Olympic Cavalcade

THE ANCIENT OLYMPIC GAMES 13 There is evidence, too, from the famous Boxer vase from Hagia T riada, that the Greeks drew their athletic system and their athletic festivals from Crete. Olympia owes its sanctity to its position, on the north bank of the Alpheus in the angle formed by it with its northern tributary, the Cladeus. It is in the coastal plain, across which runs the chief high road into the Peloponnese from the Gulf of Corinth. Pelops became the chief local hero of Olympia. Pindar in his Eleventh Olympian Ode tells how the Games were founded by Hercules after his victory oyer Augeas. According, therefore, to -Pindar, the Games were founded as a thanksgiving after war and belong in the first place to Zeus. That the ancient Olympic Games were of religious origin and signifi– cance is certain. At the middle of the fifth century B.c., when the Games were firmly on their feet, the Olympic festival was something quite distinct from a modern athletic meeting, even the revived Olympic Games. It was the national religious festival of the whole Greek race, and Olympia the meeting-place ·of the Greek world. The Games were held in a situation of such purity and charm as is but rarely to be found in a land of rugged mountajns. The wall~urrounding the Altis had disappeared by the fifth century and the Altis, the shrines, the statues and the low Temple of Hera were all dwarfed by the newly-erected Temple to Zeus, which was sixty feet in height. A little farther north was the great altar of the oracle of Zeus; built on the ashes of the sacrificed, the fire was kept perpetually burning. It was the centre of the worship at Olympia. To the east were the Treasuries erected by various Greek states and the open space where the Olympic evel).ts now were probably decided, instead of on the improvised race-course ending at the altar. There were also a Stadium and a Hippodrome. The festival took place every four years in the second or third full moon after the summer solstice in the months of August or September. About three months prior to the Games the 'truce-bearers of Zeus' departed from Olympia. They wore crowns of olive and bore heralds' staves. It was their duty to proclaim a sacred truce and to invite contestants to the Games. All festivals were times of truce and during its continuance no one might bear arms in Elis. The truce lasted two or three months and p~ople travelling to a~d from Olympia were-sacrosanct. Even Philip of Macedon had to apolo– glZe for the robbing, by his mercenaries, of an Athenian on his way to Olympia. .The would-be contestants arrived at Elis a month at least prior to the ~esuval and came under the eyes of the Hellanodikai, who were the official Judges at the Games.. The training they gave was strict-and severe, nor did they spare the use of the rod. The Hellanodikai satisfied themselves as to the claims of boys and colts to compete as such. Only those of pure Greek birth were allowed to take part.