Greece Gifts Olympia To Australia For 2032 Games

The Hellenic Republic has made the historic decision to loan Australia priceless artefacts illustrating the ancient Olympics for the 2032 Games. Greece rarely makes such a loan: the first time it did so was for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This time Australia is being offered twice as many artefacts, and many from Olympia - the site of the ancient Games for 1,000 years. The exhibition will be the most significant one on the Olympics ever staged outside Greece.

The first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games have since become the world's largest secular event. Impressive as this history is, it is still only a small part of a much older and longer story. The ancient Greeks staged Olympics for 1,000 years, attracting sports stars from across the 1,000 Greek states of the Mediterranean basin. With 40,000 spectators, theirs were also the world's largest event.

Rediscovering a religious sanctuary

The Brisbane Olympics Exhibition will tell the remarkable story of the rediscovery of the long-lost games site of Olympia. In 1874 AD, Greece signed a contract with Germany to excavate the site, with the contract stipulating for the first time that the artefacts would remain in Greece.

The first temple excavated was that of Zeus Olympios, leader of the pagan gods and in whose honour the ancient Olympics were held. What was unearthed by archaeologists literally rewrote the history of western art. The temple contained depictions of the heroic deeds of Hercules, the mythical superman who supposedly founded the Olympics, as well as a 12-metre-high statue of Zeus made entirely of gold and ivory. Created by the builder of the Parthenon, Pheidias, at a workshop at Olympia in the 420s, it quickly counted among the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

Found around the temple were monuments trumpeting military victories, bronze sporting equipment, Games regulations and pieces of statues that Olympic victors had commissioned of themselves. There were also thousands of bronze statuettes which had been offered as thanks by worshippers to an oracle of Zeus at Olympia which had answered military questions for centuries.

Track and field events

The ancient Games had a sprint race the length of the stadium as well as other footraces. The pentathlon had the 5 standard events: the sprint, javelin, long jump, discus and wrestling. But these differed from the modern ones in interesting ways. Long jumpers at the ancient Olympics used hand weights in order to jump longer and in one foot race, the runners wore military equipment.

Combat sports

The 3 combat events at the ancient Games were even more warlike: boxing, wrestling and the 'pankration', similar to kickboxing. Ancient Greek boxing gloves were designed like knuckledusters. They protected a boxer's hands while causing gaping wounds on his opponent's face.

Statues of victorious boxers at Olympia unsurprisingly showed them with flattened noses, facial scars and cauliflower ears. Combat events generally ended when a competitor was bashed unconscious or was otherwise forced to give up. Serious injuries or even deaths at the ancient Games were common.

War and peace

In the first 8 years of their dig, the Germans decided against excavating the Olympic stadium itself. This had to wait for a dark milestone in Olympia's rediscovery: the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It is still shocking that the new German regime co-opted the ancient Games. As part of its propaganda, it invented a ritual that we take for granted today: the Olympic torch relay. This was purely a Nazi invention because there was no such relay at the ancient Games.

German Führer Adolf Hitler used his own discretionary funds to pay for the Olympic stadium's excavation, which unearthed thousands of weapons and pieces of armour.

The ancient Greeks often made a trophy for a military victory by hammering such items onto a pole, set up on the battlefield. But the dig also showed the Greeks set up duplicate military trophies in the Olympic stadium itself. Peace might be a cherished ideal of the modern Olympics. But the ancient Games were much more linked to war.

Image: Some helmets that were once part of duplicate military trophies that Greek states set up in the stadium at Olympia (Archaeological Museum [Olympia]).

Photo credit: The German Archaeological Institute (photo no. D-DAI-ATH-2017-00372). Photographer: K. V. von Eickstedt.

Chariot racing

The ancient Olympics included races for chariots, horses and mule-carts. The 'agōn', or contest for 4-horse chariots, was the veritable formula-one racing of ancient Greece. It was the sport of choice of Greek tyrants, Macedonian kings and in time, Roman emperors. Because the chariots were usually driven by hired professionals, victory had nothing to do with the courage of team-owners.

In the 390s BC, the Spartan king Agesilaus wanted to make this criticism by getting his sister Kyniska to enter. He reasoned that if she, as a mere woman, won, everyone would see how worthless the event was. Kyniska did win, and defiantly commissioned statues of herself and her team to display at Olympia, with a poem boasting that she was the first-ever female Olympic victor.

Sportswomen

A statuette of a Greek sportswoman was left as a thanks-offering for Zeus at his other oracle at Dodona.

Men in ancient Greece generally thought women lacked the virtues that sport and war required. There was a male anxiety too that women might well have extramarital affairs if they were allowed to workout in public.

It comes as no surprise that women were barred from competing in person at the ancient Games or from practising sport more generally.

Nevertheless, there was one state where they were allowed to be sportswomen - Sparta. But this did not mean Spartan men were proto-feminists. Rather they thought that sport ensured that their wives would bear strong males for the Spartan army.

Image: A statuette of a Spartan sportswoman from the 540s BC from the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona (National Archaeological Museum [Athens], inv. no. KAP24).

(Photo credit: Irini Miari and Kostas Xenikaki)

Sport beyond the Olympics

The ancient Olympics was just one event of an international circuit of 4 international sports festivals held at Corinth, Nemea and Delphi. The citizens of every Greek state swelled with national pride when a fellow citizen won at such panhellenic games. Victors were given the highest civic honours of free front-row tickets at local games and free meals - for life.

The 1,000 states of the classical Greek world also staged their own local sports festivals. The greatest of them was the Great Panathenaea - the sporting festival for Athena. Olympic sports were also a standard part of male schooling across the Greek world.

Roman Olympia

Rome's conquest of Greece was good and bad for the ancient Olympics. In 69 AD, the infamous Roman emperor Nero insisted on entering a 10-horse team into the 4-horse chariot race. Driving the team himself, he came last after repeatedly falling out of his chariot. Elis's games-umpires prudently proclaimed him the victor anyway.

The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus at Olympia for more than a millennium. But his worship there ended abruptly in 393 AD when Theodosius I, a zealous Christian emperor, outlawed pagan rites. The workshop of Pheidias, still standing, was converted into a church. Within a few centuries, even the Christians had abandoned Olympia because of devastating earthquakes and local floods. The former games-venue would remain buried under alluvial silt for more than 1,000 years. What the Germans began rediscovering there in the 1870s would quickly become the main impetus for the incredible revival of the Olympic Games in modern times.