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Choosing the site

Reviving the Games

The current Olympics

 

 


The Olympic Games were founded by the great hero Herakles. He held the first Games to celebrate his conquest of Elis. Herakles had attacked the city in revenge against Augeas, its king. Augeas had refused to pay Herakles for cleaning his unspeakably foul stables, which housed 3,000 cattle and had not been cleansed for 30 years.

Origins of the Olympics

 

Hellas mapView from TodayView from TodayChoosing the site

Herakles chose for his celebratory games sacred Olympia, one of the oldest religious sites in Hellas. There stands a wooded hill upon which Zeus, the king of the gods, defeated his father, Kronos, in a wrestling match to determine which god would reign supreme over the earth. Herakles selected a grove at the foot of that hill to be the Altis, the most sacred spot in a sacred site.

Reviving the Olympic Games

The games founded by Herakles ended at some unknown time in the distant past. Then, 622 years ago, the Oracle at Delphi told King Iphitos of Elis that he could end the civil war and plague ravaging Hellas at that time by reviving the Olympic Games. King Iphitos arranged a truce during which he invited all Hellene city-states to gather in harmony for an athletic competition at Olympia. This marked the beginning of the revived Olympic Games, held every four years since.

The current Olympics

The current Games were first held 524 years ago. At first and for 13 Olympiads afterward, the Games consisted of a single event, a 1-stade-long footrace known as the Stade. The first winner of that race and the first modern Olympic champion was Koroibos, a cook from Elis.

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2002 World Book copyright