allowed to participate in the Olympic games (Instone).
From this hallowed date, the Olympic gamers were held in Olympia every four years for over a thousand years. The stadion was the only athletic event of the games for the first 13 Olympic festivals (UPENN). In 724 BC, the Olympic games were expanded to include a longer race, the diaulos, which involved running to and from a destination. Four years later the dolichos was introduced, which was a long race that involved running as many as 12 laps around the stadium. Many scholars believe that the emphasis on running in these early Olympic games had a martial origin; running was perceived as a basic requirement of a fit soldier in those times when warfare was predominantly composed of marching and hand to hand combat (Instone).
After the initial expansion of the Olympic games, many other sports soon followed. Boxing, wrestling, the pancration, which combined all different types of physical attacks that were possible, the pentathlon, and chariot racing were all introduced in the years to come. In 520 BC, a new event was introduced which involved racing while fully armored. A mule race was introduced in the Olympics of 500 BC (Instone).
There were three main criteria which were used to allow athletes to participate in the ancient Greek games: athletes had to be male, of Greek origin, and freemen. Women, slaves, and foreigners were explicitly excluded from the games. In the early Olympiads, the athletes were not professionals. City states selected their best athletes to participate in the Olympics, and these athletes would train for months in anticipation of the honor. Once the truce was declared and the dates of the Games were announced, the athletes would undertake the oftentimes arduous trip to Olympia. They arrived in the city of Elis, near Olympia, and were required to train for a month at that city's gymnasium. Those who were finally selected to comp...