First Olympic Games (776 BC): Origins of the Ancient Olympics

The ancient Olympic Games were a religious festival in honour of Zeus, held every four years at Olympia in the western Peloponnese of Greece. By tradition the first games took place in 776 BC, when a man named Coroebus of Elis won the only event, a short footrace. The festival lasted more than a thousand years, gave the Greeks a common way of counting time, and inspired the modern Olympic movement launched in 1896.

Background: Zeus, heroes and the date 776 BC

Olympia was a sanctuary, not a city. It lay in a wooded valley where the Alpheios and Kladeos rivers meet, under the Hill of Kronos, and was controlled for most of its history by the state of Elis. Votive offerings show that people were worshipping there by the 10th century BC, long before the traditional first games. The site is described in the article on the sanctuary of Olympia.

Greek myths gave the games heroic founders. In one story, Heracles laid out the stadium and set its length by pacing out 600 of his own feet. In another, the hero Pelops won the hand of Hippodameia by beating her father Oinomaos in a chariot race, and the games commemorated him.

The date 776 BC comes from a list of Olympic victors compiled by the sophist Hippias of Elis around 400 BC. Later scholars such as Timaeus and Eratosthenes used it to build a chronology for all Greek history. Modern historians treat the early part of the list with caution: it may have been partly reconstructed, and the festival probably developed over time rather than beginning in a single year. Some archaeologists argue that organised games became important only around 700 BC, when wells for visitors and many more votive offerings appear.

The sacred truce

Before each festival, heralds called spondophoroi travelled across the Greek world to announce the games and the truce, known as the ekecheiria. Tradition credited the truce to an agreement between Iphitus of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus. Aristotle claimed to have seen their names on an old bronze discus at Olympia.

The truce guaranteed safe passage to athletes and spectators, banned armed forces from the territory of Elis and forbade executions during the festival. It did not stop all wars. In 420 BC, according to Thucydides, Sparta was fined 2,000 minas and excluded from the games after its troops attacked a fortress during the truce.

The events

For the first 13 Olympiads, according to tradition, the only contest was the stadion, a sprint of one length of the stadium. At Olympia this was about 192 metres. New events were added gradually.

The pentathlon combined running, long jump, discus, javelin and wrestling. The pankration was a brutal mix of boxing and wrestling in which only biting and gouging were banned. Athletes competed naked, a custom later Greeks believed had begun in the 8th century BC.

By the 5th century BC the festival lasted five days, falling in late summer at the time of the second or third full moon after the summer solstice. One day was given over to sacrifices, including the offering of 100 oxen to Zeus at his great altar, a mound built from the ash of earlier sacrifices.

Rules, judges and women

Only free Greek men could compete, at least in the early centuries. Athletes swore an oath before the statue of Zeus Horkios that they had trained for ten months and would not cheat. The games were run by judges from Elis called Hellanodikai, who wore purple robes and could flog rule-breakers.

Cheats were fined, and the money paid for bronze statues of Zeus, the Zanes, lined up near the entrance to the stadium with inscriptions naming the offenders. According to Pausanias, the first were set up in 388 BC after the boxer Eupolus of Thessaly bribed three of his opponents. The stone bases of sixteen Zanes can still be seen.

Married women were forbidden to watch the men’s contests, on pain of death according to Pausanias. One story tells of Kallipateira, who disguised herself as a trainer to watch her son box and was discovered when she leapt over the barrier, but was pardoned because her father, brothers and son were all Olympic champions. Afterwards trainers too had to attend naked.

Women could, however, win as owners of horses, because the victory in equestrian events went to the owner rather than the driver. The Spartan princess Kyniska won the four-horse chariot race in 396 and 392 BC and set up a monument at Olympia to celebrate it. Separately, unmarried girls ran in footraces at the Heraia, a festival of Hera held at Olympia.

Key people

• Coroebus of Elis: by tradition the first Olympic victor, in the stadion race of 776 BC.
• Milo of Croton: the most famous wrestler of antiquity, who won one boys’ and five men’s Olympic titles in the later 6th century BC.
• Leonidas of Rhodes: a runner who won 12 Olympic crowns between 164 and 152 BC, a record not equalled for more than two thousand years.
• Kyniska of Sparta: the first woman to be recorded as an Olympic victor, as owner of a chariot team.
• Nero: the Roman emperor who competed in AD 67, when the games were moved to suit his tour of Greece. He fell from his ten-horse chariot but was declared winner; his victories were later struck from the records.

Myths and facts

Myth: ancient Olympians were amateurs. The prize at Olympia was only an olive wreath, but home cities rewarded champions lavishly. Athens, for example, gave Olympic victors free meals for life in the town hall. Many top athletes were wealthy or professional.

Myth: the marathon was an ancient Olympic race. The longest ancient footrace was the dolichos, a few kilometres long. The marathon was invented for the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, inspired by a legend about the Battle of Marathon.

Myth: the Olympic flame is ancient. A sacred fire burned at Olympia, but the torch relay was created for the Berlin Games of 1936. Since then the flame has been lit at the Temple of Hera at Olympia before each Games.

By the numbers

Decline, end and legacy

The games survived the Roman conquest of Greece in the 2nd century BC and enjoyed new prosperity under Roman emperors, who funded buildings at Olympia. Competitors came from across the Roman world, from Syria to Spain.

In the 390s AD the Christian emperor Theodosius I issued decrees banning pagan sacrifices and closing temples. The end of the games is traditionally dated to AD 393, although no single law naming the Olympics survives. The last securely attested victor, the Armenian prince Varazdates, won the boxing in AD 385. A bronze plaque found at Olympia in 1994, listing victors up to the late 4th century, and other evidence suggest that some form of the festival may have continued into the 5th century.

During the 5th and 6th centuries the sanctuary decayed. Fire, earthquakes and floods of the Kladeos and Alpheios rivers gradually buried the site, which was not excavated until the 19th century.

Greek writers counted years by Olympiads, so that a date might be given as “the third year of the 75th Olympiad”. This system helped historians coordinate events across different Greek cities.

The Olympic ideal was revived in the 19th century, first in local events such as the Wenlock Olympian Games in England from 1850 and the Zappas Olympics in Athens from 1859. The French educator Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, and the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. Later Games, such as the 1948 London Olympics, consciously drew on the ancient tradition through the flame and the language of a peaceful truce.

Timeline

• c. 10th century BC: earliest votive offerings at the sanctuary of Olympia.
• 776 BC: traditional date of the first Olympic Games; Coroebus wins the stadion.
• 724–632 BC: new events added, including wrestling, boxing, chariot racing and boys’ contests.
• 420 BC: Sparta is excluded for breaking the sacred truce.
• 396 and 392 BC: Kyniska of Sparta wins the four-horse chariot race as owner.
• AD 67: Nero competes at a specially rescheduled Olympiad.
• AD 385: Varazdates of Armenia wins the boxing, the last securely recorded victory.
• AD 393: traditional date of the end of the games under Theodosius I.
• 1896: the first modern Olympic Games are held in Athens.

Why it matters

The ancient Olympics were one of the few institutions shared by all Greeks, bringing rival cities together under the protection of Zeus. Their traditional founding in 776 BC became a cornerstone of ancient chronology, and their memory shaped the largest sporting event of the modern world.