Greece is a truly magical country. There, the wind plays in olive groves, the waves gently caress the coast, and the generous sun allows you to turn green and bloom in nature even in winter. It seems that this fertile land is saturated with some unusual ether that helps people create the beautiful and the eternal. Greece, ancient Hellas gave the world so many great scientists, architects, poets, thinkers! It is not surprising, therefore, that it was there that the very first Olympics in the world took place.
Olympic gods and ancient Hellenes
Ancient Hellas was a pagan country. The people there worshiped various gods, the most powerful of which was Zeus. He and his "colleagues" in the celestial pantheon lived on Mount Olympus and were called Olympians. The Hellenes built temples for them, held ritual rites and even sacrifices. Especially revered Zeus. In the days when the first Olympics was, Hellas often fought. It was necessary to repel the attacks of the invaders, and seize new lands themselves. And internecine skirmishes constantly occurred, because Hellas was divided into dozens of areas. Each of them considered themselves a small state with its own rules and ambitions. The people in those years greatly appreciated physical strength, dexterity and endurance, because without them it was difficult to survive in fights. Therefore, men were extremely proud of their muscular bodies and wore clothes that did not hide their biceps. In Hellas, there was even a cult of a strong and healthy body. It was the thirteenth century BC ...
How the Olympic Games were born
The history of the first Olympics is rich in myths and legends. The most popular of them is about the Delphic oracle and King Ifitus. He was a brave Argonaut and a good king who wished prosperity for his people. Around 885-884 BC, a plague swept through Hellas, killing thousands of lives. And then there were endless feuds. Ifit decided to go to Delphi to the oracle. He wanted to know how to achieve peace in Hellas, even for a short time. The oracle has advised to occupy warlike Hellenes with the competitions pleasing to gods. During their conduct, no one should have taken up arms, and the competitions themselves had to be held honestly and openly. Ifit rushed to Sparta to the tsar Lycurgus there. The Spartans attached great importance to physical exercise, and Lycurgus, although he did not favor Ifit, agreed to measure his strength. Having agreed, two rulers made an agreement, the text of which was minted on an iron disk. This great event happened in 884 BC. It is a pity that Hercules subsequently threw such a good king off a cliff.
Olympic Games and Hercules
There is another myth about how the first Olympics came about. The year then went 1253 BC. Elis, a small area in the Peloponnese, ruled by the cunning and deceitful Augeus. He owned a huge herd, but never cleaned his animals. Hercules was instructed in one day to clear the stables of tons of dirt that had accumulated there. He demanded part of the herd for this, and Augeus agreed. No one believed that Hercules could do it, but he could. To do this, he sent to the stables of the river, changing their channels. Augeus was pleased, but he did not deliver the promise. The hero left empty-handed and wanted revenge. After a while, he returned to Elis and killed Auggius. To celebrate, Hercules made sacrifices to the gods, planted an olive grove and organized competitions in honor of the powerful Zeus. This was the first Olympics in Greece. There are other myths about this event, for example, that the Olympics was arranged by Heracles in honor of the victory of his
father Zeus over Kronos, who swallowed his sons.
Olympia is the birthplace of the first Olympics
The venue for the Olympics was Olympia. This is a territory in Elis, hundreds of kilometers from Mount Olympus. Here was located the legendary olive grove Altis with the altar of the mighty Zeus. It was bordered by a wall and was considered sacred. Also here was the temple of Zeus, where hundreds of years of rituals were held. Later, already by the fifty-second Olympics, a new temple was founded. It provided training pallets, gymnasiums, houses for guests and athletes, prototypes of the Olympic village. Also, statues were set there for the winners. On one of them a date was carved - 776. That is how scientists who unearthed Olympia in the 19th century established when the first Olympiad was. The competition stadium was at the foot of Mount Kronos. On its slopes, stands were made for up to 45 thousand spectators. This grandiose complex was completed after more than a hundred years, somewhere around 460 BC. The new temple safely stood for 8 centuries, and in 406 it was destroyed by Theodosius II, who hated everything pagan. Nature completed the defeat of Olympia, destroying everything that remained, with two powerful earthquakes, and then flooding an unprecedented flood of rivers.
The rules of the first Olympics, valid now
Modern Olympics are significantly different from those held more than 3,000 years ago. However, some rules are still valid. The main one is fairness of competition. Athletes are now swearing allegiance to Olympic traditions. Previously, there were no oaths, but if the athlete was convicted of deceit, he was expelled with shame, and the copper statues of Zeus were cast with the penalty money that he had to pay . Before the start of the competition, they were shown to the participants as a sign of edification. The second immutable rule is to hold the Olympics once every four years. Then the Greeks introduced a special reckoning called the Olympic year. It just equaled four ordinary ones. And another important rule of past and current Olympics is to stop hostilities for the duration of the Olympics. Unfortunately, when the first Olympics took place, and now they do not adhere to it at all. Otherwise, the first Olympics are very different from the current ones.
The rules of the first Olympics, no longer existing
Now representatives of all countries and peoples can compete. When the first Olympics took place, the rules forbade non-Greeks, the poor, and slaves and women to participate in competitions. The latter did not even have the right to attend competitions. Otherwise, they could be thrown off a cliff.
In the entire ancient history of the Olympics, only one Fereniya was able to get there. She was her son's fist trainer. At the games Fereniya dressed up in a men's suit. Her son won, and the woman gave herself away in a surge of joy. She was not thrown off a cliff just because the people stood up. But since then, all the athletes' coaches, the so-called Ellanodics, have had to strip to the waist. The athlete who wished to participate in the competition reported this for a year. All this time he trained intensively, passed the established standards, and if he did, he trained for another month with a special trainer. Interestingly, there was no Olympic flame at the first Olympics; this “ancient” tradition was invented in the 20th century. In Hellas, they ran with torches, but not in Olympia, but in Athens - at various holidays.
Types of competitions of the first Olympics
The first Olympics in Greece took place only one day and included a run of 192.14 meters, the so-called one stage, equal to 600 feet of Zeus. According to legend, Hercules himself measured the distance. From the 14th Olympiad, they entered races in stage 2, and from the 15th - endurance. The distance included from 7 to 24 stages. Since the 18th, wrestling and a pentathlon (pentathlon), which consisted of wrestling, running, long jumps, throwing spears and discs, were included in the regulations. Athletes leaped long from a place, holding cobbles in their hands. Landing, they were thrown back. It was believed that this improves the result. The spear was thrown at the target, and the disk from a special eminence. Fist fights appeared on the 23rd, and chariot races on the 25th. The 33rd Olympiad has expanded the program even more. Now the athletes competed in horse racing, foals and donkeys and mutilated themselves in pankration (something like our fights without rules). In total, 293 Olympics took place. Thanks to Theodosius II, they were forgotten, but in 1896, the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin revived a glorious tradition.
How the Winter Olympics was born
The first Winter Olympics took place in France in 1924. I wanted to include figure skating in the program of the first renewed Olympiad Pierre de Coubertin, but this happened only in 1908. Figure skating included 4 disciplines. Our Russian Panin-Kolomenkin won the free program. Thus began the history of the first Winter Olympics. The IOC has proposed a winter sports week in the Olympic Games program. But the Swedes, who hosted the 5th Olympiad, refused, because they already had such competitions. They justified the refusal by the fact that in ancient Greece there were no winter competitions. The 6th Olympiad took place in 1916 and did not take place. At the 7th IOC, he included figure skating and hockey in the program. The year 1924 has come. The Olympics were hosted by the French, who did not mind winter sports. The competition aroused crazy interest, and the IOC finally approved the law on the Winter Olympics, and the past competitions were given the status of "I Winter Olympic Games".
Further development of the Olympic movement
The first Winter Olympics had a fairly wide program. It included hockey, curling, figure skating, ice skating, bobsledding, several types of ski races and ski jumping. Now the list of disciplines has replenished with freestyle, sledding and skiing, skeleton, snowboarding and short track. At first, the winter competitions were held simultaneously with the summer, but were later shifted by 2 years. The list of participating countries has expanded significantly. Now in winter sports not only northern peoples are competing, but also representatives of African countries. The popularity of the Olympic movement is growing every year. Now they are holding regional Olympics, and in 2015, the first European Olympic Games will be held in Baku.