Posted By admin on November 11, 2008

Ancient Greece

ancient greece?

okay, so im in grade 10 and working on a huge end of the year project on ancient greece. Regarding sports and sporting events: there were the olympics every 4 years, but there were also anual and other events every 2 and 3 years. Does anyone know what these were called and some brief info or a site where i could find some info on them? Any other general info on ancient greece is great as well.. especially regarding social groups and their role in society!
Thanks soo much!

This should give you all the information you need - the names of the other olympics and a brief discription.

The Games first started in Olympia, Greece, a sanctuary site for the Greek gods near the towns of Elis and Pisa (both in Elis on the peninsula of Peloponnesos). The Sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia housed a 12 meter high statue in ivory and gold of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods, sculpted by Phidias. This statue was one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World.

The Olympic Games were held in four year intervals, and later the Greek method of counting the years even referred to these Games, using the term Olympiad for the period between two Games. The historian Ephorus who lived in the 4th century BC is believed to have invented the use of Olympiads to count years, much as we today use AD and BC. Previously every Greek state used its own dating system, something that continued for local events, which led to confusion when trying to determine dates. "Diodorus states that there was a solar eclipse in the third year of the 113th Olympiad, which must be the eclipse of 316 BC. This gives us a date of (mid-summer) 786 BC for the first year of the first Olympiad".[4] Nevertheless, there is disagreement among scholars whether the games truly began at this time or not.[5]

The "Extra" reserved for the judges at Olympia on the north embankment of the stadiumThe only competition held then was, according to the Greek traveller Pausanias, the stadion race, a race over about 190 meters, measured after the feet of Hercules. The word stadium is derived from this foot race.

The early Olympics were also held to be the place where the Greek tradition of athletic nudity was first introduced in 720 BC, either by the Spartans (and Acanthus in particular) or by the Megarian Orsippus.

Several groups fought over control of the sanctuary, and hence the Games, for prestige and political advantage. Pausanias writes that in 668 BC, Pheidon of Argos was commissioned by the town of Pisa to capture the sanctuary from the town of Elis, which he did and then personally controlled the Games for that year. The next year Elis regained control.

The Athenian writer Xenophon in 364 BC gives a contemporary record of an Elean attack during the Pentathlon final of the Games themselves, as the Pisans were again in control. The Eleans pushed the defenders almost to the altar before retreating due to missiles being thrown at them from the porticos. During that night the defending Arcadians constructed defensive palisades, and the next morning on seeing the strength of the defence the Elians retreated.

Related to the Elis/Pisa conflict, is the Heraea Games, the first sanctioned competition for women, held in Olympic Stadium. It originally consisted of foot races only, as did the men's competition. Some texts, including Pausanias's Description of Greece, c. AD 175, state that Hippodameia gathered a group known as the "Sixteen Women" and made them administrators of the Heraea Games, out of gratitude for her marriage to Pelops. Other texts indicate that the "Sixteen Women" were peace-makers from Pisa and Elis and, because of their political competence, became administrators of the Heraea Games.

The Olympic Games were part of the Panhellenic Games, four separate games held at two- or four-year intervals but arranged so that there was at least one set of games every year. The Olympic Games were more important and more prestigious than the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games.

Finally, the Olympic Games were suppressed by neither Theodosius I in AD 393 or his grandson Theodosius II in AD 435,[6] as part of the campaign to impose Christianity as a state religion. The site of Olympia remained until an earthquake destroyed it in the 6th century.

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