HISTORY OF OLYMPICS

 

 

we all know that The modern Olympic Games or Olympics, are the leading international sporting events, featuring summer and winter sports competitions, in which thousands of athletes, from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are normally held every four years, alternating between the Summer and Winter Olympics, every two years in the four-year period. have you ever wondered where it all began.

According to one Greek myth, it was Zeus who initiated the Olympic Games to celebrate his victory over his father, Cronos. While it is certain that the Games were held regularly long before the first recorded instance in 776 B.C.E., historian Pausanias writing in the second century c.e., states that it was the ninth-century B.C.E. king Iphitus who "arranged  the games at Olympia and re-established afresh the Olympic festival and truce, after an interruption of uncertain length. At this time Greece was torn by internal strife and plague, and Iphitus asked the god at Delphi for deliverance from these evils. The Pythian priestess ordained that Iphitus himself and the Eleans must renew the Olympic Games."

From 776 B.C.E., the Games were held every four years until 394 C.E., when they were abolished by the Christian Byzantine emperor Theodosius, who saw them as an anachronistic hangover from the pagan era. So important were the Games that the Greeks used them to count the passing years. Held at Olympia in the Peloponnese in a stadium with a capacity of more than 40,000, they were primarily a religious festival in honor of Zeus, with a truce declared so that men from all Greek-speaking cities could attend.

At first there was just one event, the Stadion, which was a race over 650 feet (200 m)--one length of the stadium track. The winner in 776 B.C.E. was a local boy from Elis, a cook called Coreobus. His reward may have been no more than a branch of an apple tree, although later Greek Olympic champions in a growing list of events were crowned with olive wreaths and won great financial rewards. Although historians often refer to Greek athletes competing naked, nudity was not actually introduced until 720 B.CE, in part as a celebration of the human body.