“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton
And so we have to cover a little ancient history. I’ll try to keep it brief.
History
Historical records can trace the first Olympic Games back to 776 BCE in Olympia, a sanctuary site for the Greek deities located near the towns of Elis and Pisa on the peninsula of Peloponnesos. The Games were held every four years (an olympiad) until 394 CE when the Roman emperor Theodosius I suppressed them as part of his campaign to make Christianity the state religion of Rome.
The Olympic Games were just one of the four sports festivals of ancient Greece that made up the Panhellenic Games, but they were the most prestigious. Only free male citizens from Greek city-states could participate in the Games, although the first Games began as…
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VCESS Classical Studies 