in honour of Poseidon. These four, held at different times, constituted the Periodos
or Circuit and were open to all Greeks. According to the Theban poet Pindar, who
won commissions to compose choral odes celebrating the victors at all these four
major competitions, the Olympic games, the most prestigious, were first instituted by
Heracles in thanksgiving for his victories and dedicated to his father Zeus.
And Time, in passing onward, clearly told the plain story, how Heracles divided
the spoils that were the gift of war, and offered sacrifice, and how he ordained the
four years’ festival along with the Olympic games and with contests for victors.
(Pindar, Olympian Odes, 10, 55–59)Time, in fact, came to be measured in this four-year Olympic cycle, with the first
Olympiad reckoned from the victory of one Coroebus in the footrace in 776 BC; this
method of dating by naming victor was adopted by Thucydides, for example:
Meanwhile the ambassadors from Mitylene who had been sent out in the first ship
had been told by the Spartans to come to Olympia, in the Olympiad in which
Dorieus of Rhodes won his second victory, and when after the festival was over, a
meeting of the allies was called, they made the following speech:
(Thucydides, 3, 8)Evidently, political business could be transacted on these Pan-Hellenic occasions.
This dating system presupposes general Greek interest in and knowledge of the
results of the contests.
At the centre of the site at Olympia is a large religious sanctuary called the Altis,
which is dominated by the temple to Zeus which housed a giant image of the god
sculpted by Pheidias which was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
The god is seated on his throne. He is made of gold and ivory, and on his head is
a wreath representing sprays of olive. In his right hand stands a figure of victory,
also of gold and ivory... in his left is a sceptre, skilfully wrought with various
metals. The bird perched on the sceptre is an eagle. The sandals of the god are
golden, and so is his robe, which is decorated with animals and lilies.
(Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.11.1-2)Nearby in the open air was the altar on which sacrifices were made. According to
Pausanias, this was made entirely of bones and ashes from previous sacrifices
compounded with clay that had reached a height of over 20 feet at the time he was
writing in the second century AD. There were other temples and administrative build-
ings in the Altis; the various sporting arenas, including the stadium, the hippodrome
and the gymnasium radiated out from the central sanctuary.
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