Olympic Cavalcade

CHAP'JER 1 THE ANCIENT OLYMPIC GAMES THE first ~recorded Oly:mpic victor at the Ancient Olympic Games was Corcebus, a- youth of Elis, who won ~the foot race,-of approximately 200 yards, at the time of the full moon ip the month of Apollonius in 776 B.C. He was rewarded with a chaplet o{ wild olive woven from the twigs and leaves of th€ tree which, according to ancient legend, Herc11les had brought back from the land of Hyperboreans and planted in the sacr~d grove-=:-the Altis-near ~o the Temple of Zeus at Dlympia. Corcebus ran his race in a meadow b~side the Riv:et Alpheus. - ~- ~ It is doubtful, however, if Corcehl:ls was the-first Olympic victor, or the rac@ he ran marks th~ origin of th€ A:~ncient Olympic Games. T:h~ festival, in fact, both religious and atbletie, wa~robably held beneath the heights of ·cyllen~ a11d Erymanthus in far mor@ ancient times. It goes back to the very twilight of the gods, if one may trust the words of Pindar and other Greek poets. _ . ~ There is a-legend tha:t Zeus and Kronos, the greatest of the gods, strove for possession of the world on the high peaks and that, later, the ~ames and religious celebrations took place in tlie valley below to comtrtemorate the struggle and the victory of Zeus. _There is another story which seeks to trace the origin of the Games to a thril!ing chari9U:a ce hetwe~n Pelops and King illnomaus. The _King had a-fair daughter namt_ned Hippodamia. Those who sought to win her had first to take part in a chari9t race with her father. Those whom he defeated he put to th1spear. Pelops was an artful fellow. He bribed his opponent's ch?rioteer to tamper with a wheel of the kipg's chariot. It came off ii1 the cours~ of the race 'and Kri}g ~:t:omaus bro~e . his neck. Pelops, according to fhe story, thus.:won a wife, founded the Games and also the Peloponnese_. ~ - ~ · - - The Ancient Games and, much l~ter,: the -Modern Games, revived i.n 1896, too§ place at Olympia,. which -ls -in Elis, the norl h-easte_m part of Greece, where the Ruphia, form€-rly the River Alpheus, ffows -through th€ valley past .Olympia, into an arm o£ th~ Ionian Sea. ~ T.he meadow wher~ the Games were held, except for the western vista 9 to the -Ionian Sea, was protected and sheltered on. a11 sides by tall, gaunt, - snow-covered peak~- and -tree-dad Rills. _ ' - Whether the Olympic_Games wer~ established to celebrate the victory of Pelops over ffi:nomaus seems doubtful in the evidence of archaeologist~, who state ·that the Temple of Her'i\, and perhaps some other buildings standing: within the 9riginal Olympic enclosure,~;- date liack -hundreds of years prior to the-triumph of Corcebu~.-1t is, however, a generally accepted