Olympics+History

[|The Ancient Olympics]

Check out this site to compare the ancient Olympic sports with the ones we have today.

= = =Greek Olympic Games - History for Kids!= ====The temple of Hera in Olympia, Elis , Greece ==== Once every four years, men from all over[| Greece] came to compete in a great athletic festival in Elis, in western Greece (Women were not allowed to compete). This was called the Olympic games because the place was called Olympia. It was a religious festival to honor the Greek gods[| Zeus] and[| Hera]. We don't know when men first began celebrating the Olympic Games, but they were certainly already doing it in the time of[| Homer], by 776[| BC]. And they were celebrated from then on, every four years without fail, until people converted to[| Christianity] and the Roman Emperor[| Theodosius] banned the games in 393 AD. That's more than a thousand years! The games were so regular that people used them to date by. They would say, I was born in the second year of the twenty-fourth Olympiad (starting from 776 BC). Can you figure out what year that would be in our reckoning?

When it was time for the games, the[| rulers] of Elis sent out messengers all over Greece and to the[| Greek colonies] around the[| Black Sea] and the[| Mediterranean]. They declared a truce throughout the Greek world for a month. No matter who you had a[| war] with, you had to stop the war and let their[| athletes] and[| performers] go through your [|city-state] safely to get to the Olympic Games. Each city-state paid for a few athletes from their city to travel to Elis. But if you had ever been a slave, or if you had ever done anything against the gods, then you couldn't be in the Olympics. And, the men had to swear that they had already trained for at least ten months. This meant that only men who were pretty rich could be in the Games, so they could afford to take so long off work, and also pay a trainer.

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