This is SPARTA! No, just kidding. This is the final blog post for this awesome ancient Olympics blog. (Although they both have to do with ancient Greece). If you look around on this blog, you will find all of the events that competitors competed in. Some of them we still do today, but some, we don’t even think of doing. My three questions were why did the Olympics end and then resume again, who competed in the ancient Olympics, and what were the prizes?
The reason that they stopped was because that the Roman Empire took the Greek empire over and they got rid of the Olympics. About 1000 years later, a French monsieur thought of bringing them back in 1896, and so every two years, there’s a summer or winter Olympics. Although the winter games didn’t start until 1920. Some competitors were Astylos of Croton, who won three times. That’s very impressive. There was Milon of Croton, (Croton is in Italy which I guess was in the Greek Empire) whose specialty was wrestling. He was a six time champion of wrestling. He was also a student of the philosopher Pythagoras. Leonidas of Rhodes was a great runner and if he was still around, he could compete with the fastest runners today! And to top it all off, the runners wore something like knights would wear, but not nearly as much.Take his outfit off of him, and you’ve got yourself an athlete.
The prize wasn’t a big heavy medal, it wasn’t money, it wasn’t... What? Ohhhhh, it was! It wasn’t a bouquet of flowers, oh wait, what was that you said? Oh, it was!? That explains a lot. (Gee I really need to get my facts straight, don’t I? But it actually wasn’t a medal). It wasn’t only those two things, though. You see, there were several types of Olympics: the sacred, in which the winner would get money, thematikoi, in which the winner would get both the money and flowers, and many more in which I don’t have time to name, and only the Olympics were called “the Olympics” it wasn’t the sacred Olympics, etc., they were just called the Sacred Games or something. “The Olympics” was the main one of all of the other games. And back to the prizes, the winner always got a big feast in his honor with the noble, his family and friends.
There were lots of events that I found out about. I’ve already mentioned running in this blog post but there are so many more sports that I haven’t said in this post. There was the pentathlon, which involves five sports. One of them was the discus throw. That one was probably the most famous one out of all the sports that they did. In fact, they still do the exact same things, we even call it call it the same. (Although that’s not surprising. What else would they call it, frisbee?)
The Greeks also did javelin. Once again, we do the exact same javelin as the Greeks did. Running, as you know from this post, was actually completely different than what we do. The only two similarities are that they raced on legs and they did it for competition in the Olympics. They wore knight-like outfits, just not made out of metal. The distances were strangely different, like 192 meters. Nowadays, there is a 200 meter race, 400 meter, 800, etc. But they had just really random races. Can you imagine running a 2860 meter race? (Try saying that five times fast). Well, I can’t.
They had high jumping, except it was called jump. They used lead or stone jump weights shaped like telephone wires. So it was basically pole vaulting. Lastly, wrestling. It’s pretty similar from the modern day wrestling. You couldn’t bite back then, (people biting each other just for the sport of it still haunts my dreams). but you can now. You couldn’t do some holds in the Greco-Roman type that we do now, but you could literally break their fingers. The guy that had his finger broken would either forfeit, thus he won’t be a champion, or continue playing with the pain. I would just forfeit to get something to make my finger better. They’ll think I’m a wuss, but so what? If I’m going to try and live the dream by becoming an Olympic champion, I’m not about to let some injury that’s actually allowed in the sport stop me.
(Just so you know, this is NOT Sparta. This is the ANCIENT GREEK OLYMPICS)!!!! Summary. So, you’ve read about some athletes, and some sports that they played. You’ve read about some of their prizes, even chuckled a few thousand times. But I haven’t told you that they tamed lions. Whoops! guess I just did. WHO CAN TAME LIONS!?!? Seriously. WHO HAS THE NERVES TO DO THAT!?!? No one here today, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, the tales will keep on taleing! Ha! Got you there. There might be more legends or shall I say myths that people will possibly make up. But I’ve rounded up all of the facts, and here they are, in this blog.
The reason that they stopped was because that the Roman Empire took the Greek empire over and they got rid of the Olympics. About 1000 years later, a French monsieur thought of bringing them back in 1896, and so every two years, there’s a summer or winter Olympics. Although the winter games didn’t start until 1920. Some competitors were Astylos of Croton, who won three times. That’s very impressive. There was Milon of Croton, (Croton is in Italy which I guess was in the Greek Empire) whose specialty was wrestling. He was a six time champion of wrestling. He was also a student of the philosopher Pythagoras. Leonidas of Rhodes was a great runner and if he was still around, he could compete with the fastest runners today! And to top it all off, the runners wore something like knights would wear, but not nearly as much.Take his outfit off of him, and you’ve got yourself an athlete.
The prize wasn’t a big heavy medal, it wasn’t money, it wasn’t... What? Ohhhhh, it was! It wasn’t a bouquet of flowers, oh wait, what was that you said? Oh, it was!? That explains a lot. (Gee I really need to get my facts straight, don’t I? But it actually wasn’t a medal). It wasn’t only those two things, though. You see, there were several types of Olympics: the sacred, in which the winner would get money, thematikoi, in which the winner would get both the money and flowers, and many more in which I don’t have time to name, and only the Olympics were called “the Olympics” it wasn’t the sacred Olympics, etc., they were just called the Sacred Games or something. “The Olympics” was the main one of all of the other games. And back to the prizes, the winner always got a big feast in his honor with the noble, his family and friends.
There were lots of events that I found out about. I’ve already mentioned running in this blog post but there are so many more sports that I haven’t said in this post. There was the pentathlon, which involves five sports. One of them was the discus throw. That one was probably the most famous one out of all the sports that they did. In fact, they still do the exact same things, we even call it call it the same. (Although that’s not surprising. What else would they call it, frisbee?)
The Greeks also did javelin. Once again, we do the exact same javelin as the Greeks did. Running, as you know from this post, was actually completely different than what we do. The only two similarities are that they raced on legs and they did it for competition in the Olympics. They wore knight-like outfits, just not made out of metal. The distances were strangely different, like 192 meters. Nowadays, there is a 200 meter race, 400 meter, 800, etc. But they had just really random races. Can you imagine running a 2860 meter race? (Try saying that five times fast). Well, I can’t.
They had high jumping, except it was called jump. They used lead or stone jump weights shaped like telephone wires. So it was basically pole vaulting. Lastly, wrestling. It’s pretty similar from the modern day wrestling. You couldn’t bite back then, (people biting each other just for the sport of it still haunts my dreams). but you can now. You couldn’t do some holds in the Greco-Roman type that we do now, but you could literally break their fingers. The guy that had his finger broken would either forfeit, thus he won’t be a champion, or continue playing with the pain. I would just forfeit to get something to make my finger better. They’ll think I’m a wuss, but so what? If I’m going to try and live the dream by becoming an Olympic champion, I’m not about to let some injury that’s actually allowed in the sport stop me.
(Just so you know, this is NOT Sparta. This is the ANCIENT GREEK OLYMPICS)!!!! Summary. So, you’ve read about some athletes, and some sports that they played. You’ve read about some of their prizes, even chuckled a few thousand times. But I haven’t told you that they tamed lions. Whoops! guess I just did. WHO CAN TAME LIONS!?!? Seriously. WHO HAS THE NERVES TO DO THAT!?!? No one here today, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, the tales will keep on taleing! Ha! Got you there. There might be more legends or shall I say myths that people will possibly make up. But I’ve rounded up all of the facts, and here they are, in this blog.
RSS Feed
