Ancient Greek Olympics
The Greek Olympics were very important and a truce was declared when waring cities or states participated. They took place in the city of Olympia for about 12 centuries, and were held in honour of the Ancient Greek gods, Zeus and his wife Hera. Women were not allowed to compete and married women could not watch the games, except at Sparta were women were allowed to run in separate events held in 'Heraia' as a tribute to the goddess Hera. Like now, they were celebrated every 4 years until the Christian Roman Emperor banned the Ancient Greek Olympics in the year 393AD. If you were a slave or if you had disrespected the gods, then you were not allowed to take part in the Ancient Greek Olympics. If you took part, in the Greek Olympics, you had to prove that you had trained for at least the last 10 months previous to the games. Therefore it was often the wealthy who took part, because no one else could not afford to take the time off. They held many sacrificial and religious events before the actual Olympic games and after as a victory celebration to the god Zeus.
At first there was only short running events, but eventually after many years they introduced marathons, pentathlon, which included javelin, running, discus, and running and might also have included long jump. Much later other events such as boxing, wrestling and chariot racing was introduced. There were lots of heats to eliminate the weaker participants. Eventually they Olympics became a way of earning good prize money instead of olive branches. A lot of the contestants performed nude, but there was one race called the hoplite race; in this race the men wore armour of some kind. Olympics | Philosophy | Government | Pottery | The Arts | Fashion | Jewelry | Food Leave Ancient Greek Olympics to return to Ancient Greek...
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