the final stretch?

Jumped down and ran: riders finished on foot beside their mares, holding the bridle. The event lasted barely fifty years, from 496 BC until it was struck from the programme in 444 BC.