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Ancient Greece Olympic Games The Olympic Games began in ancient G

o restore the festival. They celebrated the festival at the town of Olympia, located in Pisatas, and the games were most certainly originally under the control of the Pisatans. The Eleans and Spartans then took joint charge and operated the games in a businesslike and fair manner, enforcing the truce that had to prevail during the games. The first record of Olympic victors dates from 776 BC with the name of Coroebus of Elis, a cook; the list then continues until 394 AD when Theodosius, emperor of Rome, abolished the games (Henry 11-12).

The Olympia site was rediscovered in 1766 by Richard Chandler, an English antiquarian. The site had been chosen originally for its strategic position but was destroyed by natural forces peculiar to that area, such as earthquakes and winter storms. Full-scale excavations would not be carried out until 1875 (Swaddling 13). The site contained more than two dozen major buildings and structures around the hill of Knossos, and these included religious and civic monuments as well as sports stadiums and the like.

All that we know of the games derives from scenes on pottery, accounts by observers, statues of athletes (including Roman copies of Greek originals), and various literary sources. There were once textbooks containing exercises for physical prowess, but these have been lost. What information there is must be pieced together like a huge puzzle to suggest what the games were like (Swaddling 33).

The Olympia site as it exists today is only a shadow of what once stood there, and models show more of the nature of the area than the site itself. Much remains speculative because of changes in the topography and a lack of direct evidence or even written plans. The site was started as a religious facility dedicated to Zeus and developed into a central sports facility, with the Olympic Games every four years the primary event bringing people from all over the Greek world. The site must have be...

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Ancient Greece Olympic Games The Olympic Games began in ancient G. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:55, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683667.html