302 Unit 7 Critical reasoning: Advanced Level
The history of the Olympic Games – ancient and modern
Introduction
The modern Olympic Games are always hosted by a city – not by a country. The first Olympic Games of the
Modern Era were hosted by Athens (Greece). The Olympic Games were hosted by Beijing (China) in 2008
and by London (UK) in 2012.Host cities and the calendar known as the Olympiad
The ancient Olympic Games were always in the same place – Olympia – a sacred city in western Greece
known as Elis. The Games were a religious event, a festival that honored the Greek God Zeus. The ancient
Games were hosted by the Elians who were the guardians of the sanctuary to Zeus. They tried – and
succeeded for a few hundred years – to be neutral, that is, unallied to other Greek city-states, similar to
modern-day Switzerland. But in the fifth century BCE (or BC) they allied themselves with Sparta and warred
against their neighbors. The Elians lost control of the sanctuary to the Spartans, then to other Greek
city-states, then finally to the conquering Romans. In 80 BCE the Roman general Sulla moved the Olympic
Games to Rome and only a single race for boys was held at Olympia, the stade race. But then Sulla died
and the next Games returned to Olympia in 76 BCE.
The ancient Olympic Games and the modern Olympic Games are quadrennial, meaning they are held
every four years. This four year period of time is known as an Olympiad. To the ancient Greeks an Olympiad
was their calendar, a way of designating time. However, this calendar was not used by every Greek city-state
and there is great difficulty in studying ancient history because of the calendar and attempts to ‘date’
things. There was no accurate dating system in the ancient era and every civilization used a different
calendar system. There were calendars for the Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks and many others. The one
thing the civilizations had in common was that they were conquered by the Romans. Julius Caesar created
the Julian calendar in 46 BCE. Our modern calendar, known as the Gregorian calendar, is based upon
revisions to the Julian calendar, made and instituted by the Catholic Church in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
This becomes an issue when trying to date the ancient Greek Olympiads from 776 BCE, which was ‘year
one’ of the first Olympiad.
Just as in ancient Greece, the modern Olympic Games are held every four years at the beginning of the
Olympiad. The First Modern Olympiad began in 1896 when Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games
and they were held in Athens.
During the early years of the modern Olympic movement there was a disagreement over who should host
the Olympic Games. The Greek government wanted the Games in Athens permanently while Pierre de
Coubertin, the French ‘founder’ of the modern Olympic Games, wanted them to rotate around the world to
major sporting cities. So the Olympic Games of the second Olympiad were held in Paris, France, and the
Games of the third Olympiad were in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The Greeks went ahead and scheduled their
own Olympic Games in 1906, a tenth anniversary celebration of the 1896 Games. At that time these
Games were considered ‘official,’ in spite of the calendar – not being a quadrennial event. From a historical
perspective, the 1906 Olympic Games must always be included in Olympic record-keeping. They happened- they cannot be ignored. However, they are not called the Games of the fourth Olympiad, because these
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