The Ancient Olympics
776 BCE O.S. – 188153 items
ancient worldolympicsTwelve centuries of games for Zeus
Every four years, at a full moon in high summer, Greeks from Spain to the Black Sea came to a sanctuary of Zeus in the western Peloponnese to watch men run, fight and race chariots for a crown of olive. This timeline follows the games from the first recorded race in 776 BCE to their end under the Christian emperors around 393 CE, then the earthquakes, the silt and the rediscovery of Olympia.
Counting in Olympiads
The Greeks had no common era. From the fourth century BCE historians dated events by Olympiads, the four-year cycles between games, each named after the winner of the stadion race. The notes give each date’s Olympiad: Ol. 1 is 776 BCE, Ol. 293 is 393 CE. Dates are in the Julian calendar, as historians of antiquity write them, and most are a whole year wide: the sources rarely give a day.
How much to trust the dates
Both ends are traditions. 776 BCE comes from the victor list that Hippias of Elis compiled around 400 BCE, three and a half centuries after the fact, and many historians doubt its early entries. 393 CE is a modern inference from a Byzantine chronicle and Theodosius I’s laws; another late source says the games lasted into the reign of Theodosius II, around 426 or later. Both versions are here.
Reading it
Four bands: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Olympia, with two careers (Milo, Leonidas), Nero’s tour and the German dig drawn as shorter periods.
Filter by
athletics,combat sportsorequestrianto follow one family of events from its first winner.womenfollows the girls’ Heraia and the women who won as chariot owners;religionthe cult of Zeus and its end;archaeologythe rediscovery.The map spreads from Olympia to the other crown games at Delphi, Isthmia and Nemea, and on to Rome and Constantinople.
Many are the sights to be seen in Greece, and many are the wonders to be heard; but on nothing does Heaven bestow more care than on the Eleusinian rites and the Olympic games.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.10.1, c. 170 CE.
Items
Koroibos of Elis wins the stadion
The first olive crown
The diaulos, a double-length race
The dolichos, and runners strip
Pentathlon and wrestling
Boxing
The four-horse chariot race
Pankration and the horse race
Events for boys
Temple of Hera and the Heraia
Pythian Games at Delphi
Isthmian Games
Nemean Games
The race in armour
Milo leads Croton against Sybaris
“Not for money they contend but for glory of achievement”
Pindar’s First Olympian ode
Temple of Zeus completed
Phidias’s statue of Zeus
Sparta banned for breaking the truce
Alcibiades enters seven chariots
Kyniska of Sparta, the first woman champion
The first Zanes: a bribery scandal
Battle in the Altis
Philip of Macedon’s horse wins
The Philippeion
Belistiche wins the chariot race for colts
Mummius’s shields on the Temple of Zeus
Sulla takes the games to Rome
Herod the Great endows the games
Nero’s Olympics
Nero frees Greece at the Isthmian Games
Herodes Atticus’s fountain
Pausanias visits Olympia
Varazdates of Armenia, the last named champion
Theodosius I bans sacrifice everywhere
The traditional last games
A later end under Theodosius II
The statue of Zeus burns in Constantinople
Earthquakes topple the Temple of Zeus
Richard Chandler identifies Olympia
The French dig in the Temple of Zeus
The Nike of Paionios is found
The Hermes of Praxiteles is found