User:Senior citizen smith/Ancient Olympic Games 2

Origins
"The legends of Zeus, Pelops, Heracles, and others are contradictory, and even the ancients found them confusing."


 * Strabo 8.3.33

Events
The program gradually increased to twenty-three contests, although no more than twenty featured at any one Olympiad.

Youth events are recorded as starting in 632 BC. paides

Our knowledge of how the events were performed primarily derives from the paintings of athletes found on many on vases, particularly those of the Archaic and Classical periods.

Running
The only event recorded at the first thirteen games was the stade, a straight-line sprint of just over 192 metres. The diaulos (lit. "double pipe"), or two-stade race, is recorded as being introduced at the 14th Olympiad in 724 BC. It is thought that competitors ran in lanes marked out with lime or gypsum for the length of a stade then turned around separate posts (kampteres), before returning to the start line. Xenophanes wrote that "Victory by speed of foot is honored above all."

A third foot race, the dolichos ("long race"), was introduced in the next Olympiad. Accounts of the race's distance differ, it seems to have been from twenty to twenty-four laps of the track, around 7.5 km to 9 km, although it may have been lengths rather laps and thus half as far.

The last running event added to the Olympic program was the hoplitodromos, or "Hoplite race", introduced in 520 BC and traditionally run as the last race of the games. Competitors ran either a single or double diaulos (approximately 400 or 800 metres) in full military armour.

Combat


Wrestling (pale) is recorded as being introduced at the 18th Olympiad. Three throws were necessary for win. A throw was counted if the body, hip, back or shoulder (and possibly knee) touched the ground. If both competitors fell nothing was counted. Unlike its modern counterpart Greco-Roman wrestling, it is likely that tripping was allowed.

Boxing (pygmachia) was first listed in 688 BC, the boys event sixty years later. The laws of boxing were ascribed to the first Olympic champion Onomastus of Smyrna. It appears body-blows were either not permitted or not practised. The Spartans, who claimed to have invented boxing, quickly abandoned it and did not take part in boxing competitions. At first the boxers wore himantes (sing. himas), long leather strips which were wrapped around their hands.

The pankration was introduced in the 33rd Olympiad (648 BC). Boys' pankration became an Olympic event in 200 BC, in the 145th Olympiad. As well as techniques from boxing and wrestling, athletes used kicks, locks, and chokes on the ground. Although the only prohibitions were against biting and gouging, the pankration was regarded as less dangerous than boxing.

One of the most popular events, Pindar wrote eight odes praising victors of the pankration. A famous event in the sport was the posthumous victory of Arrhichion of Phigaleia who "expired at the very moment when his opponent acknowledged himself beaten."

Pentathlon
The pentathlon was a combined competetion in five events: running, long jump, diskos throw, javelin throw and wrestling. The pentathlon is said to have first appeared at 18th Olympiad in 708 BC. The competition was held on single day, but it is not known how the victor was decided, or in what order the events occured, except that it finished with the wrestling.

Ancient

 * Pausanias, Description of Greece. (Trans. W. H. S. Jones)
 * Olympic mentions in Paus.


 * Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 431 BC (Trans. R. Crawley)
 * Plato, Apology
 * Plato, Laws
 * Xenophanes, Fragment 2
 * Pindar, Olympian
 * Plutarch, Aristotle
 * Plutarch, Lycurgus
 * Plutarch, Thermistocles
 * Strabo, Geography (8.3.30)
 * Philostratus Gymnasticus
 * Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus
 * Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
 * Xenophon, Hellenica
 * Lysias, Olympic Oration
 * Julius Africanus, Chronographiae
 * Eusebius, Chronicle
 * Aristotle, Rhetoric
 * Pliny, Natural History
 * Herodotus, Histories (8.26.3)
 * Aristophanes, Lysistrata
 * Diodorus Siculus, Library (17.109.1-2)